FRANK WARREN GARRAN
A Tribute to Thayer School Dean Who Died Sept. 18
THE DEATH ON SEPTEMBER 18, 1945 of Frank Warren Garran, Dean of the Thayer School of Engineering, was a bereavement not only to the Thayer School but to the College and the Hanover community as well. His passing was more than the loss of a valuable servant of the College; for all who knew him it constituted a deep, personal loss.
Frank Garran was born in Boston on Tune 17, 1894. He studied civil engineering at Norwich University, receiving his degree in 1917. After graduation, he served for two years as a first lieutenant in the Army Engineer Corps, seeing action in both France and Germany. After his discharge from the Army, he took a temporary position as headmaster at Atkinson Academy for one year, and then returned to his alma mater as an Assistant Professor of Civil Engineering. He later attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where he received his master's degree in 1924. For the following five years, he continued in engineering teaching at the University of Arizona and at the College of Charleston. He came to Dartmouth in 1929 as Assistant Professor of Civil Engineering and since 1933 had been Professor and Dean of the Thayer School.
He was a member of Theta Chi fraternity, of Gamma Alpha, and of the Dartmouth Scientific Association of which he was at one time president. He was also a member of the American Society of Civil Engineers and of the Society for the Promotion of Engineering Education. He held several offices in the latter organization, having been at one time chairman of the New England Section and, at the time of his death, delegate of this section to the national nominating committee.
Although not himself a graduate of a liberal arts college, Dean Garran was a firm believer in a broad cultural background for every man no matter what his business or profession. In fact, it was this conviction in the advantage of a liberal education for the professional man which first attracted him to Dartmouth and the Thayer School. He felt that engineering should be on the same professional level as medicine and law and he recognized that a lack of broad educational background had always handicapped engineers in achieving true professional status. His appointment at Thayer School, therefore, gave him an opportunity to teach engineering in an environment consistent with his educational beliefs and to students who possessed the education and maturity to appreciate the values of the profession which they wished to enter.
Throughout his professional career, Frank Garran was devoted to the cause of promoting the highest professional ideals m engineering education throughout the country. He regularly attended sectional and national meetings of the Society for the Promotion of Engineering Education, where his ruddy countenance, his quick and friendly smile, and his unassuming camaraderie made him a familiar and loved figure.
Professor Garran was best known to recent alumni of the School in his capacity as teacher. His ideals of teaching were as high as his ideals of engineering education. Possessing the natural characteristics with which the best teachers must be endowed, he was a keen and persistent student of pedagogy. He required high standards of accomplishment of his students, but these high standards were cheerfully and eagerly met, not as a chore but in fulfillment of the desire for learning which his own enthusiasm instilled in them. The great personal popularity which he enjoyed from his students was not the popularity of an easy mark but of a teacher who could and did make them work by the inspiration of his own enthusiasm for the subject matter studied and his own thirst for knowledge and truth.
In his twelve years as head of the Thayer School, Dean Garran accomplished more for the advancement of the School in the field of engineering education than had been accomplished in any similar period during its history. In fact, owing to his modesty and self-effacing attitude, his personal responsibility for the developments which were accomplished under his direction has never been fully realized. In statistical terms, the faculty increased from three members in 1933 to seven in 1942 and, owing to intensified and extended service in both the engineering and the general college Navy program during the war, to eleven in 1945. Enrollment increased from sixteen, in 1933 to fifty-five in 1942 and sixty-five full-time students in 1945- The improvement in building accommodations from Bissell Hall to Cummings Memorial has been a vital factor in making possible the greatly increased service which the School has been able to render the College in recent years. Expanding the scope of the engineering program to be available to Dartmouth students on their own campus by the addition of electrical and mechanical engineering and, in combination with the Tuck School, of the Tuck-Thayer engineering and business administration curriculum constituted one of Dean Garran's major contributions to the School.
In addition to the internal activities of the School, other programs of benefit to the community and to the country as a whole were carried out under Dean Garran's direction. Outstanding among these were the Civilian Pilot Training Program initiated in the fall of 1940 and the courses offered to war workers under the Engineering, Science, Management War Training program started in 1941 and extending through 1944.
Outstanding as the physical accomplishments were, however, Frank Garran will be remembered not so much for what he did as for how he did it. The esprit de corps which he engendered in the Thayer School staff was perhaps the most outstanding evidence of his great administrative ability. A tremendously hard worker himself, he inspired those who worked with him to achieve by equal diligence and perseverance results which they otherwise would have hesitated to undertake. Between him and his staff there was always a friendly and informal relationship which stimulated free and open discussion and cooperative endeavor. He was a leader without being a driver. He was a co-worker, a colleague, never "the boss." As an administrator, he was fearless and positive and never allowed formalities or red tape to postpone the initiation of action which he believed to be ultimately desirable. If there were several methods whereby an end could be attained, he invariably chose the most straightforward and direct approach.
His most absorbing avocation was reading, and much of his time which was not devoted to the Thayer School was spent with his books. He read avidly all the books which he could find on modern thought and philosophy, education, and sociology. He was particularly fond also of historical novels and stories of the sea. He was almost equally devoted to music and spent many contented hours with the symphony and the opera on his radio or phonograph. He was a highly informed student of current events and loved to draw his friends and acquaintances into debates on controversial topics of the day.
Paraphrasing Sir Francis Bacon's self-analysis in The Interpretation of Nature andthe Kingdom of Man, "He possessed .... a power of suspending judgment with patience, of meditating with pleasure, of dissenting with caution, of correcting false impressions with readiness He had no hankering after novelty and no blind admiration for antiquity. Imposture in every shape he utterly detested For all these reasons his nature had as it were a kind of kinship and connection with truth."
But more even than this, Frank Garran was a genuine person and a true friend.
, PROFESSOR OF CIVIL ENGINEERING
DEAN FRANK W. GARRAN
