P238 2
third dimension
tuesday, march 15, 1977
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By Paul Bejot
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In 1884 there was a total enrollment of 373 students
at the University of Nebraska, and about seven faculty
members. The entire campus consisted of one building.
The third floor and the attic were used as a men's dormi
tory. The land on what is now East Campus had been pur
chased 10 years earlier to establish an Agriculture College.
For all practical purposes, though, it existed in name only.
The UNL Industrial College (which taught practical
courses) was seeing its shortcomings also. This prompted
the university to make a generous salary offer of $2,500
to make Charles E. Bessey dean of the college. Bessey was
an Iowa State University botany professor.
At his inaugural address at the University of Nebraska
September 16, 1884, Bessey made a rather radical speech
for the day criticizing the Industrial College's teaching
method.
Nearly ten years earlier, in 1875, Bessey had intro
duced the laboratory method of teaching botany to his
students at Iowa State University. He had no intention of
not introducing the same instruction method at Nebraska.
He first, however, had a several-year struggle to keep
the University of Nebraska Industrial College in existance.
It was under almost constant attack from various parties,
as was the Ag College.
Experiment station
In an effort to develop an experiment station on East
Campus, Bessey worked hard to push the Hatch Act of
1887 through Congress. Bessey wrote the part of the act
which made $15,000 annually available to state experi
ment stations if they published bulletins and filed reports
with the United States Department of Agriculture
(U.S.DA.)
This led to Bessey's appointment as the first director
of the East Campus experiment station in 1887. Here he
began applying scientific experimentation to agriculture.
Bessey was quick to ponder the question of why there
were so few trees in Nebraska. He was brought up in Ohio
where trees were plentiful. He thought they should be
plentiful in Nebraska also.
He kept extensive records of the growth of trees from
farmers' observations across the state. He saw the
Nebraska Sandhills as an excellent environment for grow
ing pine trees. He noted that other parts of the nation
with pine trees did well in sandy areas.
In 1892 he planted a test plot of pine seedlings on the
Bruner Ranch in Holt County, near Swan Lake. By 1900
the trees had grown to a height of nearly 20 feet.
They grew so well that in 1902 Bessey persuaded the
Roosevelt Administration to establish two national forests
in Nebraska. One of them, Halsey National Forest, was to
become the largest man-made forest in the world. .
Bessey's major contribution was to his students. In
his 45 years of teaching he taught 4,000 of them-and 800
are said to have achieved national reputations in the
botany field.
' Fruitful research'
His motto was, "Science with Practice." His students
learned for themselves. Bessey added his patience,
knowledge, and charming personality in a non-dogmatic
fashion, thus making research fruitful for the student.
He organized the Botanical Seminar in 1892 to aid stu
dents in their quest of botany knowledge. This group took
field trips to western Nebraska to collect botanical data.
They concentrated on Pine Creek in Brown and Rock
Counties, Hackberry Lake in Cherry County, and the area
near Thedford in Thomas County.
Bessey worked hard to foster his method of teaching
botany throughout the state and nation. He wrote a series
of textbooks on botany for beginners. In 1901 he helped
introduce a bill which made Nebraska the first state to
provide for the teaching of agriculture in rural schools.
Bessey became so well known that people would send
their children to the university specifically to take courses
under him. He was well known nationwide too, and
many colleges made large offers to persuade him to teach
at their schools. The reason he stayed at the University of
Nebraska was because they permitted him to do more
original research than any other school might have.
Dedication
His dedication to education is evidenced by this sign
which hung over his desk; ,
"FOOTBALL occupies the same relation to education
that a bull-fight does to farming.''
Bessey became the acting chancellor of UNL on three
different occasions. Each time he could have become the
permanent chancellor, but he chose not to, in spite of the
doubled salary that would have come with the job.
In 1915, he died at his home on 1507 R street. There
was a fund-raising for his widow because the Besseys had
little money. Bessey did not live to see the move into the
current Bessey Hall, which would have finally given him
roomy quarters.
Part of Bessey still lives on in the building. He designed
the lab tables so students working on them would get light
from the north windows.
A bronze bust of Bessey reads: "To the memory of
Charles Edwin Besseyscholar-botanist-educator 1845
1915."3D Above: Bessey as acting chancellor, 1900. (Ne
braska State Historical Society photo).
Below: Botany Labs, 1914. (University of Ne
braska Archives photo).
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