'ROVING' PROFESSORS URGED BY CONANT; LATIN KNELL SOUNDED

Advocating the creation of professors with roving commissions, whose teaching and creative work shall not be hampered by departmental considerations," President Conant yesterday submitted his annual report to the Board of Overseers.

"Such professors," he writes, "without portfolio would have to be recruited from scholars who had already proved their worth not only as productive thinkers but as stimulating personalities. The endowment of their chairs should include an adequate research fund which could be spent for assistants or for publications as the incumbent in each case directed. These would not be research professorships,--inspiring teaching along unconventional lines would be an important phase of the work."

As far as the CRIMSON could ascertain last night, no American college or university has attempted this experiment on such a large scale before. An example of it here is the Norton Chair of Poetry, vacant this year, which has been filled by such men as T. S. Eliot '10, and Gilbert Murray. They have been permitted to lecture on any of the different aspects of poetry. Robert Frost, the New England poet, has held a similar position at Amherst.

Status in Question

If the proposal is adopted, however, it remains to be seen exactly what status and what duties professors of this type will assume on the Faculty.

As Mr. Conant emphasized in his speech at Amherst Saturday, he feels that "an investigator should be aware of much that is happening outside his own department and direct his own course accordingly. Unless I am much mistaken we shall require more professors in the future whose point of view is broad enough to embrace several of those fields which are now sharply differentiated. In teaching as well as in research there are rich opportunities for those who will venture into the uncertain areas which connect one specialty with another."

"It is evident to anyone who is familiar with modern experimental science that many important problems can be solved only by the efforts of a team of specialists. It also seems clear that the solitary worker immersed in his own ever-narrowing specialty is losing his importance.