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THE HORACE H. RACKHAM SCHOOL OF GRADUATE STUDIES
The last three decades in the history of the Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studies have been characterized by rapid growth in size, number of degrees, and available student support, and by improvement in standing of the academic departments of instruction. The period has been marked by three university administrations, by the incumbencies of three graduate deans with the appointment of a new dean at the period end, and by the manpower problems and the economic stresses of three wars, including World War II, the Korean War, and the current Vietnam conflict.
As the period opened, C. S. Yoakum was Dean and Peter Okkelberg was Assistant Dean. In the years just preceding, the Rackham Building had been finished at a cost of $2,500,000 and dedicated on June 17, 1938, and the five Rackham endowment funds, with a book value of $7,000,000, became available between 1935 and 1938. (The market value of the funds on June 30, 1971 was $15,317,154.55.) The building, which is described in Volume IV of the earlier Encyclopedic Survey, gives the School excellent facilities for offices, reading rooms, and assembly halls. The endowment funds provide unique resources for the support of faculty research and student fellowships as well as for the specific social service objectives of three of the funds. Through these later decades they have continued to support and strengthen the graduate program.
The first part of Dean Yoakum's deanship was a time of steady growth in enrollment and in degrees granted. Both reached new highs in 1939-40 and 1940-41. The outbreak of war brought abrupt changes. Much of the building space was heavily used as classrooms, lecture halls, and study rooms for students training for service in meteorology and other army and navy specialties. The number of regular students fell from a high of 3,083 in 1939-40 to 1,633 in 1943-44, and the number of degrees granted from 1,203 to 582 for the same years. In the first of these years there were 2,078 men and 1,005 women in the regular session; in the second 697 men and 936 women.
The absence of many faculty on war service of some