Graduate School Records of the Dean, Clarence L. Ver Steeg

The records are comprised primarily of the correspondence, reports, and other documents pertaining to the administration of the Graduate School, the various academic departments under its auspices, and affiliated institutions including Northwestern's Medical School, School of Law, School of Journalism, and the Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary, among others. They are arranged into five sub-series.

The general subject files cover a wide range of topics germane to Ver Steeg's deanship. Although some of these span more than one file, most are documented in single folders and labeled accordingly.

Program Review records relate to the procedure of formal departmental or academic program evaluation initiated at Northwestern University in the mid-1980s. The records here document the Graduate School's evaluations, findings, and recommendations concerning selected academic and administrative departments. These files, which date between 1984 and 1986, consist of committee reports, memoranda, and correspondence between department faculty and the Dean.

The files on the Program in Cognitive Science / Artificial Intelligence detail the exhaustive efforts to establish a new and nationally renowned interdisciplinary effort, seizing on what was then perceived to be an emerging field in academic research and scholarship. The files include various findings and reports on the precise nature of this program, extensive correspondence between administration and faculty on its progression and setbacks, and letters, recommendations, and evaluations concerning potential faculty recruits as well as projected financial allocations for the program's physical plant.

Files relating to departmental and administrative matters address and critique the standing of each academic department, center, or program under the Graduate School's umbrella from 1975 to 1986. These include committee reports and memoranda, student statistical profiles, information on scholarships and teaching assistantships awarded, and correspondence between individual faculty members and the Dean. One aspect of these records concerns the departmental evaluations made by external reviewing committees across this period. Other files contain the design plans for refitting the Graduate School offices as well as systems management recommendations and proposals.

Department profiles relate to units of the College of Arts and Sciences, the Medical School, and the Technological Institute and feature reviews and reports concerning a number of academic departments, undertaken at the beginning of Ver Steeg's tenure as Dean from fall 1976 to spring 1977. These include correspondence between faculty and administrators as well as department interviews and evaluations.

Addition, Box 20-55

This addition to the records of the Graduate School Dean Clarence L. Ver Steeg and are arranged into four categories: Ver Steeg's chronologically-arranged correspondence files, general subject files, budgetary records, and records relating to a conference on South Africa chaired by Dean Ver Steeg.

The correspondence files, filling more than nine boxes, contain copies of Ver Steeg's outgoing letters relating to Graduate School and University administrative matters. The correspondence is arranged chronologically and usually foldered month by month. Within folders letters are filed in reverse chronological order.

General subject files form the largest portion of the addition, more than twenty-one boxes, and pertain to administrative matters, associations and organizations relating to research and higher education, Northwestern University departments and interdisciplinary programs, curricular affairs and planning, faculty committees, and Northwestern officers and administrators. The subject files are arranged alphabetically by keyword of folder title.

Budgetary records are arranged in approximately four boxes. The files mainly include summary budget records as well as records concerning Northwestern's Administrative Budget Committee and the Budget and Resources Advisory Council.

Ver Steeg took the leading role in setting up the U.S. Policy Toward South Africa: A National Agenda conference sponsored jointly by Northwestern and the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations. Held May 27-28, 1981, the conference became a focal point in efforts to change Northwestern's investment policies as they concerned corporations operating in South Africa. The files found here pertain largely to the organization of the conference.

Addition, Box 56

A small volume of correspondence and materials pertaining to the Roose-Andersen Report, a rating of graduate programs, have been added to the series. General administrative correspondence dates from August and September, 1986, the end of Clarence Ver Steeg's tenure as dean of the Graduate School. Other correspondence includes several folders of Dean Ver Steeg's letters to candidates seeking readmission to graduate study at Northwestern. Typically, these candidates had applied for resident research continuations, for post-degree candidacy research, or for the continuation of study after leaves of absence. All correspondence found in this addition is arranged in reverse chronological order.