The University of Iowa Libraries

Walter A. Jessup served as the eleventh president of the University of Iowa, from 1916 to 1934.
 
First as an educator and later as university president, Jessup won important support to improve and enlarge the University of Iowa. He later led the Carnegie Corporation in New York.
 
Jessup received the Bachelor of Arts degree from Earlham College in 1903 and the Master of Arts degree from Hanover College in 1908, both in Indiana. In 1911, he received the Doctorate of Philosophy degree from Columbia University.
 
He became professor and dean of Iowa's School of Education in 1912. During his 18 years as president, the campus expanded from 42 to 324 acres, the faculty nearly doubled from 273 to about 500, and the student body nearly tripled to 10,000. Within the College of Liberal Arts, several schools emerged: Journalism, Religion, Fine Arts, and Letters.
 
In 1934, Jessup became president of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching in New York, and, in 1941, took on the additional duty of president of the Carnegie Corporation.
 
Jessup was born in Richmond, Indiana, on August 12, 1877. He married Eleanor Hines on June 28, 1898, and they adopted two children. He died in New York City on July 5, 1944, at age 66.

Since the Walter Jessup administration in 1916, the President's Office has maintained an index of Presidential Correspondence in the form of a Kardex file to which name and subject entries are posted. A new alphabetical sequence is begun approximately each fiscal year. These cards files have been photocopied and a bound copy is available in the University Archives  these primary files are not yet available on-line. They are, clearly, essential to tracing correspondence on specific subjects. The Kardex entries consist of the name or subject and reference to a folder number (which may change from year to year for a particular subject although in a short span of years it often remains the same). To find the current physical location of the referenced folder, readers must consult the photocopied Kardex entries, note the number of any folder they wish to review, and then determine from the list which follows the number of the storage box in which the folder has been placed.

Access: This collection is open for research.

Use: Copyright restrictions may apply; please consult Special Collections staff for further information.

Acquisition: These papers were transferred to the University Archives by the Office of the President; date undetermined. Guide posted to the Internet December 2006.

Preferred Citation: Walter A. Jessup Papers, The University of Iowa Libraries, Iowa City, Iowa.

Repository:	University of Iowa Archives
Address:	100 Main Library University of Iowa Libraries Iowa City, IA 52242
Phone:	319-335-5921
Curator:	David McCartney
Email:	david-mccartney@uiowa.edu
Website:	http://www.lib.uiowa.edu/spec-coll/archives

This collection is indexed under the following subject terms.

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