Graduating class, School of Social Service Administration, undated. The launching of SSA in 1920 attracted bright students eager to enter social work, a new profession in the process of being shaped by the school's faculty.

 

Eiji Asada (PhD 1893). A student of President Harper in the Semitic Languages and Literatures Department, Asada received the first doctoral degree awarded by the new University.

The Higher Learning

Graduate and Professional Schools
The professional schools expanded again in 1920 with the addition of the School of Social Service Administration. SSA was founded in order to provide social work a firm intellectual base. SSA's work on the status of women and children laid the foundation for child-related social security provisions in the 1930s. From 1926 until its closing in 1990, the Graduate Library School pursued the goal of integrating training in library service with research in the fundamental problems of modern libraries.

The most recently founded professional program, the Irving B. Harris Graduate School of Public Policy Studies, was added in 1987. Like all professional curricula at the University of Chicago, the public policy program was organized around the union of intellectual pursuit with policy analysis. Not surprisingly, public policy students were encouraged to adopt a broad approach by incorporating work in law, business, social service, and graduate division courses into their studies.