Education: SUNY's Second

When the trustees of the State University of New York began looking for a new president last spring, to succeed Alvin C. Eurich, they knew that they were offering no ordinary post. In its 2½ years, SUNY has become a prodigious piece of administrative machinery—the boss of eleven teachers' colleges, eleven technical institutes, seven professional colleges, two four-year liberal arts colleges, two medical schools.* It has a faculty of 3,000 and a budget of $33 million. With 41,535 full-and part-time students, paying everything from $800 to no tuition at all, it is the second largest, and by far the most complicated, university in the U.S.*

The trustees had a good idea of the sort of man they wanted. He had to be young enough to stand constant travel, old enough to have had solid administrative experience. He also had to be something of a scholar. After looking over 75 candidates, the trustees last week announced their choice; William S. Carlson, 46, president of the University of Vermont.

The son of a Michigan mine operator, Carlson is a first-rate geologist who has taught at the University of Michigan, knows Eskimo, and is a veteran of two major expeditions to Greenland. In 1937 he joined the faculty of the University of Minnesota, served as professor and director of admissions until World War II called him to Washington. Finally, after three years as a top consultant on Arctic affairs, ex-Colonel Carlson was ready for a presidency—first at the University of Delaware, then at Vermont.

Both campuses found the genial six-footer an easy but able boss, with a knack for getting along with both professors and legislators. At Delaware, he awarded the university's first Ph.D., admitted its first Negro student. He set up a new department of biological sciences, a speech clinic, a psychological services center for veterans. In 1950, when his daughter's health demanded a change of climate, he accepted the top job at Vermont. There, he had scarcely hit his stride when the call came from New York.

As second president of SUNY, Carlson knows that his job will be different from that of any other president. His Albany office is not on any campus; and his small executive staff must rule, almost by remote control, over a bewildering array of local presidents, provosts, deans and directors. But if Carlson sticks to his job, he may have the honor of running the biggest university in the nation—a planned-for 46,000 students by 1960.