University of Connecticut, President's Office Records [Albert N. Jorgensen, 1935-1962]

Like some of his predecessors, Albert Nels Jorgensen was born and educated in the Midwest, where the tradition of land-grant higher education his historically strong. He attended Coe College in Iowa and took a Ph.D. in Educational Administration at Eastern Michigan College and at the University of Buffalo, he did important scholarly work in the field of educational measurement and evaluation. In 1935, at the relatively young age of 36, he was appointed the seventh president of Connecticut State College, succeeding Charles C. McCracken.

Despite the hard economic circumstance of those times, Dr. Jorgensen brought to this office a far-sighted vision of a great public institution at Storrs. He immediately launched a vigorous campaign to persuade state agencies and civic organizations of the value of the College to the state, and of its need for more adequate support. In 1938, he presented an ambitions long-range plan for the physical development of the College, asking 23 million dollars from an historically resistant state legislature for the construction of a library, dormitories, and other needed facilities. In justifying his request, Dr. Joegensen pointed to the 31% increase in enrollment since he had taken office in 1935. Due in part to the President's persuasiveness and prestige, and in part to the changing climate of opinion, he was able to win support for his building program. The progress made by the institution in Dr. Jorgensen's first years was ratified by the changing of its name to the University of Connecticut in 1939. The Wilbur L. Cross Library, and impressive symbol of the institution's new status, was also built in 1939. President Jorgensen succeeded in maintaining his program for the physical development of the University during World War II by taking advantage of federal funds available through New Deal programs, although some major projects had to be put off because of wartime shortages of materials.

When the nation returned to peacetime, its colleges and universities were faced with the formidable task of meeting the demands for higher education made by the wave of veterans returning with the new GI Bill in hand. Under the imaginative leadership of President Jorgensen, the University of Connecticut became a leader in this work, establishing new University branches in Hartford, Waterbury and Fort Trumbull (New London), and increasing its enrollment from 1200 in 1939 to more than 7500 by 1947. While the effects of the veterans' wave were still being felt, other important needs in the University's physical plant were filled. President Jorgensen, a strong proponent of college athletics, vastly improved the University's facilities with the construction of the Physical Education Building in 1950, and its later addition, and Memorial Stadium in 1953. The North Campus dormitories relieved a great shortage of housing in 1950, and the long-awaited Student Union opened in 1953.

While the needs for the physical development of the campus might have been most pressing, and the accomplishments in this area most evident, President Jorgensen was equally concerned with maintaining and upgrading the quality of the University's academic programs. The most important academic changes during his administration were in the development and strengthening of graduate work and research. The Graduate School was founded in 1940, and the University awarded its first Ph.D. in 1949. By the end of the Jorgensen era in 1962, doctoral programs were being offered in more than sixty fields. In another measure of the improvement in the academic standing of the institution, there was but one national honorary society represented on the campus in 1935. By 1960, the Silver Anniversary of the Jorgensen Presidency, twenty-six national honorary societies had established chapters at the University, including Phi Beta Kappa in 1956.

President Jorgensen also helped the University of Connecticut to establish a strong reputation as a defender of academic freedom. He insisted as a prerequisite for his acceptance of the position her in 1935 that the Trustees suspend a rule prohibiting discussion of the issue of compulsory military training on the campus. During World War II he defended the right to due process of a member of the University staff of foreign origin who was accused of disloyal acts. He also resisted outside pressure to dismiss a staff member who had come under suspicion during the McCarthy era.

During the last decade of his administration, President Jorgensen continued the development of the University and the advancement of its academic standards. New academic buildings and dormitories were built to meet the steadily increasing enrollment. New University branches were opened in Stamford and Torrington. The University also began to build an enviable reputation as a center for research financed by grants from the federal government and private foundations. The campus' social and cultural life was enhanced by the opening of Jorgensen Auditorium in 1956, which has brought numerous fine artistic productions to the campus in years since.

Dr. Jorgensen retired in 1962 after 27 years in office, one of the longest tenures of any American university president. His years of service as President are coincided with the rise of the University of Connecticut from a small, even obscure, college of 800 students to the great public institution that it is today. He is perhaps best remembered as the architect of the University campus. Most of the permanent buildings on the campus today are monuments to the energy, ability and vision of President Jorgensen. But he was more than just a “bricks and mortar man.” As President Glenn W. Ferguson said at the passing of Dr. Jorgensen in 1978, he was also “a 'builder' in the philosophical sense; a champion of academic freedom, a person who recognized that excellence is the critical quest for a university, who created this university from a state college, and who built an institution that cared about its future and cared about that quest for excellence.”