MacLean, Malcom Shaw

Malcolm Shaw MacLean, educator, was born in Denver, Colorado, on January 4, 1894. He was the son of Lester and Mary Dewey (Shaw) MacLean and grandson of John MacLean, a Congregational clergyman who came to Pennsylvania from Scotland before the Civil War. His father was a distinguished Denver lawyer. Dr. MacLean attended Hamilton College for two years (1912-1914), graduated from the University of Michigan with an A.B. degree, from Northwestern University with a M.A. degree and from the University of Minnesota with a PH.D. in 1929. He was an instructor in both English and the student Army training corps at northwestern University (1916-1919) and taught English at the University of Minnesota (1919-1920). His next four years were spent in newspaper work as editor of the Laguna Beach (California) Life (1920-1921), copy-reader and financial editor of the Minneapolis Tribune (1921-1922), managing editor of the LaSalle (Illinois) Daily Post, and night telegraph editor of the Minneapolis Tribune (1922-1924). In 1924 he returned to the University of Minnesota as an instructor in English and student counselor (1924-1925). He then spent three years at the Milwaukee Center, University of Wisconsin, as professor of English, director of guidance, and assistant director of the center. In 1932 he again returned to the University of Minnesota to launch a new experience in higher education, known as the general college program, of which he was director and professor. The general college program was charted to explore solutions to three of the major problem of American state universities: (1) how to provide students with a general or liberal education in the face of ever-expanding specialized curricula with inevitable fragmentation into multiplicity of fields and courses and rigid sequences; (2) how to prevent or reduce student "mortality" among potentially "solid" future citizens, abilities interests and needs of individual students in mass education. Enthusiastically supported by the University of Minnesota and having received large grants from the General Education Board of the Rockefeller Foundation and the Carnegie Corporation, Dr. MacLean and his able staff devised and directed the development of a general curriculum program, a guidance program and a series of significant studies of students in college, former students of the University of Minnesota, and conducted special research in visual education, English composition, speech, and the arts. In eight years the enrollment at the college increased from two hundred sixty-nine to more than one thousand students per year; it was visited by more than seven hundred individuals from forty-seven states and twelve foreign countries who were interested in making higher education understandable to young men and women who, for the most part, were not entering professions or contemplating advanced scholarship. In 1940 Dr. MacLean was elected president of Hampton Institute.

The papers of Malcolm Shaw MacLean consist of 86 linear feet of mainly administrative correspondence. Included are folders and files containing correspondence of a general nature, a few personal papers, paper related to the Fair Employment Practice Commission, and reports and correspondence concerning the United States Naval Training Program during World War II at Hampton Institute.