After the longest tenure as Dean of the College in the past century, A. Chester Hanford retires from University Hall this month to take up the teaching of state and local politics where he left off in 1927.

At first comparatively unknown to undergraduates at large and, as he admits, by no means certain of his ability to cope with the busy job of "doaning", Dean Hanford has been able, from his position as middleman between students and Faculty, to strengthen "respect for scholarship" in the former and to increase the effective energy of the latter.

President Lowell, in reporting the resignation of Dean Hanford's prodecessor. Chester Noyes Greenough '98, pointed out that the "office is very exacting and requires tact, skill, and constructive imagination in a rare degree."

Personal Concern for Students

A hint of the "tact" and "skill" Dean Hanford used in his personal relations with wayward students was reported in the Alumni Bulletin in 1942:

"One morning not long ago he called a friend of ours to say that lying awake in the night he had suddenly solved a bad one which might easily have handicapped an undergraduate for the rest of his life. It was quite characteristic of him to take his worries home for self-inflicted insomnia."

Having accepted a job about which he insists he knew nothing, Dean Hanford has demonstrated "constructive imagination"--as one may discover in reviewing and comparing the Annual Reports of the President and of the Dean--in encouraging students to take an active part in improving all phases of College life.

Council Constant Advisor

The Student Council particularly has established for itself a tradition of important service as an investigating and advisory group. In Dean Hanford's own words: "The Council has played a significant part in every important development in Harvard College over the last quarter century, from the first official proposal of the House plan down to the discussion in the Faculty regarding the A.B. and S.B.

"It has been my policy. . . to regard the Council officers as if they were Faculty colleagues and to lay before them all proposed changes of policy affecting the educational or social life of the undergraduate."

Several Council men and CRIMSON editors engaged on such Faculty projects have in fact later become assistant deans themselves.

Highpoints in Dean's Career

Landmarks in Dean Hanford's term of two decades include:

1927: Reading periods instituted to give men in more advanced courses opportunity for more independent study.

1928-29: Dean Hanford backs up recommendations of Council for setting up a system of individual undergraduate Houses first envisioned in the Council's 1926 Report on Education.