Growing Pains

Van Pelt characterized the change in name, in particular the change from being a "College" to being a "University," as a recognition of existing facts. Once the change was made, however, the message became 'now that we are a university, we should look like one.' Pressure increased for all faculty to have a PhD and for them to be actively engaged in research. One could no longer hire new tenure-track faculty who did not already have a PhD. Soon the University was divided into colleges and schools—Physics belonging to the College of Sciences and Arts.

By the late 1960's Stebbins began a search for his replacement as Physics Department head and ultimately announced his decision to hire Charles Mandeville, then at Kansas State. Mandeville was hired because the combination of his very strong research background and his no-nonsense personality was expected to aid in a rapid transition of the department from a role of principally providing service teaching to a department with a strong, externally funded research of its own. Since Mandeville’s research specialty was in nuclear physics, and there was very little nationally competitive research already in the department, the department research emphasis became nuclear physics. Several new hires were made in the late 1960's, all in the area of nuclear physics, including two of his Kansas State collaborators, Drs. Potnis and Agin, as well as several new assistant professors.

There was a strong contingent of the faculty who thought the department’s role should not change and this friction caused problems. Mandeville has been variously described by faculty who were in the department at that time with adjectives such as "boisterous" and "abrasive." There is general agreement that Mandeville set high standards and was quite critical of those that did not meet them. He had little trouble finding fault with all the administrators and with many of the physics faculty, describing their activities as "unprofessional," and he freely shared those opinions. Many of the new hires were ultimately denied tenure. Mandeville was ultimately relieved of his duties as department head in 1975—the department continuing "headless" for the next several years.

Mandeville had been writing, somewhat secretly, a fictional story during most of this time. His novel, "University," was published at his own expense under the pen name Roger Coan in 1973. Were that it appeared earlier, the administrative friction might have been avoided. The novel is a story of unscrupulous and incompetent university administrators who use the system to get to the top. Had Stebbins been able to read the inside jacket cover, perhaps he would have made a different choice for department head. The description of the author reads:

Dr. Roger Coan holds B.A., M.A., and PhD. degrees and is a member of Phi Beta Kappa. He wears the gold key of that scholastic honorary society. During the past thirty years, he has made efforts to carry on teaching and/or research as a faculty member on six different campuses in various parts of the U.S. Having often experienced frustration of his efforts to achieve in constructive fashion, he has withdrawn to a secluded sanctuary to set down in a series of works the demoralizing story of bureaucracy, banditry, blundering, bickering, and backbiting in the great universities of the land.

While this description is about the fictional "Roger Coan," it also appears to be an accurate description of Mandeville if one regards Houghton as the "secluded sanctuary." A second book in the series never appeared. Some would say that Mandeville was hired to "shake up the department" and that job was certainly accomplished.

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