Papers of Charles A. Lory

Charles A. Lory was a professor of electrical engineering and the fifth president of Colorado Agricultural College (now Colorado State University). During his almost 40 years as president, Lory oversaw the expansion of campus, creation of new departments such as entomology, forestry, horticulture, and veterinary pathology, and created a uniform budget system for the college.

Charles Alfred Lory was born in Sardis, Ohio on September 25, 1872, to Chris and Ida (Stauffer) Lory. The family moved to Colorado in 1888 and settled on a farm near Windsor. Unlike the family farm in Ohio, the property in Windsor was in a semi-arid area, and short of water. With their neighbors, the Lory family worked to construct an irrigation ditch to bring water to the land. Charles Lory completed much of the work on the ditch, and after, he continued to work in irrigation engineering. In 1893 he was appointed as superintendent of the Hillsboro Canal which brought water to the Johnstown area east of Loveland, and in 1894 did similar work for the Big Cut Lateral and Reservoir Company. Even though he developed an extensive agricultural and irrigation background, Lory wished to become a teacher, and enrolled at the Colorado State Normal School (now University of Northern Colorado) in Greeley in 1895, graduating with a bachelor of pedagogy in 1898. To pay for his studies, Lory continued to work as a 'ditch rider.'

To gain a practical background in the sciences, Lory continued his education at the University of Colorado, studying mathematics, physics, and electrical engineering, and earning his B.S. in 1901 and M.S. in 1902. After graduating in 1902, Lory went to Cripple Creek, Colorado, and spent two years as principal of the local high school. He married Carrie Louise Richards on June 8, 1904, and had three children, Marion, Earl, and Anna, and one foster son, Arthur Moinat.

In 1904 he returned to the University of Colorado as an acting professor of physics and in 1905 he came to the Colorado Agricultural College (now Colorado State University) as professor of physics. He became professor of electrical engineering in 1907, and in 1909 was appointed as the fifth president of the Colorado Agricultural College.

Lory believed that the purpose of the state-supported land-grant institution was to offer a balanced curriculum in the professional programs, such as agriculture, engineering, veterinary medicine, and home economics, with the liberal arts serving a subordinate role in students' education. Unlike his predecessors, Lory's background was not in religion, but he still felt there was a role in higher education to develop students' moral values, and his strong support of in loco parentis was an example of this philosophy.

During the early days of Lory's tenure as president, changes were made in the administrative arrangement of the college. As the college continued to grow, it was no longer possible to gather input from the entire faculty, as well as the president, before decisions could be made. Various standing faculty committees had been established over time to give feedback, but because of difficulty in scheduling regular meetings these committees disbanded, and a small Executive Committee of the State Board of Agriculture (now the Board of Governors) took their place. These changes allowed for this single committee along with the president's office to make the majority of the policy decisions that effected the business matters of the college. Over time, this arrangement left the faculty with little say on matters such as salary, student groups, and the hiring, responsibilities, and retention of new junior faculty.

One of Lory's goals was for C.A.C. to serve all of Colorado. Since the college's reputation had suffered under the previous administration, Lory took many steps to increase access to campus and traveled extensively around the state to bring his message directly to citizens and organizations. He assisted in creating the Colorado Farmers Congress, a group of leading agriculturalists, which met yearly on the Fort Collins campus for almost 25 years and he routinely invited state legislators to visit the campus. He also included undergraduate students and faculty on his traveling demonstration trains, allowing them to give firsthand accounts of courses of study and campus activities to future students.

To create a more balanced funding system and to try to eliminate the college's debt, Lory established a uniform budget system, requiring departments to create and submit annual budgets and reports of expenditures. This led to the ability to break down how much it would cost to educate a student in a particular field of study. Lory's approach attracted national attention and was positively viewed by the state legislature, who approved the majority of funding for the college. With an increase in funding for new buildings by the legislature in 1917 and Lory's uniformed budget system, by 1919 the college was no longer in debt.

During Lory's tenure, agriculture and veterinary medicine began to become more focused on individual disciplines, with new departments being established and additional faculty being hired in such areas as entomology, forestry, horticulture, and veterinary pathology. Many of these staff held dual state appointments and worked closely with government agencies to help educate leaders in their respective fields.

Significant additions to the college during Lory's presidency include the School of Agriculture (1909), the Fort Lewis School (1911), Pingree Park (1912), the summer session (1913), the Extension Service (1914), a coordinated campus master plan for adding buildings around the oval (1918), and the construction of the first student center (1935). The current student center, originally opened in 1962, is named in honor of Lory.

By 1933, dissatisfaction on how the college was being run led to changes to eliminate the almost total control by the Executive Committee. Membership on the committee was increased from three to five, monthly meetings were eliminated, and the entire State Board of Agriculture was more involved in decisions regarding the college. The overall organization of the college was also drastically altered with the establishment of five major divisions, each being under the direction of a dean. Some administrative decisions that had been the purview of the president for so many years were now assigned to the deans, establishing a wider distribution of power, and greater debate on college matters. These changes culminated in the forced retirement and demotion of some long-term faculty in the early part of 1938. Many of these faculty members had been with the college for most or all of Lory's tenure, and this action was seen as a backlash to Lory's unchanging management style. In April 1938, he notified the Board that he wished to retire upon reaching the age of 68. Charles Lory officially retired as president emeritus on September 25, 1940.

Lory was involved with many organizations outside of the college, most of which focused on water use, agriculture, and higher education, including membership and leadership positions in the Masons, the Fort Collins Rotary Club, the National Resources Planning Board, the Association of Western Agricultural Colleges, the Association of Land Grant Colleges and Universities, the Association of Colorado State Institutions of Higher Education, the Colorado Education Association, the Colorado-Big Thompson Project, the Northern Colorado Water Conserancy District, the State Council of Defense, the President's Association, and head of the commission that led to the Reclamation Project Act of 1939. Charles A. Lory died on December 30, 1969.