1947: Dean F.M. Quance retires, Quance Lectureship established

In 1947, the founding dean of the College of Education, Frank M. Quance, retired.  As dean since 1928, he helped develop the College's curriculum from a one-year postgraduate course into a four-year degree program. During his career, Quance gained a reputation as a leading Canadian educator, and was particularly well known for developing the first spellers based on Canadian norms of spelling ability.  Upon retirement, Quance offered to donate “sufficient funds for the establishment at the University of Saskatchewan of ‘A Lectureship in Canadian Education’. ... I am asking that my gift to the University and to Canadian Education take this form not only because this University and Departments of Education in Canada have been generous to me, but because I realize that there is a lack in Canada of a body of authoritative literature in the field of publicly administered education.  I cherish the hope that the lectureship may stimulate further interest in and study of, these phases of our Canadian educational system.”  Quance suggested a number of topics: “The Administrative Structure of Canadian Education; The Dominant Philosophy of Canadian Secondary Schools; Differentiating Characteristics of French-Canadian Education in Quebec; and, if an American educator should be chosen for a lecture, a subject such as A Comparative Study of the Educational Development in the Great Plains Region of the United States and of Canada.”¹

The first series of lectures was delivered in 1949, and it initially was to be a five-year project.  Quance subsequently extended the funding until 1960, at which point the W.J. Gage Company (which published the lectures) offered to take over financial support.  By 1971, with limited sales of the lectures and “Canadian publishers [having] entered a very difficult period,”² the financing of the lectures was in jeopardy.  The last lecture was given in 1975.  In 1974, however, another College of Education lecture series had begun: the Laycock Lecture Series, endowed by the late Samuel Laycock, another former dean of Education.  In October 1984, as part of the university’s 75^th anniversary celebrations, the College of Education sponsored the “Quance Revisited Lecture Series.”³

Related Collections

F.M. Quance fonds, MG 25.
A.F. Deverell fonds, MG 35

Images

1947a: F.M. Quance. Photograph Collection, A-3216.

Sources

Faculty Biographies Collection, F.M. Quance.
1. President’s Office fonds, RG 2001, Series III, file B161.
2. President’s Office fonds, RG 2001, Series IV, file B244.
3. College of Education Dean’s Office fonds, RG 2078, file 19-9.