Edward Kidder Graham

The Alpha Theta Phi honor society enrolls the best scholars

Dr. Tolman, who taught at the University in 1893-94, introduced Alpha Theta Phi, a society open only to the best scholars; by spring 1895 nine members of the class of 1896 belonged. In 1898 Archibald Henderson was its president and E. K. Graham its secretary, and a few years later it merged into Phi Beta Kappa.

People: Archibald Henderson · Edward Kidder Graham

Edward Kidder Graham organizes the Odd Number Club for student writers

Members met monthly to hear poems, sketches and prose by one another, kept ties with like clubs at Tennessee, Georgia, Virginia, Texas and Vanderbilt, and worked to build up campus journalism.

Venable names Edward Kidder Graham dean of the College of Liberal Arts

At 32 the youngest of the senior faculty, Graham took over the English department and replaced Eben Alexander, who was given a year's leave, as dean, with first responsibility for student discipline.

People: Francis Preston Venable · Eben Alexander

Graham joins the student county clubs into a civic association

Dean Graham revived the clubs of students from the same county, which nearly half the student body joined after Rand's death, and federated more than a dozen of them as the North Carolina Civic Association of the University, urging members to study conditions at home.

The university calls off its football game with A&M over eligibility

Disputes over A&M players who had played for Brown, Holy Cross and Georgetown and over paid assistant coaches on the field led Carolina to cancel the game, a step Graham accepted with reluctance.

People: Edward Kidder Graham

Graham proposes a statewide civic service week in a Charlotte speech

Closing Farm Life Week in Charlotte, the acting president called for a day of community self-study across North Carolina a year later, and Farmers Union president Henry Q. Alexander drafted a resolution asking the governor to back it. The book treats the speech as the moment the university openly took up the cause of farmers and wage earners.

Marvin H. Stacy becomes permanent dean of the College of Liberal Arts

Graham had made Marvin Hendrix Stacy acting dean of the College of Liberal Arts during Venable's absence and made the post permanent at his first faculty meeting as president. Stacy, a civil engineering professor, handled student discipline and worked to replace written rules with reliance on student honor.

People: Edward Kidder Graham

Trustees put athletic rules in the faculty's hands

At their winter meeting the trustees adopted Graham's view that the faculty alone should make and enforce athletic rules, turning aside coach Trenchard's lobbying for the board to overrule faculty eligibility decisions.

People: Edward Kidder Graham

Some 250 high school debaters come to Chapel Hill for state finals

About 250 high school students came to the campus for the final rounds of the university's statewide debating union, one of Graham's means of tying the university to towns across the state. Topics included woman suffrage and public ownership of railroads.

People: Edward Kidder Graham · Albert Coates

Thomas J. Campbell arrives as the university's first athletic director

After coach T. G. Trenchard's contract ran out with the 1915 season, Graham and a faculty committee ended alumni control of athletics and put a director in charge. Thomas Joseph Campbell, a former Harvard football star, took the post by early March 1916 and coached under a new rule that made athletes wait a year before playing.

People: Edward Kidder Graham

President Edward K. Graham engages planner John Nolen to study the campus

Urged by a faculty grounds committee of W. C. Coker, George Howe and Collier Cobb, formed in 1913, and after the trustees endorsed a full campus plan in spring 1916, Graham brought in the national planner John Nolen. Between 1917 and 1919 Nolen studied the campus and recommended building out the land south of South Building, the direction the 1920s expansion took.

People: Collier Cobb · William Chambers Coker · George Howe

The faculty approves summer banking jobs for credit with National City Bank

The faculty approved a plan Graham arranged with New York's National City Bank to hire rising juniors for summer jobs that taught banking, with university credit for the work. Graham meant it as a first step toward a school of commerce and began recruiting Dudley DeWitt Carroll at about the same time.

People: Edward Kidder Graham · Dudley Dewitt Carroll

Secretary of War Newton D. Baker gives the wartime commencement address

Baker spoke to an overflowing Memorial Hall hung with flags, the day after draft registration, warning that the war would be long and urging those who stayed to keep learning. Of the 161 graduates in the class of 1917, 65 were already in training camps, and all dances were canceled.

People: Josephus Daniels · Edward Kidder Graham

Subject: Memorial Hall

John Nolen recommends a site for the engineering building

As plans took shape for the School of Applied Science building paid for by the 1917 bonds, planner John Nolen advised placing it between Memorial Hall and the Peabody Building and chose a spot for a flagpole. He promised broader campus plans by the June 1918 commencement.

People: Edward Kidder Graham

The Students' Army Training Corps takes over the campus

Registration, put off to September 24 and 25, opened a year run by the army: dormitories became Barracks 1 through 8, Swain Hall the Mess Hall, and the year was cut into twelve-week quarters with classes grouped by age. About seven hundred enrolled, nearly all of them required to take a course on the issues of the war, and the commander worked from the Sigma Chi house.

People: Edward Kidder Graham · Charles T. Woollen

Graham Memorial is completed as the university's student union

The building named for Edward Kidder Graham was completed in 1931 and served as the student union, holding the Horace Williams Library, a barber shop, a bowling alley, a game room and offices for student publications.

Subject: Graham Memorial