Into the Modern Era
Leslie R. Marston was the fourth president of Greenville, serving from 1927 to 1936. Marston was a scientific educator and psychologist of national repute, having focused his research on human development, especially in the role of emotions in development. He had studied with the leading educators of his day at the universities of Illinois and Iowa. He became convinced that all education must honor the nature and the developmental processes of the student as a growing human person.

Marston believed that as president of Greenville, his role was to bring the college’s educational philosophy and practices into the modern era. Marston had seen this need while serving as faculty member and dean under Burritt from 1920 to 1926. Academics during Burritt’s tenure were often lacking in challenge and quality.

"Life Adjustment" was the banner under which the new educational theory was flying in the nation, and Marston brought this theory fully into the college, but with one major difference. Whereas such national educational leaders as William James, Charles Pierce, John Dewey, Boyd Bode, William H. Kilpatrick, and other could not find a place for God in their bio-social understanding of human life, Marston could.

Marston took all of the life adjustment aims of education – social efficiency, complete living, appreciation of life’s values – and subsumed them under the highest aim of all, "adjustment with God." The purpose of the faculty, curriculum, and extra-curriculum of the college, Marston contended, was to teach students, whatever their careers may be, how to live. And this required that education focus on the whole student and his or her relationship to God and to each other.

Marston led the faculty during his tenure in a major reform of the curriculum and of teaching. The focus was on the growth and development of each student. So significant was this reform that two graduates, Donald Miller and Lois Woods, both completed masters’ theses on the topic. Said Miller, Marston led the faculty in making education be not mastery of subject matter" for itself alone, but for the purpose of developing the students as "well-rounded personalities, equipped to function adequately in their place in society." Wood concluded that Marston’s new educational reforms focused on three points: (1) change in personality traits, (2) liberalizing of the mind, and (3) spiritual development and Christian service.

Coming of Age
Marston spoke at national meetings about Greenville’s new curriculum and teaching, and soon the college was recognized for its educational strengths. The college had once had a good standing with the University of Illinois, but ten years before Marston arrived in 1927, the university had removed it from the list and given it a "C" rating. In light of Marston’s reforms, early in 1930 the university gave the college a basic "B" rating with some "A" rating privileges.

Just before Marston came in 1927 the preparatory school was dropped. For the fist time Greenville stood as a four-year Christian liberal arts college. Under Marston Greenville had come of age as a college and had seen as well its laboratories and library improved. Alumni chapters were formed, and an institutional self-consciousness took root. The Gospel League was formed, whereby students were sent out to teach Sunday school classes, preach, make calls on the sick, and provide other forms of Christian service.

The extra-curricular programs were also extended, especially in music. The A Cappella Choir was begun under Professor Robert Woods, college-community choruses performed, and glee clubs were developed. Marston conceptualized the mission that would guide the college, in light of its new curriculum and educational and spiritual emphases. In a 1929 issue of the Record Marston stated:

"The Christian college is not a cloistered retreat from the problems of a changing world to the seclusion of which a few monkish professors withdraw to create, unchecked by the restrictions of reality, and ideal world of fixed forms and values to which they fit the minds of students likewise seeking release from the demands of a changing order.

"Neither is the Christian college the last feeble stand of a dying orthodoxy, the expiring protest of a lost cause. Rather, it is at the axis of the world’s thought; it seeks the fullest expression of truth; it is a foremost experiment on the frontier of educational advance."

But as was the case under the other presidents, finances were always in short supply. The students continued to come form homes of modest means and the college had few if any major donors. Faculty salaries were low, making it necessary for wives to work whenever possible. To compound the problem, it was during Marston’s tenure that the nation’s worst depression occurred, and the college built up major debt.

To help students pay for their education, the college developed an extensive student work program. Tower Press was begun, and a young chemistry professor, H.J. Long, produced Tower Products in his labs. Students made and sole these products (creams, toothpaste, soaps, etc.) door-to-door. When Marston was elected bishop in 1936, in the middle of the Depression, the creative chemist H.J. Long, who had directed the entire student work program, was named to replace him.

Long’s term and the years following, up to the present, define the scope of the rest of this book. For those who seek more detailed information on the first half century of Greenville College, an excellent place to start is Mary A. Tenny’s book Still Abides the Memory (Tower Press, 1942).

The second half of Greenville’s first hundred years, which began actually six years into H.J. Long’s presidency, will now become our focus.