Wall Street's woes in the early Thirties swept across the country, devastating the U.S. economy and bringing to a screeching halt the rapid expansion of the college in Kent, Ohio.

The Teens and early Twenties had seen the construction of Merrill, Lowry, Kent, Moulton, Franklin and Rockwell halls, as well as the Administration Building and Wills Gymnasium. Now the hammers stopped. Faculty hiring fell off; staff wages were cut; plans for new courses were scrapped.

Enrollment? It went up. And, that really is not surprising. High school graduates had no jobs, so many went to college. The cost, especially at Kent State, was low--only $15 a session.

Kent State had a new president. James O. Engleman had assumed the presidency in 1928. Under his leadership, Kent State would make great strides, but he also would be a controversial president during his ten years in office.

One of his earliest moves was to reorganize the college. Kent had been chartered as a normal school, i.e., a school that produced teachers. It had one academic unit: Education.

Engleman changed that. In 1931, he split the school into two academic units, or colleges. One was education, the other liberal arts.

By establishing a college of liberal arts, Engleman had radically broadened the school's mission and paved the way for new growth. In 1932, Engleman created seven new academic departments to go, with the English Department, into the new College of Liberal Arts. Five of the new departments were philosophy, economics, political science, sociology and history.

Journalism becomes a department

The two other new departments: the Department of Journalism and Publicity, and the Department of Speech. The former, obviously, would be the home base of journalism education in the years to come; the latter shortly would house another new academic program, the division of radio. Journalism did not yet offer a full major, but more courses were being added and that was on the horizon. Again, though, this gets ahead of the story.

Eric Griebling

By the fall of 1930, journalism education had gained much greater stability. William Mapel, Alfred Hill and Eric Griebling each had spent a year teaching journalism. The courses had proved interesting, but there had been no overwhelming demand for their continuation. Yet, continue they did. In September 1930, Chester Satterfield, an English professor who had advised

the Kent Stater in the summer of 1927, went on academic leave to pursue his doctorate at Columbia. The department needed a temporary replacement for him.

Most hiring back then was done by the president through the Board of Trustees. The person President Engleman hired to take Satterfield's spot was Buryl F. Engleman, his son. Nepotism? Who could say? President Engleman's enemies--there were a few--undoubtedly thought so. They hadn't liked much of anything he had done so far, and they weren't to like much he of what he did in the future.

President's son becomes head of Journalism

To be fair to Buryl Engleman, a young man with wire-rimmed glasses, wavy brown hair and the wisp of a mustache, he proved to be an excellent choice. His academic background was strong: a bachelor's from Indiana State Teachers College (1926) and work toward a master's at Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism. He had taught high school in Aurora, Danville and Marshall, Illinois. In addition, he had journalism experience: "reportorial and editorial work for several years" in Decatur, Ill. and Racine, Wisc.

During what apparently was supposed to be his first, and last, year on the faculty, he taught freshman composition and seven journalism classes and served as adviser to the Kent Stater and to the college's debate team.

The journalism courses were becoming more popular, too. Enrollment for the year was 54 students, up from 16 the year previous. When Satterfield returned in the fall of 1931, Buryl Engleman remained in the English Department, and during the 1931-1932 academic year taught eight journalism courses, with the assistance of Kent Stater editor, Harold Jones.

Buryl Engleman

The president's son had taught journalism for two years at Kent State when the president created the new Department of Journalism and Publicity. For a chairman, he had to look no further than Merrill Hall, where Buryl Engleman already was teaching.

Promotion for Buryl Engleman

Two years after joining the English faculty, most likely as a one-year replacement, the younger Engleman had secured a full time position, been named head of one of seven new departments in the newly created College of Liberal Arts, been given charge of advising the Kent Stater and the Chestnut Burr, and been appointed chair of the new Faculty Committee on Publications. It had to be a heady time for the young assistant professor.

The growing popularity of journalism was being recogized.

The 1932 Kent State Bulletin, explaining creation of the Department of Journalism and Publicity, noted: "Expansion of the courses in journalism is the result of a definite de-mand from, and an increased interest on the part of, the students who plan to enter the profession of journalism...."

Modern curriculum takes shape

Even earlier, however, Engleman had begun tinkering with the journalism curriculum, perhaps in anticipation of the program becoming a separate department. Building on the framework Al Hill had outlined three years earlier, Engleman developed a curriculum that, by fall 1931, had a distinctively modern bent: Newswriting and Reporting, Copyreading and Headline Writing, Advanced Reporting, Problems of Make Up and Printing, Feature Writing, Editorial and Critical Writing, History of Journalism, and Supervision of High School Journalism.

With minor adjustment and tuning, Engleman's journalism curriculum stayed pretty much the same for the next three years. Enrollment in the new program was not especially large, but it was stable. Student publications entrusted to Engleman's care improved, and staff sizes grew.

The Chestnut Burr, praising its weekly lodge brother, said of the Kent Stater, "It provides a weekly mirror to the events of the campus. With its non-partisan policy, its freedom from fraternity and sorority politics and its modern outlook, it is truly a paper of which to be proud."

Surprising resignation

Seemingly, Engleman was doing an excellent job in and out of the classroom. In January 1936, however, halfway through his fourth year as head of the Journalism department and his sixth of teaching journalism at Kent, Buryl Engleman suddenly and surprisingly resigned, effective June of that year.

For some reason, he returned to Decatur, Ill. where he became managing editor of the daily paper there. It's not readily apparent why he left. No one appears to have forced him out. The Board of Trustees, in accepting his resignation, passed a resolution expressing "appreciation for his valuable services" that seemed to be more than pro forma. The Stater, in a page 1 story about his resignation, simply announced, "His plans for next year are as yet unannounced."

With Buryl Engleman on his way out, the developing program found itself at a dangerous crossroads. Kent State rapidly was emerging as one of the fastest growing colleges in the country, and its enrollment, as the Depression waned, began to show even sharper growth spurts. If journalism education were to not only survive, but grow and prosper, it required expert and forceful leadership.

A new broadcast program also was taking shape. Read more about it.

Read about program's beginnings

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