evaluation the student’s entire concentration program and viewed the comprehensive examination as a means to that end.
The Colgate Plan attracted nationwide attention as a somewhat radical experiment in higher education. The President and faculty were asked to discuss it at conferences; articles on it were published; representatives of other institutions carne to the campus to study it. Perhaps its highest recommendations came in the form of adaptations of various segments and the use of its Survey texts by other colleges. Though it was not related to the Colgate Plan, Eugene T. Adams of the Philosophy Department and eight faculty collaborators in 1942 published The American Idea, a discussion of aspects of American culture which served as a basis of a course they taught during part of the World War II period.
Of particular interest, also, were instructional approaches which the Departments of Psychology and Political Science developed independently of the Colgate Plan. Professor Donald A. Laird stressed the experimental approach in psychology and was responsible for setting up a laboratory in 1928 in which undergraduates studied sleep under controlled conditions with themselves as subjects. Dr. Rodney L. Mott of the Political Science Department suggested the Washington Study Group which for the first time spent a semester in the capitol in 1935 under the supervision of Dr. Paul S. Jacobsen, ’27. This innovation aroused the interest of prospective applicants to Colgate, served to stimulate students already enrolled who sought to meet the high standards required for appointment to the group, and afforded a unique opportunity for first-hand, quasi-laboratory experience with many phases of the national government.
As an incentive for high quality work in the new curriculum, commencement programs, beginning in 1932, noted the seniors who had won honors in tutorial work and their departments of concentration. In 1933 the designations “summa,” “magna,” and “cum,” were first used to show outstanding attainment in the whole academic program. To encourage freshman interest in scholarly achievements and to make them aware of Phi Beta Kappa and its’ purposes, the local chapter of the organization in 1928 established the Phi Society in imitation of such a group at Denison University. Professor Frank C. Ewart of the Romance Languages Department had brought the idea before the group and was active in promoting its adoption at other colleges.