Monday, May. 28, 1934
Studebaker for Zook
When George Frederick Zook turned down the presidency of University of Iowa last fortnight most observers supposed it was because he liked his present job as U. S. Commissioner of Education. But last week he handed in to Secretary Ickes his resignation, effective July 1. He will then become director of the American Council on Education, a War-born bod)' which coordinates the work of 22 national education organizations and 233 colleges & universities. Into his U. S. Commissionship on Sept. 1, for one year only, will step Des Moines' Superintendent of Schools, John Ward Studebaker, 47.
Commissioner-designate Studebaker could earn his living as a brick mason if he needed to. As such, he worked his way through Toledo. Iowa's Leander Clark College (since merged with Coe), still holds a union card. Des Moines credits that experience with saving it many a dollar during a $7,000,000 school building program, and architects from all over the world go to see the building he planned for Des Moines' Smouse Opportunity School for the crippled.
Mr. Studebaker got a Columbia M.A. and his superintendency in 1920. Thin, wiry, bespectacled, he makes his subordinates enjoy being slave-driven. Many a U. S. school has copied his system of paying teachers' salaries on the basis of individual ability, rather than for the job held. Not content with educating Des Moines children, he wangled a tentative $120,000 from Carnegie Corporation in 1933 for a five-year experiment in adult education. In two years he has received $45,000, kept a Public Forum humming with lectures on current affairs. He is a Methodist, Mason, Shriner, Rotarian. Time left over from education and lodge meetings he spends studying botany, raising flowers, fishing.
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