G.I. U.

The total absence of sloppy sportswear was notable; so was the stage for the opening address by the head of the school, Brigadier General Claude M. Thiele, who spoke from atop a concrete pillbox (and split an infinitive in his first sentence).

Otherwise last week's opening of the Army's University Center No. 1 at Shrivenham, England was little different from any first day on a U.S. college campus.*

Set in a pleasantly wooded district, the grounds and buildings had been laid out in 1937 to house a second Sandhurst (Britain's West Point). Turned over to the U.S. for an officer training camp, it was converted after V-E day into a campus for 4,000 G.I. students. At the start, there were only 3,611, including 270 officers, 14 nurses, and eight WACs. They ranged in age from 19 to 46 (average: 22 1/2) and in rank from buck private to lieutenant colonel. Their average education amounted to one year of college.

Newspapers & Frogs. Before classes began, the G.I.s sipped Cokes in the PX bar or sprawled with their books on the well-trimmed lawns bordering the former parade ground. In the afternoon they enthusiastically piled into converted class rooms and laboratories in the camp's red brick buildings, launched into their choices of 300 courses. Liberal arts and commerce curriculums attracted more than half, with science, fine arts, agriculture, engineering, journalism and education trailing in that order.

Of the faculty's 230 members, 130 were first-rate civilian professors fresh from the U.S. on special leaves of absence.

Kenneth Olson, dean of Northwestern University's school of journalism, planned to set up a model city room and have his students publish a daily Shrivenham Post on local newspaper presses. Dr. Douglas Whitaker, Stanford zoologist, created a minor Army supply problem by ordering 1,000 frogs. Among others in the U.S.

faculty group: Yale's Dr. Charles Hendel (philosophy), the University of Texas' colorful Frank Dobie (English), the University of Wisconsin's William Hesseltine (history).

Programs & Credits. Shrivenham's students are enrolled for eight weeks, a term approximating a summer session in the U.S. Ten percent of them are to be officers, 10% Negroes. The average program includes three hours of classwork a day, five days a week, and two hours of compulsory sports a week. Regular classwork will be supplemented with field trips and with lectures by visiting professors.

The university at Shrivenham will be one of three such schools for servicemen and women temporarily stranded in Europe. One opened last month in Florence, and another gets under way this month in Biarritz. (A similar school for technical students only will open at Wharton, near Liverpool, next month.) None of them has been officially accredited by U.S. associations, but students will receive certificates recommending credit in U.S. colleges.

With the opening of these centers, the Army will complete the last and most ambitious phase of its vast post-V-E education project. Hundreds of unit command schools have sprung up everywhere. Army-sponsored courses at civilian schools have also made a hit. When the program reaches its peak, more than 1,500,000 troops will be enrolled.

* One other difference: German P.O.W.s will make beds, serve meals, and clean students' quarters.

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