The Project

Organizations that have no living past have no future. Too often organizations flow from one administration or generation to the next without any form of institutional memory. When this happens, at best there is a sense of the past without any concrete understanding of what happened and for what reasons. At worst, organizations without histories cease to exist for lack of any desire to preserve and improve upon the hard work of those who came before.

In 2005, the GSO executive board, along with a handful of earnest volunteers, undertook the task of making the Graduate Student Organization's records available in an online form through our Web site. After weeks of constant work and the scanning of thousands of pages of material, we released the GSO Archives in January 2006.

Today we begin the project of integrating our history with that of Syracuse University's. Much of the material you find below comes to us from the five volume history of the university published by Syracuse University Press between 1952 and 1998. We thank the late W. Freeman Galpin, Richard Wilson, Oscar Barck Jr., John Robert Greene, and Karrie Barron, the authors of these volumes, for giving us the blueprint upon which we must build.

Our endeavor now is to compile a complete picture of graduate education at Syracuse University and of the active role graduate students have played in directing their careers over the past forty years, in the hopes of completing the project by 2008-2009, the forty-year anniversary of the GSO. We invite faculty, administrators, and graduate alumnae to send us their memories of the GSO to help us fill in the historical blanks with records and reminiscences that time has made opaque to us as current students. We hope that this project will be ongoing and updated as we receive more pieces of the puzzle lost to posterity.

Antecedents and Beginnings (1873-1893)

From its very beginning, graduate students have been present at Syracuse University. As early as 1873, the University was granting Master's degrees to graduates with three years standing in the University's Classic, Scientific-Latin, and Scientific curricula.

The first recipient of a doctoral degree from Syracuse University was James H. Hoose, who was awarded the degree of "Doctor of Philosophy in Course" at the 1872 Commencement. Hoose was a 1861 graduate of Genesee College and the Principal at the Normal School in Cortland.

From 1872 to 1912, there was no official graduate school or modern "graduate work" at Syracuse University. Graduate degrees were bestowed on Syracuse or Genesee College alumnae who had distinguished themselves in their respective fields at least three years after graduation or in recognition of services to the college, state, nation, or Methodist Church. One of the first acts of the Syracuse University Board of Trustees was to grant over 100 Master of Arts and Master of Science degrees to prominent alumnae of Genesee College, a practice that raised curricular issues about the aptitude of those holding those honorary distinctions.

In fact, alumnae applied not for admission to a graduate program at Syracuse, but for the degree itself. They were eligible so long as they met the requirements for an advanced degree and submitted their applications to the Secretary of the Faculty two weeks prior to Commencement. According to W. Freeman Galpin, the University's requirement that these applicants also pass some sort of certification exam, made Syracuse "pioneering in graduate work" by 1870s standards and gave more weight to a Syracuse graduate degree.

Once the University made its first moves toward granting graduate degrees, questions were raised by the faculty and central administration about what degrees should be granted and what requirements should be imposed for these degrees. University officials did not want their graduate degrees perceived as mere awards, nor did they want them to be perceived as non-academic in nature.

In 1874, Thomas Hooker became one of the first graduate students in residence at Syracuse University. Hooker arrived at Syracuse to study Physics and Analytical Chemistry after completing his A.B. degree at Williams College. That same year, Chancellor Alexander Winchell urged the faculty to devise rules and programs of study of Syracuse graduate students. That year the faculty and Chancellor accepted a report recommending the establishment of post-graduate courses for advanced degrees, later also accepted by the Board of Trustees. However, the faculty chose not to print the report's findings, leaving us no idea of what they had in mind for graduate courses of study. Notwithstanding this lost program, it was clear as early as 1874 that the faculty, with Chancellor Winchell's support, desired to make graduate education a permanent and defined component of university life.

To get an advanced degree, a student did not have to reside in Syracuse and did not have to hold a bachelor's degree from Syracuse University. Any person who had completed a baccalaureate course of study at Syracuse or another similar institution was admitted to candidacy. There were no required courses to take and no set number of credit hours earned would generate a graduate degree. All graduate work had to be done within the departments of Philosophy, Mathematics, Philology, Natural Science, History, and Literature. Masters degrees were given to those who had completed a bachelor's degree, one additional year of study, and submitted an approved "original thesis" to the faculty. Candidates for the Doctor of Philosophy degree had to spend one more year studying for their degrees than their peers wanting a Master's degree. Graduate work within the departments was, for the most part, was what the faculty within that department or college said it was – there was no central authority acting on behalf of graduate students.

The colleges of Liberal and Fine Arts encouraged graduate education through the 1880s. Departments sought students doing original research, albeit by the standards of their time. Length requirements for original theses varied by department, but in History for example, final papers were not to exceed 5000 words (about 20 pages in modern type). Some theses on record extended to more than 100 pages but could be as short as 15 pages. Some were summaries of past research and others were long essays on a single topic – all written out in long-hand.

Getting a graduate degree was not without expenses – it cost $20 to sit for examinations and $5 for a diploma. (In 1893 this fee was combined into a "graduation fee" of $25) A graduate student had to have this money prior to applying for the degree and there were only a handful of scholarships available at the time.

In 1881, the faculty and administration began to review their policies toward honorary degrees and at the end of the academic year decided only to recommend only three candidates per year for the Doctor of Divinity degree. Also at issue that year was the propriety of granting honorary doctorates to members of the University Board of Trustees – the Chancellor and most of the Trustees themselves did not want to be perceived as buying or selling graduate distinctions. By 1882, this concern was sweeping across academia as well. The American Philological Association and the American Association for the Advancement of Science protest the conferring of gratuitous honorary degrees, a practice Syracuse had avoided by requiring successful completion of examinations in order to obtain a doctorate.

In 1890, the University decided that it would not accept Master's degrees from other institutions in satisfying the requirements for a Doctor of Philosophy degree. In 1891 it was resolved that doctoral candidates who had not reported to the Dean of the College of Liberal Arts in three years, would be dropped from candidacy. In 1893, alumnae applying for a graduate degree based on service, as they had in the 1870s, were required to present an approved piece or original work at the college, pass an examination on disciplinary readings and a history of the profession, and pay all fees associated with that degree.

Between 1873 and 1893, Syracuse University granted 894 graduate degrees (843 of which were granted to non-resident students), excluding those honorary degrees granted with examinations. Of those graduate degrees granted, 127 were doctorates. Those doctorates granted between 1873 and 1876 were honorary; none of those after 1876 were honorary. The most doctorates during this period were granted in Christian Evidences, followed by English Literature, then History, then Philosophy, and Latin, Geology, and Greek. A handful of doctorates were awarded in the sciences as well as modern languages, notably Hebrew. Some doctoral examinations also required knowledge of the American Indian to supplement a major field of study.