An admired and respected leader on campus, Dr. 克莱门特C. 麦克斯韦’s tenure as president in the 1950s and 1960s marked the greatest period of growth up to that point in Bridgewater’s history.
His decade at the helm helped lay the foundation for the campus we see today, which features a library bearing his name.
命名的
Dr. 克莱门特C. 麦克斯韦
The Backstory
A native of Taunton, 麦克斯韦 came to Bridgewater with extensive experience as a secondary school teacher and a college professor. He became chairman 的 English department in 1937, served as dean 的 graduate school, and directed continuing studies programming and a summer school at Hyannis.
麦克斯韦 became acting president upon the death of his predecessor, Dr. 约翰·凯利.
Faculty and students praised his subsequent permanent appointment to the post, with one student telling the Campus Comment: “I'll be proud to receive my degree from Dr. 麦克斯韦.”
In an editorial, the student newspaper praised 麦克斯韦’s familiarity with Bridgewater.
“Nothing could have pleased us more than his appointment as president of Bridgewater,” the paper wrote. “To have a president whom we know means much more to us than to have a perfect stranger take the position as head of Bridgewater.”
Under 麦克斯韦's watch, the number of faculty tripled as new courses and majors took shape. The physical campus also grew as Bridgewater built two new residence halls and a gymnasium.
麦克斯韦, who believed that “a library is the heart of a college,” led the remodeling 的 old gymnasium (now the Art Center) into a library that was named for him in 1963. In January 1958, 900 students formed a human chain to move the library’s 30,000卷 from Boyden Hall across School Street to their new home. They toiled for five hours as music played over a loudspeaker to boost morale.
今天使用
当前的 麦克斯韦 图书馆, which is on the west side of campus between Shaw Road and Park Avenue, opened in 1971 and continues to honor Bridgewater’s seventh president. It offers approximately 300,000卷, more than 31,000 periodical subscriptions and nearly 100 electronic bibliographic and full-text article databases. The library includes a café, classrooms, offices, the Academic Achievement Center and an auditorium.
Material in this article comes from the May 28, 1952 edition 的 Campus Comment, Not to be Ministered Unto, But to Minister: Bridgewater State University, 1840-2010 博士. 托马斯·R. •特纳 麦克斯韦’s biography 和 1975/76 Undergraduate/Graduate Catalogue.