• U.S.

Education: Reincarnation

3 minute read
TIME

“You’ll die laughing,” said lean, modest Gus Turbeville, 30, to his wife. An obscure University of Minnesota sociologist, Turbeville had just become the youngest U.S. liberal-arts college president. That was six years ago. Joanne Turbeville had something else to laugh about when she arrived at Northland College in remote Ashland, Wis. (pop. 10,000) on the shores of Lake Superior. Northland (enrollment: 175) was almost a ghost college.

Founded in 1892 at the height of the Wisconsin timber boom, Northland began as a flourishing Congregationalist secondary school. When pines and people dwindled, it became a fading nonsectarian college. Gus Turbeville inherited a huddle of Victorian buildings, an unaccredited school without entrance requirements, a refuge for flunkees from other colleges. More than one trustee said to him: “I’d like to resign as soon as possible.”

Gold Board. Young President Turbeville might have rushed back to Minnesota. A quiet South Carolinian, the son of a chemical salesman, he set out instead to make Northland work. First he expelled more than 40 sluggish students, some of them seniors. He ordered the faculty to crack down on marks, gave every student more work than he could handle. He established stiff entrance exams, rejected applicants below the top half of their high school classes. When stunned alumni asked how freshman-starved Northland could afford it, Salesman Turbeville hit the road.

For three years he worked on a key trustee: Ellsworth C. Alvord, a leading Washington tax attorney and the biggest individual stockholder in General Dynamics Corp. By the time Turbeville got through with Alvord, the lawyer was a convert. By the time Alvord got through with Frank Pace Jr., chairman of General Dynamics, Pace was a dedicated Northland trustee. By this year, tiny Northland has a solid gold board that many a university might envy. Among its members : Presidential Friend George E. Allen, Publisher Gardner Cowles, Industrialist Victor Emanuel, Movie Arbiter Eric Johnston, Financier Floyd B. Odium.

Rosy Future. Backed by his well-heeled trustees, Gus Turbeville tripled Northland’s budget to $600,000 a year, doubled enrollment to 350, is raising $3,000,000 for new dormitories. The school is now fully accredited; its seniors score in the top 30% in nationwide Educational Testing Service achievement tests. By next year, salaries for the school’s 30 teachers will have nearly doubled to a $7,000 maximum. To Theologian Harmon Bro, formerly of Syracuse University and a onetime Northland student, the Turbeville treatment is “a reincarnation.” Bro has left Syracuse to teach at Northland.

Last week booming Northland received a distinction presently unmatched by any other four-year liberal-arts college. Courtesy of General Dynamics, it will soon have a $250,000 atomic reactor, along with famed Physicists Edward Teller and Frederic de Hoffmann on loan from time to time to lecture in a new $1,000,000 science building. With an additional $10 million endowment in the offing (all earmarked for teachers’ salaries), Northland faces an even rosier future. Says go-getting President Turbeville, who has turned down industry offers at more than double his $15,000 salary: “In ten years we’ll be able to hire the best brains in the world. If they can teach, we’ll pay them $25,000 yearly.”

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