1895

President Harris

John Howard Harris was born in Indiana County, Pennsylvania, in 1847. After service in the American Civil War, he entered the University at Lewisburg in 1865 and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1869. After graduation, he founded and served as the principal of the Keystone Academy in Factoryville, Pennsylvania. In 1872, he was ordained as a Baptist minister and he was a Baptist pastor in Factoryville from 1880 to 1889, when he was inaugurated as President of Bucknell University. He had received the honorary Ph.D. from Lafayette College in 1883.

Harris was a staunch supporter of co-education and a true believer in Christian education. One of his major goals was to increase the student body at the university. He cultivated relationships with Baptist academies in New Jersey and Pennsylvania in order to recruit students. When Harris became President in 1889, ten professors taught seventy-four students in the College; fifteen faculty members taught seventy-nine boys in the Academy; and, fifteen faculty members taught seventy-seven women in the Institute. In 1895, seventeen professors taught one hundred and seventy-one students in the College; seven faculty members taught eight-five boys in the Academy; and, sixteen faculty members taught ninety-eight women in the Institute. Additional students were enrolled in music, painting and elocution classes.

In the fall of 1893, President Harris taught a lecture course on the history of education to juniors in the College, and in 1894 he taught an honor's course in philosophy of education. President Harris was an advocate of the type of higher education espoused by Andrew D. White at Cornell University and Charles W. Eliot at Harvard. Harris introduced many changes during his thirty-year tenure as President.

In 1895, President Harris was forty-eight years of age.

 President Harris in 1915