Two innovations appeared in the Seminary’s program: an off campus study group and an Italian Department. The first, begun in 1905, permitted advanced students to spend a term in New York City under the instruction of Edward Judson, minister of the Judson Memorial Baptist Church in Washington Square, who had taught Pastoral Theology on a part-time basis, 1897-1900. They were thus enabled to gain first-hand experience with urban problems, city missions, charity organizations and settlement work. The second, the Italian Department, established in 1906, for training Italian young men to become ministers of Baptist churches of their countrymen in the United States, was similar to those for Germans at Rochester and Scandinavians at the Chicago Theological Seminaries. Antonio Mangano, a former student at Colgate and a graduate of Brown and Union Theological Seminary, became the professor in charge. With the assistance of three special faculty members, he formally opened the department in 1907 in Brooklyn where it was to continue for twenty years.
Colgate Academy under Principal Frank L. Shepardson held to its philosophy of developing Christian character and high scholarship as essential qualities for useful citizens. Enrollment ranged from a low of 131 in 1906 to a high of 153 in 1905. To improve standards a “pre-academic”
course was added to the regular four-year course in 1905 to accommodate the young men who had’ not completed all necessary preliminary subjects on entering, a change bringing to the Academy full accreditation of) the New York State Board of Regents. The extra year also made possible additional offerings in the Scientific Course.
The marked decline in the number of students who planned to enter the ministry which had appeared in the College in the 1890’s was more pronounced in the early 1900’s. A trend, begun in 1897, when the proportion of the graduating class going into teaching exceeded those for the ministry, was maintained without interruption. In the Class of 1908, six were headed toward the pulpit and 13 toward the classroom. Business was generally the second choice but the popularity of this vocation was not to become dominant until a later period. The campus was assuming a distinctly secular coloration.
To give fitting recognition to the opening of the academic year, President Merrill instituted a formal convocation in September 1901, a custom which each of his successors observed in due course. He made it an opportunity for delivering a homily on some aspect of university