This historical note is not comprehensive to each event in the collection, many of which contain a small amount of material. Because the majority of the collection covers the General Education Board and the Greater University of Buffalo Development Program, this note is limited to these topics.

General Education Board:

The General Education Board of New York State supplied a grant, accepted May 4, 1931 by the Committee on General Administration, to the University of Buffalo to continue and extend its project of the tutorial plan of study. It involved a comprehensive study over a period of years of successive groups of students (in the junior college of the university, together with juniors and seniors in Buffalo high schools who planned to attend UB), curricula, course materials, and study methods.

Greater University of Buffalo Development Program:

The Greater University of Buffalo Development Program consisted of two major activities: the Niagara Frontier Convocation (December 7-8, 1951) and the Niagara Frontier Campaign (January to June, 1952). The Convocation was designed to stimulate the financial interest of alumni, local industry, and the Buffalo community in the University’s program for the expansion of its facilities. The Campaign for the solicitation of funds, with a goal of $3.5 million, was organized in January 1952 and carried on intensively into May and June of that year. Facilities to be funded included the Medical-Dental Building [now Sidney Farber Hall] and a building for Physics.

According to The Power to Serve (1952, folder 5.6), the Program was explained thus:

“Throughout the long history of the University, its loyal alumni and friends have always responded enthusiastically and generously. This is the spirit that will enable this institution to remain a university privately financed and independently controlled. The University of Buffalo as we know it has been bequeathed to us by men and women of the past century. Each building, each tradition, even each course, reflects the lives and hopes of human beings stirred by a desire to leave the world better than they found it.”