Eliot, Charles William

Eliot, Charles William (1834–1926), president of Harvard University (1869–1909).Charles William Eliot sprang from Boston Brahmin and Unitarian family roots. Graduating from Harvard in 1853, he taught chemistry there from 1854 to 1863, and then at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology from 1865 until elected Harvard's president four years later. His inaugural promise to innovate, while controversial, soon launched Harvard on the trajectory that would make it the nation's leading private university. Eliot's reforms aimed at turning the undergraduate college into a vital core surrounded by a growing cluster of professional graduate schools whose quality was ensured by his insistence on the A.B. degree as a credential for admission. For undergraduates he introduced his once notorious elective system, which gradually eliminated required courses in mathematics, science, and classical languages until only English and a modern language requirement remained. This freed students to pursue personal academic interests and led, in turn, to a proliferation of advanced courses taught by professors in their special zones of expertise. To lure gifted scholars to the faculty, Eliot promoted research sabbaticals and ample salaries, but insisted that faculty in the arts and sciences teach undergraduates as well as graduate students. The scrapping of required chapel to secularize college life and widening women's access to Harvard, through the “Annex” that became Radcliffe College in 1894, were other changes under Eliot. His overarching goal was the preparation of the liberally educated expert, to guide contemporary American society and its government toward a more progressive future.
See also Education: Collegiate Education; Education: Rise of the University; Professionalization; Secularization; Unitarianism and Universalism.

Bibliography

Hugh Hawkins , Between Harvard and America: The Educational Leadership of Charles W. Eliot, 1972.

Geoffrey Blodgett