Fall 2006

Happy 120th Anniversary, Wooster Magazine

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Archibald Alexander Taylor, the University of Wooster’s second president (1873-83) and dean of the post-graduate program, was passionate about the University’s graduate program. In October 1886, he launched the first issue of The Post-Graduate and Wooster Quarterly. The sober little magazine’s primary purpose was to publish graduate theses. An additional purpose was to communicate with alumni (whose paid subscriptions would, hopefully, sustain the magazine). Two years after its birth, the magazine boasted 300 readers, who subscribed for one dollar per year.

Two years later, Taylor asked Jonas O.Notestein ’73, a busy young professor of Greek and Latin, to take over as editor. Although Notestein would later write that he seriously considered turning down his former boss, he edited the magazine for the next 31 years. He was joined from the beginning by Elias Compton ’81, professor of Latin, math, and English.

In 1903, when the University gave up its post-graduate department and became a college, the magazine was renamed The Wooster Quarterly. Its primary purpose was to communicate with alumni.

The next turning point for the magazine came when the alumni office hired a permanent paid staff member, alumni secretary and magazine editor John D. McKee ’17. The Wooster Quarterly disappeared, and the first Wooster Alumni Bulletin appeared in October 1923. Publication changed from four issues to 10 a year. Except for a six-year interval, McKee edited the magazine for the next 41 years.

In 1967 the College’s new president, J. Garber Drushal, decided to put the magazine under the authority of the central administration’s new publications office, rather than the alumni office. The magazine makes no mention of the change.

Rod Williams ’48, who served as the first director of publications and edited the magazine from 1971-1985, remembers thinking that the transition was not unwelcome. “The alumni office not only published the magazine, they were also responsible for other publications, including the catalogue and directory,” said Williams in a recent interview. “Publications were a tangle and things were often late.When Pres. Drushal took over, he said, ‘We’ve got to straighten out this late business.’”

In the October 1967 issue, the magazine’s name was changed from the Wooster Alumni Bulletin to Wooster Alumni Magazine. The change occurred without editorial comment.

Professor of English Peter Havholm, editor from 1985-1995, marked the magazine’s 100th birthday in the Winter 1986 issue with its first color cover, a new look, and a new name. The words “Alumni Magazine” had become increasingly diminutive since they were introduced in 1967, and with this issue they disappeared altogether. The magazine was now simply Wooster.

The College published the magazine 10 months a year for more than 40 years. The number dropped to seven in the early ’ 70s, then to five in the late ’70s. By the mid-’80s, the magazine was back to where it began in 1886–a quarterly.

Editors