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1947: Dean F.M. Quance retires, Quance Lectureship established
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In 1947, the founding dean of
the College of Education, Frank M. Quance, retired. As dean since 1928, he helped develop the College's curriculum
from a one-year postgraduate course into a four-year degree program. During his
career, Quance gained a reputation as a leading Canadian educator, and was
particularly well known for developing the first spellers based on Canadian
norms of spelling ability. Upon
retirement, Quance offered to donate “sufficient funds for the establishment at
the University of Saskatchewan of ‘A Lectureship in Canadian Education’. ... I
am asking that my gift to the University and to Canadian Education take this
form not only because this University and Departments of Education in Canada
have been generous to me, but because I realize that there is a lack in Canada
of a body of authoritative literature in the field of publicly administered
education. I cherish the hope that the
lectureship may stimulate further interest in and study of, these phases of our
Canadian educational system.” Quance
suggested a number of topics: “The Administrative Structure of Canadian
Education; The Dominant Philosophy of Canadian Secondary Schools;
Differentiating Characteristics of French-Canadian Education in Quebec; and, if
an American educator should be chosen for a lecture, a subject such as A
Comparative Study of the Educational Development in the Great Plains Region of
the United States and of Canada.”1
The first series of lectures
was delivered in 1949, and it initially was to be a five-year project. Quance subsequently extended the funding
until 1960, at which point the W.J. Gage Company (which published the lectures)
offered to take over financial support.
By 1971, with limited sales of the lectures and “Canadian publishers
[having] entered a very difficult period,”2 the financing of the
lectures was in jeopardy. The last
lecture was given in 1975. In 1974,
however, another College of Education lecture series had begun: the Laycock
Lecture Series, endowed by the late Samuel Laycock, another former dean of
Education. In October 1984, as part of
the university’s 75th anniversary celebrations, the College of
Education sponsored the “Quance Revisited Lecture Series.”3
Related Collections | |
F.M. Quance fonds, MG 25.
A.F. Deverell fonds, MG 35
Images | |
1947a: F.M. Quance. Photograph Collection, A-3216.
Sources | |
Faculty Biographies Collection, F.M. Quance.
1. President’s Office fonds, RG 2001, Series III, file B161.
2. President’s Office fonds, RG 2001, Series IV, file B244.
3. College of Education Dean’s Office fonds, RG 2078, file 19-9.
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