Background

Zook was born on April 22, 1885 in Fort Scott, Kansas, the son of Douglas Zook, a farmer, and Helen Follenius Zook.

Education

After completing high school in Fort Scott, Zook drove a hearse to help pay his way through the University of Kansas, from which he received the B. A. in 1906 and the M. A. in 1907.

Career

Zook then secured an assistantship (1908) at Cornell University, which awarded him a traveling fellowship (1911) and the Ph. D. in European history (1913). While working for the doctorate, he was an instructor in modern European history at Pennsylvania State College (1909-1911). Zook returned to Penn State in 1912 as assistant professor and became professor in 1916. He remained there until 1920, with a leave of absence in 1918 to serve on the Committee on Public Information, for which he wrote the series America at War. In 1919 he became associate director of the savings division of the United States Treasury and published the historical study The Company of Royal Adventurers Trading Into Africa. After the war Zook became chief of the division of higher education in the United States Bureau of Education, where he served until 1925, when he was appointed president of the University of Akron. He hoped to make that urban university a prestigious institution with a graduate school and publishing faculty, but he was frustrated by problems of finance during the Great Depression. He retained his ties to the federal government by serving on President Herbert Hoover's National Advisory Committee on Education from 1929 to 1931; and in 1933 President Franklin D. Roosevelt appointed him United States commissioner of education, a post he held for a year. In 1934 Zook was elected director of the American Council on Education, which had been established in 1918 to provide common representation of interests of major colleges and universities to the federal government. As council president, Zook, a hard, meticulous worker and consummate bureaucrat, often had to maneuver between professional educators and college and university administrators. His stiff, almost mannered reserve and his slow and deliberate approach, coupled with a lack of interest in parties, books, and the cultural ambience of intellectual life, irritated his detractors. But his easy access to the White House, to the major foundations, and to the agencies of government, coupled with his imperturbable style, brought much success. Zook's promotion of the broad-based postwar education best characterized in his leadership of the President's Commission on Higher Education (1947), which in a six-volume report established a blueprint for the expansion and restructuring of American education, alarmed conservatives. The report called for the expansion of general education; the provision of tuition aid and of federal funds for massive construction of school buildings; and the guarantee of a free education for all Americans through the junior college level, as well as expansion of adult education. Zook and his consultants, after one month in Germany and a little longer in Japan, embarked on the difficult and controversial mission of revamping the basic social and educational structure of the occupied nations. In his many articles and speeches Zook dealt with almost every facet of education, and his appearances before congressional committees on educational matters kept him and the council in the forefront of educational leadership. In 1945 he endorsed the establishment of the National Science Foundation because of his concern over the nation's loss of a generation of scientific manpower through the exigencies of war. While pursuing federal support for education, Zook was never blind to the problems such aid might pose for the principle of academic freedom, an issue on which he never compromised. In the light of present knowledge, he planned better than he knew, for little of what he promoted in education has not taken place in the United States. In his concern for international education, he had no peer. He was the United States delegate to the third through the sixth International Conferences on UNESCO and served as the United States national commissioner for UNESCO from 1946 until his death. He also was active in founding the International Association of Universities in 1950, the year of his retirement. He died in Alexandria, Virginia.

Achievements

• Zook was an American educator who was President of the University of Akron, U. S. Commissioner of Education, and President of the American Council on Education.

Works

More photos

• book

  • The Libraries of Washington

    (A Study Of The Governmental And Non-Governmental Librarie...)

  • Accredited Higher Institutions (Classic Reprint)

    (Excerpt from Accredited Higher Institutions Part II cont...)

  • Report on the Higher Educational Institutions of Arkansas (Classic Reprint)

    (Excerpt from Report on the Higher Educational Institution...)

  • Japan and Germany: Problems in Reeducation

    (International Conciliation, No. 427, January, 1947.)

  • Higher Education For American Democracy A Report Of The Presidents Commission On Higher Education Vol I - VI 1947 Hardcover

    (Lang:- eng, Pages 483. Reprinted in 2015 with the help of...)

Views

During his chairmanship (later presidency) the council moved into a new era of cooperation with the federal government and Zook became perhaps the most prominent lobbyist for education. He sought federal aid to education, organized education in the war effort, pressed for aid to higher education that would cushion the impact of returning servicemen, and encouraged philanthropic organizations to finance council projects. Zook also supported the growth of junior colleges, a broad-based education system to include vocational training, and federal educational aid to servicemen. He encouraged international exchanges and, after the war, applied the council's expertise to restructuring the educational institutions of Japan and Germany.

Personality

Those who worked with Zook in setting up commissions to explore educational needs in the occupied areas of Europe saw him as an "educational statesman" both abreast of and ahead of current ideas.

Connections

Zook married Suzie Gant on August 21, 1911; they took advantage of his fellowship for a honeymoon.

Father:

Douglas Zook

Mother:

Helen Follenius Zook

Spouse:

Suzie Gant

References

• New lamps for old;: One hundred years of urban higher education at the University of Akron. A centennial publication,