Background

George Edwin MacLean was born on August 31, 1850, in Rockville, Connecticut. He was the eldest of the three children of Edwin W. and Julia H. (Ladd) MacLean, both of New England colonial stock.

Education

George MacLean attended Westfield Academy and Williston Seminary (now Williston Northampton School) in Massachusetts, received a Bachelor of Arts in 1871, Master of Arts in 1874, Doctor of law in 1895 at Williams College, in 1874 earned a Bachelor of Divinity at Yale University and Leipzig (Doctor of Philosophy, 1883).

Career

After serving in the ministry, George MacLean held pastorates in New Lebanon (1874-1877) and Troy, New York (1877-1881). In 1881, having decided, apparently, on a teaching career, he gave up his position in the ministry and devoted the next two years to study at the universities of Leipzig and, for two semesters, Berlin. His work was mainly in philology and Anglo-Saxon literature. George MacLean edited lfric's Anglo-Saxon Version of Alcuini Interrogationes Sigeuulfi Presbyteri in Genesin (1883).

Returning to the United States, he served for twelve years (1883-1895) as a professor of the English language and literature at the University of Minnesota. In 1895, he was appointed chancellor of the University of Nebraska. George MacLean sought to raise faculty standards, placing stress on research and publication, and there are indications that his policies stirred up some internal friction. His emphasis on making the university a seat of learning seems also to have roused practical-minded opposition outside the campus.

In 1909, the state legislature replaced the university's board of regents with a new board of education with jurisdiction over all three of Iowa's state-supported institutions of higher learning: the university, the State College at Ames, and the State Normal School. Some rivalry had grown up among them, and it was the hope of the new board that it might bring about a closer unity. Believing that George MacLean would not be able to serve the purposes of such a reorganization, the board asked, in 1911, for his resignation. From Iowa MacLean went to the United States Bureau of Education as a specialist in higher education. Commissioned to visit universities in the British Isles, he wrote two bulletins, Studies in Higher Education in England and Scotland and Studies in Higher Education in Ireland and Wales (both 1917), the first comprehensive accounts of British universities and colleges by an American. Following the publication of these reports, he served from 1919 to 1923 as director of the British division of the American University Union.

Upon retirement, George MacLean moved to Washington, D.C., where he lived until his death at age 87. He was buried at Great Barrington.

Achievements

• In 1883 George MacLean was awarded a doctorate from Leipzig. Though his administration lasted only four years, MacLean established a summer school for educators and schools of mechanic arts and agriculture. In 1899, the presidency of the State University of Iowa fell vacant, and the regents, seeking a strong president and impressed by MacLean's work at neighboring Nebraska, called him to the office. During the next twelve years, he largely transformed the institution, bringing it to the forefront of American state universities. He created, virtually from the ground up, administrative machinery, instituting the university's first registrar's and admissions offices and appointing its first dean of women and dean of men. Under his direction, new schools were organized (among them a school of education, a college of applied science, and a liberal arts graduate school) and old ones expanded. He carried forward a building program begun by his predecessor and won increased financial support from the legislature.
  
  MacLean's most important contribution, however, was the raising of standards. The number of high school credits required for admission was increased; the school year was lengthened by six weeks; the level of scholarship, both graduate and undergraduate, was raised.
  
  As a result, Iowa gained admission to the Association of American Universities and received a high rank in a comparative survey of American universities conducted by the United States Bureau of Education in 1911.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Department of the Interior. Bureau of Education. Bulletin, 1917, No. 15.

    (Studies in Higher Education in Ireland and Wales, with Su...)

  • Studies in Higher Education in Ireland and Wales: With Suggestions for Universities and Colleges in the United States
  • Opportunities for Graduate Study in the British Isles 2017
  • Present Standards of Higher Education in the United States
  • Christian Education
  • Studies in Higher Education in England and Scotland, With Suggestions for Universities and Colleges in the United States 2016
  • An Old and Middle English reader on the basis of Julius Zupitza's Alt- und mittel-englisches übungsbuch 2014

Personality

A tall, fine-looking gentleman, George MacLean was polished in the manner and somewhat given to the language of Old World compliment. A few thought him over-effusive at the cost of sincerity. He spoke and presided well and was an earnest and tireless student. His scholarship in Old English, though limited, was sound, and his work as an educational administrator was substantial.

Connections

George MacLean had married, on May 20, 1874. They had no children.

Father:

Edwin W. MacLean

Edwin W. MacLean was a public-spirited merchant, postmaster, and later a deacon of the Congregational Church at Great Barrington, Massachusetts.

Mother:

Julia H. (Ladd) MacLean

Spouse:

Clara Stanley Taylor

References

• Hudson, D., Bergman, M., & Horton, L. (Eds.) The biographical dictionary of Iowa
  2009