The College faced a mountainous set of problems as the Second World War drew to a close in 1945. There was the matter of returning to the normal two-semester academic year. Should the war-born summer school be continued? College buildings, worn to the floorboards by continuous use, had to be restored and reconverted to their original uses or modified for new ones. A peacetime student body had to be rebuilt and the faculty reconstituted and strengthened. A return to prewar conditions in some areas was accomplished with amazing rapidity. Other adjustments took longer, and inevitably there were more offices, more divisions, an enlarged staff, and a more complex administration. The fraternity houses leased by the College were returned to their occupants. The summer school system introduced in 1942 was continued and adapted to peacetime, and the traditional two-semester academic calendar was resumed in September 1946.

The problem of reassembling the scattered regular faculty and releasing temporary personnel had to be faced long before the war itself was over. The turnover of faculty because of war service or other governmental commitments became bewildering in its complexity and rapidity. Some members, such as Professor Dawson G. Fulton of the Mathematics Department, were originally "loaned" by other institutions but remained on the permanent faculty after the war. Several senior members of the faculty chose to retire during the war period, after having given long and faithful service to the institution. In the one year of 1943, three faculty members (all graduates of the College), with a combined total of 114 years on the

Many academic departments needed special attention after the war. Some had to be rebuilt, others expanded, and still others created. The Economics Department had been reduced to two fulltime faculty members by the fall of 1944.[27]  Growing interest in the field of sociology warranted attention, and in the fall of 1945 Dr. A. Warren Stearns, after retiring from Naval duty and relinquishing the deanship of the Tufts Medical School, became the chairman

Tufts, sharing an experience with most other educational institutions in the postwar period, was flooded with applications from returning veterans and did its best to prevent overenrollment and lowering of standards. The total student body jumped from 2,369, with 307 veterans, in September 1945, to 3,385, with 2,125 veterans, a year later. In 1946-47, 80 per cent of the student body in liberal arts and in engineering were veterans. Only 15 per cent of the Hill students were veterans in 1949. They were an unusually serious, mature, and able generation of students who not only did creditable work but took a prominent part in campus activities. President Carmichael insisted that the best way to achieve and maintain an ideal academic community was to "continue rigorously to limit the number of students admitted." Even before the peak of veteran enrollment passed, after 1948, a more systematic effort than ever before was made to select a superior student body from secondary schools. In 1946 Tufts joined other highly selective institutions in requiring College Entrance Examination Board tests of all applicants, and achievement tests of all but a few candidates. Under the leadership of Dean Wessell, admission procedures became more thorough and exacting, and personal interviews were used wherever possible. Much to the delight of Dean Bush, Jackson College finally obtained an assistant director of admissions in 1945 to help with the sharply rising tide of applications in that division.

The effect of the Second World War on the composition of the undergraduate student body was nothing short of dramatic. In 1940 Dean Wessell had expressed the hope that in the future the students might be drawn from a wider geographical area than in the past. Over 80 per cent of the students on the Hill came from within fifty miles of the College in 1939 and 1940. Within five years after the war every state in the Union was represented, and in 1948 there were sixty-two foreign students in the various divisions of the institution. Tufts had lost, permanently it seemed, its characteristics as a "neighborhood" college.

Just as Tufts was settling into what appeared to be a period of uninterrupted progress, the national mobilization and readiness plans brought by developments in the Korean conflict between 1950 and 1952 threatened to disrupt long-range planning as well as the stability of the student body. President Carmichael was peculiarly aware of the demands that might be made on personnel because of his involvement in the work of the War Manpower Commission during the war and his services as consultant to the National Security Resources Board and Selective Service System, as well as membership on the Science Committee of the National Resources Planning Board. The president of Tufts, like many another person concerned with educational matters, was distressed by the "crisis-thinking" that seemed to dominate manpower policy-makers, and by the apparent lack of a well-defined national policy regarding inductions under the Selective Service program. He fretted because morale was lowered among draftable males and uncertainty was injected into admissions policies. One result of a wavering and sometimes inconsistent national policy was the interruption, across the nation, of the college careers of thousands of young men who had already served in the armed forces.

In the area of organized sports before the Second World War, the outstanding name in the annals of Tufts athletic history was that of Edward Dugger, of the Class of 1941. "Eddie," as he was known to all, achieved national prominence as a track star. By the time he was graduated, he had amassed the impressive total of twenty-four individual track titles and held several records in that

In the postwar period the College continued to follow a policy of avoiding professionalism in the particularly sensitive area of intercollegiate football. President Carmichael, in 1939, had pointed with satisfaction to the fact that Tufts was one of the handful of colleges having a policy "free from any possible taint of commercialism" - the exact phraseology used by President Cousens earlier in the same decade. Professor Houston, who served as head of the Department of Physical Education for many years (until succeeded by W. Stanton Yeager in 1947) could see the problems of athletics from a nation-wide perspective, for after the Second World War he was named chairman of a committee of the National Collegiate Athletic Association to draft a "sanity code" to encourage the amateur spirit in collegiate athletics. After the code had been adopted by the 375 participating colleges, Professor Houston was for three years (until 1951) chairman of a compliance committee to interpret and enforce the code. He was later honored by election to the presidency of the NCAA, in which capacity he served between 1955 and 1957.

The need to construct new buildings as well as to repair old ones appeared to have reached almost emergency proportions by 1945. No major academic structure had been provided since the end of Cousens' administration. The Trustees had voted to furnish President Carmichael with a house when he became president in 1938, and this was duly accomplished when a red brick residence was constructed not far from the site once occupied by the home of Tufts' first president.[29]  Whatever plans for building that might have been in anyone's mind in 1938 were rudely dissipated by the ravages of nature and by the lean state of the College's pocketbook.

The College treasury looked far from promising in 1938 and 1939. After only one year as president, Carmichael was convinced that "it is difficult to believe that there has ever been a time in the history of Tufts College when financial problems were more pressing." The institution eked out the fiscal year 1937-38 with an operating balance of $1,411, and a deficit was expected for the next year. Declining interest rates on investments were the principal culprits, induced in turn by events in a jittery world. As a consequence, additions and improvements to the College plant before the Second World War consisted of nothing more ambitious than providing improved facilities in 1940 for the Chemical Engineering Department (known officially as the "Durkee Memorial Laboratories") and acquiring the Tufts College Station (vintage of 1896)

When the Second World War came to an end, the Trustees found a towering stack of building requests to consider. Some immediate needs could be met with temporary structures; others represented offers or gifts for permanent buildings which could not be put to use until government restrictions on labor and materials were relaxed; still others were intended to meet expanded academic requirements and, for the most part, had to be paid out of investment funds. The emergency housing needs of returning veterans were met functionally (if not aesthetically) by the erection in 1945 of twelve two-story buildings on the site of the old Stearns estate adjoining Cousens Gymnasium. Known as Stearns Village, these contained apartments for eighty couples (undergraduates, graduates, and instructors), who added appreciably to the postwar "baby boom" in the ten years that the "Village" existed.[32] 

President Carmichael listed nine top-priority building needs in his report to the Trustees in the fall of 1945: an addition to Eaton Library, a new mechanical engineering building, a powerhouse, an ROTC building, a student union or alumni-alumnae headquarters, a theater, a dormitory for men, a Jackson dormitory,

The building of the next postwar structure, the mechanical engineering laboratory, illustrated the difficulties of construction at a time when wartime shortages still plagued contractors. The story of the laboratory was in turn related to the acquisition by the College of the reservoir (the "Rez") that had stood at the western end of the campus since 1865. As early as 1938 rumors circulated that the Metropolitan District Commission, which had jurisdiction over it, might decide to give up the reservoir. It was used between 1914 and 1944 as a reserve for emergency use only. In 1944 the reservoir site was sold to the College for $1.00, drained, and dismantled shortly thereafter. The excavation was filled in, and flanked by four men's

While the laboratory was being constructed, extensive renovation and modernization of the men's dormitories was being undertaken. Part of the financing of these projects was made possible by one of the many special gifts quietly made to the College by Trustee Arthur J. Anderson. Plans were simultaneously being laid for other buildings on the priority list. The bookstore (Taberna) was constructed in 1948. Another building not on the list, but much needed and warmly welcomed, was also completed in the same year after many frustrations because of fluctuating costs and restrictions still imposed on materials. The Henry Clay Jackson Memorial

Four buildings in the planning stage after the Second World War had not yet been built when President Carmichael's administration was over. The Jackson dormitory, authorized in 1945, was to be named "Frothingham Hall" in honor of Richard T. Frothingham, one of the original Tufts trustees and third treasurer of the College. It was actually completed in 1954 and was named in honor of Tufts Trustee and benefactor Frederick C. Hodgdon. A similar delay was encountered in the construction of the new men's dormitory, which was also opened in the fall of 1954. The outgoing president was, however, still at Tufts when the Trustees voted in 1952 to name the building in his honor. Nine years elapsed before the Trustees were able to use for the purpose intended a gift from Edward E. Cohen, Boston industrialist and benefactor. He had proposed in 1943 to give $125,000 toward the construction of an auditorium to bear his name.[36]  In 1952 the Trustees authorized the building of not only what became the Cohen Auditorium and Art Center but the long-talked-of Alumnae Hall, linking the Cohen complex and Jackson Gymnasium when completed in 1954.[37] 

There are always those projects, practical or otherwise, which never leave the drawing board (or never reach that stage), like the ambitious plan for a combined Student Union and Alumni Center; it had progressed as far as architect's sketches in 1935 but got no farther. The Carmichael administration saw its share of such unrealized plans. In 1945 the Trustees considered, but declined to act on, a proposal that a television broadcasting station be constructed at Tufts as a joint venture with the DuMont Laboratories. In 1946 Trustee Eugene Bowen offered a contribution toward the construction of a combined theater, student union, and art and music center, provided it be built on the site of the old reservoir. The new center, if Trustee Bowen had had his way, would have been a memorial to Leo R. Lewis and would have followed the architectural lines of Thomas Jefferson's "Monticello."

The Tufts Library shared in the effort made in the postwar period to make up for lost time, although it still lagged woefully behind many other parts of the College in important respects by

Cooperation with other libraries in the Boston area in 1941 had made possible the long-range plan of storing little-used materials in the New England Deposit Library in Brighton. Some 3,000 volumes from the Tufts Library had been transferred there by 1948, but the whole process had been delayed by frequent changes in cataloguing personnel. Between 1938 and 1948 there had been over a dozen replacements in a staff which never totaled more than six to eight full-time persons. The turnover occurred simply because the College could not match salaries being paid elsewhere. The notable exceptions of continuous service were Ethel M. Hayes, who had loyally completed forty-seven years of service at the College when she retired in 1943; and Blanche M. Hooper, whose service when she retired as assistant librarian in 1952 lacked only two years of half a century. The library somehow managed to process over 37,000 books in the ten-year period preceding 1948, with no more than one trained cataloguer on the staff at any one time. It was not until the fall of 1948 that the librarian was able to obtain (and retain) the services of a full-time professionally trained reference librarian.[38] 

The working collection of the library, which remained almost exclusively an undergraduate facility until after 1955, grew slowly and spottily in the decades before Tufts officially became a university. The number of volumes by 1948 had barely reached 150,000, and the library budget remained almost static over a period of almost twenty years. The amount charged students for laboratory breakage fees in chemistry alone in 1941-42 was more than was budgeted for all books and magazines for the library that year.[39]  In the decade 1938-48, only 29,000 volumes were added to the main collection. Gifts accounted for one-third of the total, largely from the faculty and alumni and the United States Government. It was fortunate for the library that it had been a depository for government documents since 1896. The "starvation budget" for the library was all too characteristic of an institution whose total resources required the most careful establishment of priorities. Strengthening the library collection had not been one of them during the Carmichael regime.

The librarian did at least see his plea for enlarged quarters fulfilled. In the fall of 1945 the Trustee Executive Committee included the possibility of a wing for Eaton Library in their discussion of plant needs. The Alumni Fund for 1945-46 was devoted to raising money for the purpose, and by 1948 the Trustees had arrived at the conclusion that the total cost "must not exceed $170,000." The new wing was dedicated and opened in the fall of 1950 and was designated as a memorial to the 7,232 Tufts students and alumni who had served in the armed forces during the Second World War, of whom 102 had lost their lives. The provision of a greatly needed reading and reserved book room, additional stack space for bound periodicals, and study carrels made possible the vacating of that portion of Goddard Hall used as a makeshift extension of the library. The original structure was also refurbished, and structural arrangements in the joining of the two buildings

There were many other areas of activity besides building construction that kept the campus humming after the Second World War. The decision of George S. Miller to retire as vice-president and as dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences in 1951 produced a revised administrative structure, effective in 1951-52. Dr. Wessell, dean of the school of liberal arts, shouldered as an additional duty the vice-presidency vacated by Dean Miller as well as a Professorship of Psychology. John P. Tilton, who continued as dean of the graduate school, became the first provost. Miller assumed the title of Dean of Administration, while Richard A. Kelley became Assistant Dean of the Division of Special Studies, and a year later its dean; Clifton W. Emery became the Acting Director of Counseling. President Carmichael passed no judgment on the net increase of administrative staff but did forewarn the Trustees that even more such posts would be needed in the near future. Further administrative changes came promptly, effective September 1952. Grant Curtis, who had been Admissions Officer for the school of liberal arts and assistant to Dean Wessell, became Director of Admissions, and Emery became Assistant Dean of Liberal Arts as well as Director of Student Personnel, thus relieving Vice-President Wessell of some of his multitudinous duties. Professor Paul Flint became Assistant Dean of the graduate school, and Katharine R. Jeffers succeeded Edith Bush as dean of Jackson College following the latter's retirement. James R. Strawbridge took on the duties of assistant to the provost as well as registrar, following the retirement of Mrs. Nellie W. Reynolds after half a century devoted to the College.

There were still other offices created or enlarged during Carmichael's presidency. The Placement Office, which had been created in 1936 in the heart of the Great Depression, and had been operated for many years by Lester W. Collins, became a major operation after 1946 under the direction of Mrs. Viola Saltmarsh. President Carmichael's predictions about further administrative changes were quite correct. The days of multiple activities carried on by one or two offices were fast receding, and new lines of communication were established with a rapidity that bewildered the faculty and the students, if not the administrators themselves. Each

Throughout his administration, Carmichael was eager to have the College before the public as much as possible. He spoke frequently and at length on "the very great importance of maintaining proper professional publicity for our entire educational enterprise." It was on his initiative that the format of the rather drab College catalogue was radically changed in 1939-40; he considered the more attractive product "one fundamental form of Tufts publicity." The public relations program was greatly intensified when Mrs. Cecilia Van Auken was appointed to the staff in 1943 and was made Public Relations Officer three years later. In 1947, David Geller, who had edited Tufts Topics during the war, was placed in charge of publicity for the medical and dental schools. A summer school equivalent of the Tufts Weekly during the regular term was first published in 1946. Known for two years as the Tufts Summer News and after 1948 as the Tufts Hilltopper, it also became a responsibility of the Public Relations Office. As the magnitude of the institution's operations grew, so did the need for administrative staff. It is probably safe to conjecture that Hosea Ballou 2d would have looked with awe and a bit of consternation, if not downright disbelief, at the once-tiny college he had helped to create and over whose first years he had presided a century before.

[25] They were Ethel M. Hayes and Professors Edwin B. Rollins and Edwin H. Wright.

[26] Thanks to the efforts of these two men, the institution possesses over 20,000 photographs, documenting the history of Tufts from 1912 to 1942. The so-called Munro Collection consists of over eighty volumes of mounted pictures of everything and (almost) everybody associated with the College during the thirty-year period.

[27] In 1944 a one-man Department of Aesthetics and Creative Imagination was organized, with Professor Robert C. Givler as chairman. Professor Givler, on the faculty since 1919, was the only man in Tufts history to have held separate professorships in three different departments (Philosophy, Psychology, and Aesthetics) at one time or another. The Department of Aesthetics disappeared when the chairman retired in 1952.

[28] For several years prior to the war, sociology courses were offered in the combined Department of Economics and Sociology. The Professorship of Sociology which Dr. Stearns held was made possible by a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation. Stearns had already achieved a notable reputation as a pioneer in the field of social psychiatry.

[29] Although the president was expected to reside at the College, an exception had been made in the case of President Cousens, who lived at his home in suburban Chestnut Hill. Capen House, where Carmichael might have resided, continued to be used as a women's dormitory.

[30] The railroad station was to have been demolished in 1941 but it was turned over to the Drama Department in 1943.

[31] Samuel R. Moses was employed in the fall of 1948 to manage the press, the work being limited to items like posters, notices, and letterhead stationery; its most important responsibility was printing the Tufts Weekly. Larger and more complex printing tasks were handled by contract with outside publishing firms.

[32] The structures, obtained through the Federal Public Housing Administration, had already seen considerable use as housing for employees of an aircraft plant in Hartford, Connecticut, when they were disassembled, trucked to their new locations, and reassembled. They were to have been used for only five years, but there was too much demand for them to permit demolition before 1955.

[33] It was originally to have been named the "Fletcher Swimming Pool" because it was financed in part from the funds of the Austin B. Fletcher estate. It was named, instead, for Frederick W. Hamilton, of the Class of 1880, fourth president of the College.

[34] The size and configuration of the new building were less the choice of the architect than of the contractor, who furnished what sizes and amounts of structural steel he happened to have on hand in 1945. The building was financed, like the Hamilton Pool in part, from Fletcher funds.

[35] This structure was made possible through a gift from the estate of a conductor on the New York, New Haven, and Hartford Railroad and was administered through the Paul Wilde Jackson Trust Fund established by the donor's brother. The original gift was $200,000, but $50,000 more was provided, at the College's request, to cover additional costs.

[36] He proposed at the same time a generous gift to the Tufts Medical School.

[37] The construction of Alumnae Hall represented the culmination of a twenty-five-year effort sponsored by the Association of Tufts Alumnae. Women graduates of Tufts (before 1910) and of Jackson had worked diligently to build up the Alumnae Hall Fund established in 1928. The effort was made under the initial leadership of such devoted alumnae as Mrs. Bella (Porter) Ransom, of the Class of 1907 and for ten years chairman of the fund. Among the money-raising devices used were teas, sales, subscriptions, and recitals; detailed reports of progress and pleas for funds were reported in a pamphlet entitled "The Little Beggar." The alumnae had raised in excess of $12,000 by the time Dr. Carmichael became president of the College. The original intention had been to construct a separate building, to have been known as "Ruth Capen Farmer House" as a memorial to the person who had organized the Association of Tufts Alumnae and had been its first president. The building as planned in 1930 would also have included sorority rooms and a "little theatre." Those interested in a place to stage drama had to be content with the old Jackson Gymnasium, which was vacated in 1948.

[38] Mrs. Dorothy Markle Union, the reference librarian, also served as acting librarian for one year, following the retirement of Raymond L. Walkley in 1955, and continued on the staff when Joseph Komidar became University Librarian.

[39] The only increase in funds for library purposes between 1943 and 1948 came from the bequest of $3,600 by the late Professor Wade. In 1948-49, money was specifically allocated for the last time out of student fees to help support the Reading Room Association. This organization, from the days of President Miner, had helped finance recreational reading as a supplement to College appropriations. Since the 1920's, much of the money had been used to purchase extra copies of library books required in courses with large enrollments.

[40] Among the principal contributors who made the lounge possible were Lieutenant Commander Mark's classmates and Donald R. MacJannet, who contributed part of his salary as fund-raiser for the medical school.

[41] The collection was a tribute to an outstanding member of the Tufts faculty who had served for many years in the Department of English and was both its chairman and dean of the graduate school at the time of his death in 1938.