With the goal of research always in mind, the University also developed schools to train professionals in ministry, medicine, business, education, and law. Schools for music and engineering were also contemplated by President Harper before he died. Chicago graduates found positions nationwide, but a substantial number made their homes in the city and surrounding region. Of 27,000 alumni in the Chicago metropolitan area in 1991, 9000 were MBAs, 2000 worked in the legal professions, 1200 served as social workers, and 800 were physicians.
While the Law School faculty quickly gained a national reputation for its research on broad issues, some professors focused on improving the legal system in Chicago as well. Julian Mack, appointed to the first faculty when the Law School opened in 1902, became a Cook County circuit court judge and helped establish guidelines for the recently-established juvenile court. In close association with the Chicago Woman's Club and Hull House, he helped found the Juvenile Protection Association and Immigrants' Protective League and was active in other philanthropic endeavors. Ernst W. Puttkammer, a specialist in criminal law, wrote A Manual of Criminal Law and Criminal Procedure for Police (1931) for the Chicago Citizens' Police Committee, and served for many years on the Chicago Crime Commission.
For over thirty years Law School students have participated in the Mandel Legal Aid Clinic, which assists indigent clients with cases and allows third-year students to make appearances in state courts. In addition to providing aid to those who cannot afford it, students prepare test cases on recurrent problems in areas such as utilities regulation, government benefits, children's rights, mental health, consumer advocacy, and employment discrimination. From its beginnings as an undergraduate program, the University's school of business was tranformed in the 1940s into a full graduate institution, which aimed to train scholars as well as skilled entrepreneurs. The Graduate School of Business expanded rapidly and became known for its emphasis on the basic disciplines underlying the business environment. Research and training in management, labor relations, finance, and marketing received sponsorship from Chicago-area firms.
As early as the 1930s, the business school also sponsored downtown programs for working business people. The Executive Program was created for experienced managers who wanted to sharpen their decision-making skills and broaden their understanding of problems which extended beyond individual companies or industries. Likewise, the 190/MBA program provided younger executives with opportunities to study during evenings or weekends while working full-time. Faculty members gained by testing their theoretical assumptions against the experiences of students who were already engaged in commercial activities.
The Divinity School was formed from the Baptist Union Theological Seminary, which had been in operation for 25 years before the University opened in 1892. Students from other denominations were welcomed, and by 1894 the Disciples Divinity House opened to support students from that denomination at the University. Ryder Divinity House, associated with Lombard College in Galesburg, Illinois, similarly helped Universalist students.
Harper advocated affiliation agreements with other denominational schools, intending to make the University of Chicago a nucleus for theological and ministry training in the Middle West. At first hesitant to accept Harper's invitation because of the "tainted" Rockefeller money at the University, Chicago Theological Seminary (Congregational) decided to move from its West Side location to Hyde Park in 1914. Meadville Theological School (Unitarian) arrived from Pennsylvania in the 1920s, following a successful exchange program with the University. More recently, the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago built a new campus on 55th Street, and McCormick Theological Seminary (Presbyterian) sold its North Side campus to DePaul University and moved into the former Phi Kappa Psi fraternity house at 56th and Woodlawn. The Catholic Theological Union, the largest Roman Catholic theological school in the country, also located in Hyde Park. This accumulation of theological institutions has not only expanded educational opportunities for students and faculty from many denominations, but has produced a substantial body of ministerial candidates for the Chicago region.
The campus of the University was never meant to contain its educational mission. As conceived by William R. Harper, the University of Chicago included an extension division that would bring instruction to students who could not work toward their degrees on campus. The extension offered three methods of instruction: students could learn by attending a series of scheduled lectures (lecture-study), register for courses offered in an extension center (class-study), or receive instruction through the mail at home (correspondence-study). At a time when state universities were bound to their rural land-grant campuses and the concept of adult education was still new, the University's offering of extension courses in the heart of the city provided opportunities for students for whom conventional higher education was out of reach.
Harper had several models for his extension program. The correspondence-study component of the extension was derived from Harper's own entrepeneurial experience as the founder and promoter of a surprisingly successful Hebrew correspondence school. The inspiration for lecture-study and class-study extension programs came in part from American educational and religious institutions offering similar fare, including the famous summer sessions of Chautauqua which Harper knew personally. It was also shaped by the lecture courses offered through the extension programs at English universities. The British public had attended them so enthusiastically that some of the lecturers were minor celebrities. As the administrator and first lecturer for Chicago's program, Harper recruited Richard Green Moulton, Cambridge's most popular extension lecturer. Moulton, who lectured at the University's downtown extension center until 1919, routinely filled the 275-seat auditorium with his addresses on English literature.
Over the years, the University Extension offered both courses for credit and non-degree classes. Correspondence courses were ended in the mid-1960s, but lecture and seminar programs continued. In recent years, the Extension Division, renamed and redefined as the Office of Continuing Education, continues to offer an appealing array of adult education programs.
Enthusiastic response to the University's first half-century of extension courses prepared the way for one of Chicago's best known ventures in continuing education, the Great Books program. In 1943, Wilbur Munnecke, then vice-president of Marshall Field and Company, complained to President Robert M. Hutchins that too many bright businessmen had difficulty communicating. Munnecke thought that a great books discussion group, like the one Hutchins had conducted on campus with Mortimer Adler, would help overcome the problem. The result of this idea was a gathering of top Chicago executives, informally known as the "Fat Men," who met regularly to read and discuss the classic works of the Western tradition. The success of the group was so immediate that the experiment was taken to the Chicago Public Library, where librarians were trained to lead discussions.
Within three years, a city-wide Great Books program had been established in Chicago and a number of other cities. A manual for discussion leaders was prepared so that even participants untrained in scholarly criticism could lead lively, informed discussions. In 1946, Hutchins, who had made frequent personal and radio appearances on behalf of the program, established the independent Great Books Foundation with a $132,000 loan from the University.
Great Books continued to grow and thrive. In Chicago, the first major city to embrace the program, public schools have offered Great Books for twenty-five years in over 250 local schools. Today 30,000 adults take part in discussion groups, and nearly one million children are introduced to at least part of its content through public schools and libraries. For its part, the University offers the Basic Program of Liberal Education, its own continuing education courses centered on reading the classic texts of the Western tradition.
On February 4, 1931, three University of Chicago professors sat around an already antiquated microphone in Mitchell Tower for an unrehearsed discussion of a new government report on prohibition. It was one of the earliest informal, "round table" discussions of a public issue ever heard on radio. To broadcast the program, Chicago station WMAQ had to waive its standing rule against ad-libbing on the air.
That first experiment led to the long-running "University of Chicago Round Table" radio program. In the mid-1930s, WMAQ's parent network, NBC, picked up the program for broadcast nationally on Sunday afternoons. Much of the program's success was due to William Benton, co-founder of the Benton and Bowles advertising agency, a trustee and vice-president of the University, who saw early the power mass media could have in presenting the University to the public.
Benton encouraged President Hutchins to improve the quality of the "Round Table" and expand its reach. By 1951, the "Round Table" was carried by ninety-eight network and twenty educational radio stations, and had the largest national audience of any discussion program. Over the years, participants included public figures such as John F. Kennedy, Ralph Bunche, Jawaharlal Nehru, and Adlai Stevenson as well as a wide range of University faculty from all disciplines.
Although the radio version of the "Round Table" was discontinued in 1955, it was reincarnated as a television program from 1967 to 1974. Chicago's educational television station, WTTW, produced the new "Round Table" initially for the local audience and then later for distribution to public television stations throughout the Midwest.
The University has made other forays into broadcast media, most of them created for Chicago audiences. After WTTW first came on the air in 1955, the University produced "The Humanities," a thirteen-week, non-credit course broadcast from the station's studios, which were then located in the Museum of Science and Industry. In the 1960s, "University Radio News," broadcast over station WFMT, provided a look a recent developments in University research. Two weekly radio programs, "From the Midway" and "Conversations at Chicago," produced in the 1960s and 1970s, picked up the discussion format pioneered by the "Round Table." As in earlier decades, the University continued to maintain a media presence that helped shape public understanding of its academic programs and the work of its faculty.
With support from the William Benton Foundation, a new venture began in 1983 when radio and television journalists came to campus as Benton Fellows, taking regular University courses in areas of personal interest and participating in special seminars on public policy issues. The six-month program allowed journalists to reflect on issues facing their profession in ways not usually possible under deadline pressure. In 1987 the Benton Broadcast Project initiated plans to develop broadcast treatments for scholarly activities and research projects. One of its first products was "Bastille," an ambitious radio dramatization marking the bicentennial of the French Revolution.
THE UNIVERSITY AND THE CITY:
A Centennial View of the University of Chicago