Faculty Profile

The muscularly modest man who sits behind a white-vaulted door in University Hall has a tricky and unromantic job ahead of him. Dean Bender, who claims he is "not the kind of man about whom legends collect," faces the task of filling the shoes of two almost legendary deans, LeBaron Russell Briggs and A. Chester Hanford. With his work three fourths disciplinary and routine, he has to draw in the reins on his positive plans for the College while he carries out a policy that the Faculty has formulated. A narrow thread between Administration and Student, his is probably the most delicate position around the Harvard Yard.

But the new dean is well suited for is job. On surprisingly common ground with a majority of his students, he graduated college at the age of 24, and has two years as counsellor for Veterans behind him. After leaving his Indiana high school, Bender worked at various jobs on the New York Central, including section hand and caller of crews for departing trains. For two years he went to Goshen College; then followed a stint as a grade-school teacher, before his arrival at Harvard.

First and foremost, his experience is that of a teacher, and he still believes in "academic bureaucrats," or deans who teach. Right now, Bender gives occasional lectures in American history, but hopes to expand his pedagogic pursuits when things settle down a bit. From the time of his graduation from Harvard in 1927 until two years ago, he has been teaching here or at Andover. For a while he was a "baby dean," and formed half of the two-man team that developed the National Scholarship plan.

The appearance of a bright football guard seems to be fused with a pleasing reticence in Wilbur J. Bender. But though he enjoys watching football, he avers he knows nothing about it technically, is not a fisherman, and fills his sparse spare time by reading history texts. All in all, his extra-University Hall life is a quiet one, largely occupied by a wife and three children.

The Dean of Harvard College does not make policy himself, but in this important position, he can do a lot to encourage what he or the Faculty wants, Bender feels it a part of his job in the future to "develop a more responsible participating outlook on the part of the student." He can draw up no ukase to achieve this, nor will he offer a dogmatic statement so soon after taking office, but he thinks that encouragement through student organizations over a period of time will do the trick.

Bender's main work, however, is not making plans, but seeing merely that things run from day to day. He welcomes all students with difficulties, but especially the rough ten percent that gets "involved" with the delicate machinery of parietal and scholastic rules; in these cases, Bender is both judge and jury. He probably champs at the bit at many of these interviews, while he plans a Harvard that is a more socially conscious community.