Curricular Change
In the fall of 1919, Virginia Polytechnic Institute welcomed Julian Burruss as its new president. Burruss began to assess the structure and curriculum of the institution in the first months of his presidency. What he found at VPI disappointed him. He wrote that at VPI he could not “imagine a more unsatisfactory program that our students are required to follow.”
Subsequently, Burruss embarked on a fundamental reorganization of VPI. Burruss’ first focus was curriculum. Burruss’s predecessor, Joseph Eggleston, believed the wartime changes at VPI were detrimental to the institution’s health. In contrast, Burruss believed that some changes were beneficial because they led to “criticism of all content of instruction.” Instead of returning to VPI’s pre-war curriculum, Burruss believed that the institution should reform to align with technologies which emerged during the war and the needs of a post-war society.
Between 1919 and 1922, Burruss expanded VPI’s degree programs from fifteen to twenty-two. Courses which had not been adapted to new technological advances were either overhauled or eliminated, and many new ones were introduced. Not surprisingly, some of the new courses correlated to those introduced to VPI by the Students’ Army Training Corps (SATC) in 1918, particularly those in science and technical subjects.
Ultimately, Burruss believed that the First World War demonstrated the need for VPI to become a larger, more standard university, one that was focused on academics and technical education rather than military instruction.
