University Builder: Edgar Odell Lovett and the Founding of the Rice Institute
- ISBN-10
- 0807135224
- ISBN-13
- 9780807135228
- Category
- Biography & Autobiography
- Pages
- 344
- Language
- English
- Published
- 2012-07-04
- Publisher
- LSU Press
- Author
- John B. Boles
Description
Rice University, one of America's preeminent institutions of higher education, grew out of the vision, direction, and leadership of one man: Edgar Odell Lovett (1871--1957). University Builder is the fascinating story of this extraordinary educator and the unique school he created. Widely acknowledged, almost from its founding in 1912, as one of America's best universities, Rice is distinguished as both the smallest and the youngest institution in the top tier of American universities. In telling the tale of Lovett and his innovative, enduring vision for Rice, John Boles provides both a compelling biographical narrative and a refreshing new view of American higher education in the first half of the twentieth century. Lovett was not a Texan; he was not even a southerner. Rather, with two Ph.D.'s in hand, he was a rising star at Princeton University when the trustees of the newly founded Rice Institute--chartered in 1891 by wealthy Houston merchant William Marsh Rice--called him in 1907 to be the school's first president. Working with a significant endowment, a vague charter, a supportive board, and a visionary's gift for planning, Lovett set out on a fact-finding tour of educational institutions around the globe. He transformed the idea of the Institute into a complete university, one that emphasized research as much as teaching and aspired to world-class status. He sought the best architect available to design the campus, lured distinguished faculty from leading universities across the globe to Texas, and constructed a far-reaching vision of a small, carefully planned, elite university that incorporated the most advanced educational practices and shaped Rice's development for the next century. Lovett served as president of Rice for nearly forty years, proving himself to be an exemplary and charismatic leader who inspired two generations of students. He was the creator of Rice University in practically every way. Indeed, perhaps no other American university has been so shaped by its founder's vision. Boles's exceptional account of Lovett's remarkable academic achievement is a vital contribution to the legacy of Rice University and an important addition to the historiography of education in the early twentieth-century South.
Get the book
Other editions
-
- 2012-07-04
- 344 pages
- Ebook
- LSU Press
-
- 2012-05-31
- 344 pages
- Paperback
- LSU Press
-
- 2007-12-01
- 344 pages
- Paperback
- LSU Press
Similar books
-
Building the Intentional University: Minerva and the Future of Higher Education
By Stephen Michael Kosslyn, Ben NelsonThis book explains that vision and how it is being realized.
-
Tradeline's College and University Buildings Project Data Book, 2001
Tradeline's College and University Buildings Project Data Book, 2001
-
Building the Ivory Tower: Universities and Metropolitan Development in the Twentieth Century
By LaDale C. WinlingBuilding the Ivory Tower examines the role of American universities as urban developers and their changing effects on cities in the twentieth century.
-
The Oregon Experiment
By Christopher AlexanderLOOGENO LODGE NOU LODGE NO LODGE NO AMMO IND THE BOND MEMORIAL MAU FIRST FLOOR PLAN LODGE NO LOOSE Wings of light - Women's Quad , Swarthmore College 23. PARKING SPACES As the university grows , there is a great danger that parking will ...
-
Master Builders of Byzantium
By Robert Ousterhout... to fill many lacunae in the history of Byzantine architecture — including omissions in the present study . ... 77-94 ; idem , A Byzantine Settlement in Cappadocia , Dumbarton Oaks Studies 42 ( Washington , DC : Dumbarton Oaks ...
-
Bigger Isn't Necessarily Better: Lessons from the Harvard Home Builder Study
By Frederick H. AbernathyGiven the importance of housing to the US economy, the book's lessons are critical to those in homebuilding as well as to policy makers, scholars, and the public.
-
Campus with Purpose: Building a Mission-Driven Campus
By Stephen W. LehmkuhleThrough personal and engaging anecdotes about his experience as the inaugural chancellor at the University of Minnesota-Rochester, Lehmkuhle describes how higher education leaders can focus on campus purpose to create new and fresh ways to ...
-
Nation Builder: John Quincy Adams and the Grand Strategy of the Republic
By Charles N. EdelBut Charles N. Edel’s provocative biography of John Q. Adams argues that he served as the central architect of a grand strategy whose ideas and policies made him a critical link between the founding generation and the Civil War–era ...