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As the decades passed, colleges of law, medicine, dentistry, engineering and pharmacy began to rise along the Iowa River. Starting with the presidency of Walter A. Jessup (1916-34), S.U.I, gradually embarked on a whole new tack. Under Ed ward Mabie, the aramatic art department and University Theater started turning out such alumni as Playwright Tennessee Williams, Producer Richard (The Big Clock) Maibaum, Actor Macdonald Carey and Stage Designer Lemuel (Oklahoma!, Kiss Me, Kate) Ayers. Onto the prairie, meanwhile, came poets, novelists and painters (among them: Iowa-born Grant Wood). The university began a representative collection of modern American canvases, and its auditoriums began to echo with new music. Largely through the influence of Psychologist Carl Seashore, S.U.I, took on the arts wholesale, and with typical Midwestern hospitality proceeded to make them right at home. It was one of the first universities to hit upon the idea that a novel, poem or painting could be as worthy of an advanced degree as even the most scholarly thesis.
No Need to Worry. Today, under mild-mannered President Virgil Rancher, the university's 8,200 students follow their pursuit of culture with the same openhandedness. Though S.U.I, must by law take in all applicants, it needs to worry very little about the quality of its students. For one thing, Iowa itself is the most literate state in the union (i.e., has the lowest percentage—3.9%—of illiterates), and those of its citizens who want only a practical education are either drained off to Iowa State College in Ames, or simply stay down on the farm. S.U.I, is thoroughly committed to the liberal arts; students who cannot make the grade are gently but firmly dropped.
Those who remain lapse only occasionally into the rambunctious sort of hoopla that plagues other state campuses. There was at least one panty raid two years ago, and now and then a crisis on the gridiron will turn the whole town upside down. But though S.U.I.'s field house is big enough for an entire indoor football field and though its football team is rapidly rising to the top of the Big Ten, the university's interests on the whole lie elsewhere. "Unless there is a spirit of learning here," said President Jessup, "unless there is a genuine thirst for knowledge, unless there is a hunger for education, nothing worthwhile will happen."
Rockets to Godfrey. The sort of things that happen range from Physicist James Van Allen's experiments with high-altitude research rockets to Psychologist Wendell Johnson's pioneering work with stutterers, from Zoologist Harold Beam's studies on the organization of cells to the Institute of Gerontology's "clearing house" on the problems of old age. The medical school, with its three affiliated hospitals, is a major center for the treatment of handicapped children, rightfully boasts such names as Surgeon Arthur Steindler, Ophthalmologist Alson Braley, Heart Specialist William Bean, and Carroll Larson, authority on arthroplasty of the hip (Arthur Godfrey's operation).