Edmund Ezra Day (1883-1951, Cornell University President, 1937-1949)
BS and MA, Dartmouth (1905)
Ph.D. Economics, Harvard (1909)
Professor of Economics, Harvard University (1910-1923)
Chief Statistician, U.S. Shipping Board and the War Industries Board (1919)
Chair, Department of Economics, University of Michigan (1923)
Founder and Dean, School of Business Administration, University of Michigan
(1924)
Director for Social Sciences, Rockefeller Foundation (1928-1937)
President, Cornell University (1937-1949)
Edmund Ezra Day led Cornell through the turbulent years of World War II and
its boom years afterward. He became the fifth president of Cornell in 1937.
During his presidency, academic programs were revised and expanded. A Department
of Sociology and Anthropology and a Department of Slavic Language and Literature
were created. Area studies were initiated in 1943 with a course in Contemporary
Russian Civilization.
The central event of Day's presidency was World War II. The Army A-12 and Navy
V-12 programs began in 1943. The College
of Engineering created the Engineering,
Science, and Management War Training Program for the war industry, training
some 30,000 persons, and a one-year program for the industrial training of women.
The Medical College
sponsored the Army's Hospital No. 9 on Biak Island
off the coast of New Guinea.
After the war, the campus developed rapidly, with record enrollment, which
grew from 6,341 to 10,034. Cornell's Laboratory of Nuclear Studies quickly developed
into one of the world's leading centers of research in experimental particle
physics. A new School of Business
and Public Administration began operation in 1946. The Cornell Aeronautical
Laboratory, a research lab in Buffalo,
was acquired by the university. In 1948, the State University of New York was
formally established. Cornell's state colleges were defined as state-supported
but not state-operated. On May 15,
1944, a bill establishing the New York State School of Industrial
and Labor Relations was passed and signed; the school opened on Nov. 1, 1945. Day's achievements also
included administrative reform, the success of the Greater Cornell Fund and
the creation of entirely new schools.
Born in Manchester, N.H., in 1883, Day received the B.S. and M.A. degrees from
Dartmouth College, and a Ph.D in economics from Harvard
University where, from 1910 to 1923, he served as professor of economics and
chair of the department. During World War I, he was a statistician for the U.S.
Shipping Board and the War Industries Board. He went in 1923 to the University
of Michigan, where he served as professor
of economics, organizer and first dean of the School
of Business Administration and Dean
of the University. He became director for the social sciences from 1928 to 1937
for the Rockefeller Foundation and director of general education for the General
Education Board from 1930 to 1937.
Day resigned the presidency in 1949 because of ill health. He was appointed
to the post of chancellor, giving his energies to the major overall aspects
of university development, to the higher levels of fund raising, and to the
cultivation of the university's relations with the state. He also continued
to serve as the chief executive officer of the Medical
College. He died in 1951.
(Cornelis W. de Kiewiet, who had been provost, was appointed acting president
upon the resignation of Edmund Ezra Day in 1949. de Kiewiet resigned Jan.
27, 1951, the day Deane Waldo Malott was
named as the next president. Theodore P. Wright, then Vice President for Research,
was appointed acting president from then until Malott
was inaugurated on July 1, 1951.)
Source: http://www.news.cornell.edu/campus/presidents.bios.html
Although Day's tenure was short at the University of Michigan, his impact will
last forever. Immediately after joining the Economics staff in February of 1923,
Day started plans for a School of
Business Administration at Michigan.
Day had attended Harvard during the time Harvard instituted its separate School
of Business (1908-09). Just as it
was with the University's Observatory, and its Dental
School, the Business
School would be yet another plan
modeled after Harvard. Another factor that ultimately influenced Day to set-up
a separate Business School,
was his attendance at the Association of Collegiate Business Schools meeting
in May of 1921, 2 years before being appointed to Michigan.
It is evident that Day's appointment to U-M, signifyed Michigan's
desire to form a separate School of
Business. The regents found the perfect
man for the job.
Day's Short Stay in Ann Arbor
Day would continue to hold the position of Chair of the Economics Department
with his new title as Dean of the School
of Business Administration. Day ultimately
had enough of Michigan. Several
letters sent by then President Clarence C. Little to Day at his temporary position
at the Rockefeller Foundation in New York City
urged Day to remain at Michigan.
Day was particularly annoyed with the underpaid salaries of the Michigan Faculty
and Staff. (This was the time when football coaches were being paid more than
2 times the amount of full-time professors) Day resigned from Michigan
in 1928, and would carry a significant position at the Laura Spellman Rockefeller
Memorial Foundation in New York City
(where his salary was significantly larger than what he made as Dean of the
Business School).
Day would go on to attend the University
of Vermont and receive an LLD there
in 1931. Although Day served a rather abrupt five year term in Ann
Arbor, his impact is still felt today. Day died in 1951.
Source: http://www.umich.edu/~hist265/links/projects/1996/business/day.html