When a group of powerful Methodist ministers held an 1870 convention in Syracuse, they envisioned a university where men and women could surround themselves with knowledge of fine arts, liberal arts and medicine. They received a hilly stretch of farmland in the southeast corner of the city, built a Hall of Languages and then left the fate of this seedling of an academic institution in the hands of one office: the chancellorship.

Syracuse University’s first three chancellors faced unique challenges during their tenures, but the issue of fundraising, a problem that still plagues the university presidents of the 21st century, continued to get in the way of each man’s vision for SU’s immediate future.

‘What got wearing was you had to constantly raise money,’ said Mary M.T. O’Brien, assistant archivist at SU. ‘And this place just sort of hung on by their fingernails.’

The first chancellor

Dr. Alexander Winchell was embedded in the academic landscape of Michigan. He served as a professor of zoology and geology at the University of Michigan, edited the Michigan Journal of Education and was the director of the Geographical Survey of Michigan.

He unexpectedly left Michigan in 1872, two years after SU’s opening, to accept the offer of the highest administrative position at a new school with uncertain potential, according to W. Freeman Galpin’s, ‘The Pioneer Days.’

Winchell knew the risk he was taking, which was evident by the closing remark of his acceptance letter: ‘and so the die is cast.’

It would become apparent early on that Winchell had pictured his duties as chancellor quite differently from the realities he faced during his first months.

‘Mr. Winchell, he perhaps did not understand that it was going to be more to this than teaching,’ O’Brien said. ‘Not too many of the chancellors you’ll see, they don’t actually teach class when they are chancellor. You just don’t have the time to do that.’

Winchell’s timing was poor. He took on the post at the same time the U.S. government began withdrawing the greenback money it had issued during the Civil War and also demonetized silver. This combination led to a significant depression that was popularly called the ‘Crime of ’73,’ said J. Scott Strickland, professor of history at SU.

Winchell, however, was not comfortable with asking people for money and constantly being asked to raise substantial sums. The university was too young and needed more than a figurehead at the helm. The veteran of academia recognized this was not his time or place.

‘(They need a man here) to create a university, not to manage one and they can’t afford a chancellor and a creator both,’ Winchell said upon his resignation.

Winchell’s year of work was rewarded by the Board of Trustees; they offered him to remain on as a professor at the same meeting he quit. He would be able to do what he knew best – teach.

‘He was really more of an academic and that’s why one year was enough for him,’ O’Brien said.

The Rev. Haven

Though Erastus O. Haven had been the Board of Trustees’ first choice for chancellor in 1872, he had already accepted the presidency at Northwestern University.

After Winchell’s resignation, the board once again turned their gaze westward and asked the Methodist reverend to be chancellor.

According to Galpin, fundraising was also the dominant issue of Haven’s SU career. Faculty members often received their salary weeks late; the Hall of Languages was mortgaged and crops – grown in what is now the Quad – were sold for a profit. Despite the financial troubles, learning continued.

‘You can see where the Board of Trustees would have looked at him and said, ‘OK he’s got experience, he knows what to expect having been the president of two universities,” O’Brien said. ‘So it can’t come as shock to him that we are going to ask him to do not so much academics as fundraising and directing of the university.’

The academic duties of the chancellor were being defined during these formative years and the role of the individual college deans became clearer. The curriculum was developed by the small but dedicated faculty, while students celebrated the end of calculus classes with a textbook-burning picnic, O’Brien said.

‘(The chancellor) would of course be expected to decide with the Board of Trustees and your faculty, the courses that were going to be taught,’ O’Brien said. ‘What were you going to teach, what were the standards you were going to raise?’

‘You either had the scientific or the classical, that’s what you learned,’ she said. ‘Two curriculums – that was it.’

SU’s ties to the Methodist church helped to maintain a financial safety net, but also had ramifications.

Haven was called to serve as a bishop in 1880, and the university had no choice but to let their leader of six years depart for San Francisco.

His greatest contribution may have been keeping the university solvent during a national economic crisis. The adolescent university had increased enrollment from 41 students during its first year to 279 in 1880, with 1,941 students having matriculated during the first nine years, according to Galpin.

‘At least we were still here and that was a rough decade,’ O’Brien said.

Sims and a little bit of growth

By 1880, SU had an Alumni Association and it tested its sway with the Board of Trustees by asking them to take their time in selecting the university’s third chancellor, Galpin wrote. The alumni wanted the board to carefully calculate their decision in the best interests of their alma mater.

The goal was for the new chancellor ‘to concentrate all of his time and energy upon the physical and financial life of the university,’ according to Galpin.

For the second time, the board found their man in a Methodist minister. The Rev. Charles N. Sims accepted the chancellorship in late 1880 and was sitting behind his desk in the Hall of Languages by April.

Sims worked to achieve many of the tasks his predecessors had not been able to carry out. He wanted the board to clearly define the duties of the chancellor and accepted responsibility over the financial direction of the school.

‘From that time on the hand of the chancellor became increasingly more apparent in every aspect of university life,’ Galpin wrote.

‘You’ll notice that every single chancellor will say that the previous chancellor had done his best,’ O’Brien said, ‘but there is always more to do.’

Under Sims’ leadership the faculty grew in size, the University Senate was established, the annual deficits were eliminated and more diverse courses were taught because of a reduction in required courses and an increase in electives, according to Galpin.

Sims was also the first chancellor to see a new building added to the barren, farmland campus of the university’s early days.

‘The era of rapid development hadn’t yet arrived,’ O’Brien said.

She added he was very involved in securing the four buildings added during his administration: Holden Observatory, Crouse College, the Von Ranke Library – now the Tolley Administration Building – and the Gymnasia – now the Women’s Building.

O’Brien explained that Crouse College had been built with a generous gift from the Honorable John Crouse, an SU trustee. Yet, his intent was for the girls to take their courses in the castle he had built just west of the Hall of Languages. It was this notion that led to the inscription – still there today – on the building’s northern entrance: ‘John Crouse Memorial College for Women.’

‘From the very beginning, Syracuse University was coeducational and never discriminatory,’ O’Brien said. ‘Their daughters as well as their sons were going to be educated.’

But Crouse was never used as a women-only facility because Crouse did not live to see the completion of his building.

This conundrum of asking donors for money and then having to accommodate their requests challenges every chancellor, O’Brien said.

‘I think that’s something he was obviously good at,’ she said, ‘that he was here as long as he was.’

Sims retired in 1893 after serving as chancellor for 12 years. He oversaw the university while it increased its total assets to more than $1.7 million and doubled the size of the student body, according to Galpin.

‘And the expansion just kept on going,’ O’Brien said of the years following Sims’ retirement.

Syracuse had a place in this minister’s heart and he returned to Syracuse in 1903 to serve as trustee – a position he held until his death in 1908.

‘He was obviously really invested in the university,’ O’Brien said.

The first 23 years

After 23 years of financial difficulties, SU had seen three chancellors from various backgrounds with individual approaches to leading an immerging university. The campus now consisted of five buildings, an Alumni Association, three colleges and most importantly a foundation for others to expand upon.

‘You had students coming in, open to anyone, sexes, races, anybody,’ O’Brien said. ‘The place expanded and I think it shows that even just the way they hung on tenaciously to be able to get to where they were going. And it kept on growing. And even through tough hard times, it kept on growing. Pretty impressive for the first 20 years.’

Published on March 6, 2007 at 12:00 pm