Growth and transformation
A. Howard Meneely began his 17-year tenure as Wheaton president when Dr. Park retired in 1944. By the mid-1950s, pursuing a college education had become an increasingly desirable goal for growing numbers of students nationwide. Noting Wheaton’s own steady enrollment growth since World War II, President Meneely voiced his concern that unless college facilities and the number of faculty increased across the country, a crisis in education could result. At the same time, Dr. Meneely believed that Wheaton should remain a “small” college, continuing to provide students with individualized attention and a homelike atmosphere.
While agreeing with President Meneely in principle, trustees acknowledged the changing definition of a small college and voted, in 1955, to increase Wheaton’s enrollment by 250 students. This initiative, combined with another vote taken six years later, doubled enrollment to 1,000 students. In turn, such growth allowed Wheaton to expand and improve its curriculum, faculty and building program.
On the academic front, Wheaton established in 1959 a major lecture series through the generosity of Henry Witte Otis. (Two of Mr. Otis’s daughters graduated from Wheaton.) Wheaton Professor of Religion J. Arthur Martin developed the idea for the Otis Lecture Series to give students, as he put it, “an opportunity to hear and to come to know distinguished theologians and philosophers, and to profit from the inspiration and guidance of a person of such intellectual stature as is usually found in our leading universities.” During the 1960s, the series attracted such speakers as Dr. Paul Tillich and Eleanor Roosevelt. Today, the purpose of the Otis Fund has broadened to support a colloquium in social justice—a forum through which the Wheaton community may address key contemporary social issues. The first Otis Social Justice Award was presented in 1990 to former U.S. Surgeon General C. Everett Koop. Two years later, the award went to Jonathan Kozol, (son of Ruth Massell Kozol '25), author and critical observer of American public education. The annual Miriam Lee Tropp Memorial Lecture, meanwhile, has featured CBS 60 Minutes correspondent Lesley Stahl '63, economist Elizabeth Janeway and Chinese political observer William Hinton, among others; the Wright-Shippee Memorial Lecture has brought to campus well-known artists and art historians.
During his last year as Wheaton president, Dr. Meneely suffered from cancer, and the administration of the college fell increasingly to Dean of the College Elizabeth S. May. Dr. May was named acting president upon Dr. Meneely’s death, and served in that capacity from 1961 to 1962 during the search for a new leader.
Trustees found President Meneely’s successor in Dr. William C. H. Prentice, a psychology professor and administrator from Swarthmore College who was to hold the Wheaton presidency from 1962 to 1975. In completing the building program necessary to accommodate growing an enrollment that reached 1,200, President Prentice oversaw the creation of Wheaton’s Watson Fine Arts building, Meadows residence hall and Clark Recreation Center. Additionally, in 1966, the college constructed the Elisabeth Amen Nursery School to replace the school built in 1931, which had been one of the first laboratory nursery schools in the country.