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Samuel Paul Capen Edit Profile

educator

Samuel P. Capen, educator, chancellor of the University of Buffalo, was the president of the Worcester Public Education Association and a member of the Worcester School Board.

Background

Samuel Paul Capen was born on March 21, 1878 in Somerville, Massachussets, United States; the son of Elmer Hewitt Capen, president of Tufts College, and Mary Leavitt Edwards.

Education

After receiving the A. B. and A. M. simultaneously from Tufts in 1898, Samuel earned another A. M. from Harvard in 1900 and, following a year of study at Leipzig, received the Ph. D. in modern languages at the University of Pennsylvania in 1902.

Career

Capen became instructor in modern languages at Clark College, an experimental undergraduate school affiliated with Clark University, in Worcester, Massachussets

Capen's growing interest in pedagogy and educational administration led him to serve as president of the Worcester Public Education Association from 1908 to 1911 and as a member of the Worcester School Board from 1908 to 1914. He began taking courses in education and psychology at Clark University in 1909 and was lecturer in educational administration there from 1911 to 1914 while continuing as a professor at Clark College. In 1914 Capen was hired by the United States Bureau of Education as a specialist in higher education. He reported annually on trends and conditions in higher education, prepared statistics, and investigated college and university problems. His surveys of institutions established a standard method for such endeavors. With United States entry into World War I, Capen became executive secretary of the Committee on Education of the Council of National Defense, charged with the task of coordinating university resources for the war effort. He also served on the Advisory Board of the Committee on Education and Special Training of the War Department. In 1919 Capen became the first director of the American Council on Education. He also founded the quarterly Educational Record, and edited it from 1920 to 1922. Capen accepted the position of chancellor of the University of Buffalo in 1922. Until the twentieth century, Buffalo had been a collection of professional schools, adding a liberal arts college only in 1913, in response to the Flexner Report's insistence on at least one year of liberal arts work for candidates seeking admission to medical school.

Capen set out to strengthen undergraduate education by more selective admissions and by creating a curriculum allowing more independent study. His first major move, however, was to strengthen professional education by replacing part-time faculty and developing the relationships between the medical school and local hospitals. He strongly supported the teaching of dentistry as a medical specialty, and within five years the principal items of his plan were embodied in regulations drafted by the Regents of the University of the State of New York for the registration of dental schools.

By 1931 all upperclassmen were taking a combination of courses and independent work. Economic conditions after World War II forced some retrenchment in the program. To supplement the tutorial system, Capen extended the advisory system for underclassmen, introduced the elective system, and established comprehensive examinations with outside examiners. Renowed for his unrelenting defense of academic freedom, he insisted that such freedom required that academics distinguish their personal role from their institutional role in commenting upon politics, a stance that enabled him to achieve excellent school-community relations. He retired in 1950.

He died in Buffalo, N. Y.

Achievements

  • Capen's major innovation in undergraduate education at Buffalo was the tutorial system, in which a student could pursue independent advanced study under the direction of a faculty member. Through his efforts, as a director of the American Council on Education, the new organization launched a study of the role of the national government in higher education, of standardization in higher education, of the status and future of the arts and sciences, and of the costs of a college education. He established a tutorial system in undergraduate education at Buffalo. In 1934, Capen was one of three founders of the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra. The University at Buffalo honored Capen with the dedication of a campus building, Capen Hall.

Personality

Capen, an austere man devoted to plain living and high thinking, felt that he would have been at home in the eighteenth century. Aloof but considerate, elegant and courtly in his behavior, he was able to lead without dictating and to mobilize faculty, administrators, students, and the community to contribute to achieving his vision of academic excellence.

He was a strong executive whose efforts at centralization were undercut only by his own tendency to pay too little attention to the financial aspects of university management.

Connections

On March 25, 1908, Capen married Grace Duncan Wright, daughter of the president of the college; they had one daughter.

Father:
Elmer Hewitt Capen

Educator

Mother:
Mary Leavitt Edwards

Wife:
Grace Duncan Wright