New Presidents

University of Idaho has been shopping for a president ever since last June when Frederick James Kelly, onetime Dean of Administration at the University of Minnesota, quarrelled with the State Board of Education about money matters and resigned. Last week Idaho acquired for its eighth president Mervin Gordon Neale, who has also served time on the Minnesota faculty but whose chief work was done at his alma mater, the University of Missouri, where he has been Dean of Education since 1923.

Bright, sharp-faced Dean Neale, 43, has been successively rural schoolteacher, school superintendent, college professor and educational expert since he was graduated from Missouri in 1911. For a while (1919-20) he was at Columbia Teachers College, for two years (1920-21) was professor of school administration at Minnesota. When War broke out he went to Plattsburg, thence to France with the 42nd ("Rainbow") Division as an infantry captain. He was wounded in action.

Since he has been at Missouri he has increased the size of and vitalized the summer sessions, published numerous surveys of local public school conditions. He likes to fish and take his three daughters and small son to football games.

Fordham University. Jesuit colleges select and induct their presidents quietly, without public fanfare. In the refectory of Fordham University (New York), last week, an order from the Very Rev. Vlodimir Ledochowski, S.J., Superior General at Rome, was read at mealtime. Rev. William J. Duane, S.J., 63, having completed the six years in office permitted by canon law, got up from the head of the table and bowed to Rev. Aloysius G. Hogan, S.J., 37, who took his place. Next day Father Duane sailed for Rome. It is not expected that he will do any more educational work.

Fordham's new president, one of the youngest in the land, comes from Philadelphia. He entered the order in 1908, receiving his training at St. Joseph's College. For five years (1915-20) he taught classics at Boston College, for four (1923-27) he studied at Oxford. Since then he has been Prefect of Studies at the Novitiate of St. Andrew-on-Hudson, Poughkeepsie.

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