Regents History: February 25-26, 1960

Board Membership

  • Harry Hagemann, President, Waverly
  • Arthur Barlow, Cedar Rapids
  • Maurice Crabbe, Eagle Grove
  • Arthur Drebenstedt, Burlington
  • Elsie Evans, Emerson
  • Lester Gillette, Fostoria
  • Alfred Noehren, Spencer
  • Dannie Rosenfield, Des Moines
  • Harriette Lubetkin, Des Moines

Highlights
President James William Maucker of the Iowa State Teacher’s College (UNI) distributed a report on duplication in the course offerings of the three institutions. President James Hilton of Iowa State, President Virgil Hancher of the University of Iowa and President Maucker had been working on this report with the Committee on Educational Coordination for the past several years. The report would not be fully discussed until the April 1960 meeting of the Board, at which tensions ran high among representatives from the three institutions. President Hancher and Provost Harvey Davis took exception to President Maucker’s plan to offer bachelor’s degrees at the ISTC without teacher certification, stating such duplication would lead to a dilution of state funds and mediocrity. Provost Davis supported the measure with the caveat that ISTC would limit participation to 100 students, prompting President Maucker to remark to the Ames Tribune that he was “not merely [looking] to educate a few pupils who happen to wander onto the campus by mistake.” The issue of duplication and the continued expansion of Iowa State University and the Iowa State Teacher’s College would continue throughout the 1960s.

Paul W. Brechler, director of athletics at the University of Iowa, offered his resignation effective August 15, 1960, to accept the commissionership of the Skyline Conference. The Skyline Conference dissolved in 1962 following the departure of Brigham Young University, the University of Utah, New Mexico University and the University of Wyoming. These four universities, along with the University of Arizona and Arizona State University, formed the Western Athletic Conference (WAC), and Brechler was chosen as its first commissioner. Brechler was a 1989 Iowa Sports Hall of Fame inductee and a 1990 inductee of the University of Iowa Athletics Hall of Fame. The press box at Kinnick Stadium was named in his honor in 2006.

ISTC (UNI) put forth several financing proposals for its new Men’s Dormitory, which was needed to meet demand for on-campus housing from the large numbers of baby boomers expected to enroll within the coming years. To save money, ISTC proposed reusing designs for Iowa State’s previously built Helser Hall. The Regents Hall for Men opened in September 1961 and was immediately overfilled with students. The Board renamed the dorm Rider Hall, after Board President Dwight G. Rider, in 1964.