THE appointment in 1841 of the Reverend George P. Williams as Professor of Mathematics and that of the Reverend Joseph Whiting as Professor of Languages signalized the opening of the University in Ann Arbor and the birth of the Department of Literature, Science, and the Arts, which multiplied almost a thousandfold in students and more than a hundredfold in faculty within a hundred years. The curriculum offered by these two professors to the seven* 1.1 students who first enrolled was limited to the Greek and Latin classics and to the more elementary branches of mathematics. Ten years after the first classes were conducted in Mason Hall, the number of students had grown to almost one hundred, and an additional building, now the South Wing of University Hall, had been erected to provide them with living quarters. The faculty had increased, likewise, during this first decade, until four more chairs had been filled — zoology, moral and intellectual philosophy, chemistry, and logic, rhetoric, and history. These additions to the teaching staff resulted in considerable expansion in the college curriculum and permitted the students to become acquainted with some of the newer, scientific disciplines.
The second decade of the University's existence gave evidence of the vigorous, directing hand of President Henry P. Tappan in all departments (see Part I: Tappan Administration) . For no department of the University was this energetic direction more beneficial than for the Department of Literature, Science, and the Arts, as it was officially named until the year 1915. Tappan helped to bring about the introduction of a scientific course which paralleled the instruction in the classics. This "course," including work in physics, astronomy, chemistry, and civil engineering, led to the degree of bachelor of science. The inclusion of this science curriculum in the Literary Department was a departure from the precedent of Yale and Harvard, where scientific schools separate from the faculty of the humanities had been established.
President Tappan also inaugurated a greater amount of student freedom in the selection of courses than had been possible before that time. The introduction of the course leading to the bachelor of science degree provided an alternative to the customary classical curriculum. His belief that students should be permitted to pursue their individual interests led to a second alternative, an optional course which permitted a student to spend his entire time in the department of his special interest and receive at the end, not a diploma, but a certificate of proficiency. This optional course was clearly the precursor of our present permission to register as "not a candidate for a degree." The expansion of the curriculum provided a further range of choice. The student was allowed in addition to choose some of his courses during the senior year; this was the beginning of the system of free electives prevalent at the turn of the century.