A Brief History Of The Chemistry Department

1926-1932

The Birth of the University

On March 18, 1926, with the charter almost a year old, the regents appointed Bowman Foster Ashe as executive secretary with instructions "to do whatever was necessary to get the University ready for opening in October." Exactly seven months later classes began. On November 3, 1926, Ashe became the first president of the University of Miami.

Ashe, a native of Scottsdale, Pennsylvania, and a graduate of the University of Pittsburgh, had close ties to Pittsburgh and its university. In creating the academic and administrative structure of the new university, he relied on advice and assistance from friends and associates in and near Pittsburgh. We'll see this Pittsburgh-connection repeatedly influencing the early days of both the new university and its chemistry department.

(Of the 18 faculty listed in the university's first bulletin, six had spent time at the University of Pittsburgh and a seventh had held a position at a financial institution in the city. One of the six, Jay F. W. Pearson, Professor of Zoology, had received his B.S. and M.S. from the University. In a continuation of the Pittsburgh-connection, Pearson would become the University of Miami's second president in January, 1953, a month after Ashe's death.)

Bowman Foster Ashe at the Anastasia Building, 1938

In 1926 both the chemistry department and the university as a whole came to life in the Anastasia Building, a large, three-story, triangular building enclosing a substantial internal courtyard. It was located at the intersection of Anastasia and University Avenues, just west of Le June Road. (The Coral Gables War Memorial Youth Center now occupies the site.) But that wasn't how it had been planned.

As the idea of a new university took shape in the mid-1920's, the board of regents held a large plot of land at the western boundary of Coral Gables, where the University of Miami now stands. The board had a vision of a substantial university at this site, consisting of 20 large buildings and many smaller ones, and they had promises of many millions of dollars to build them. But financial weakness generated by a fragile land-speculation bubble and the disastrous hurricane of September 17/18, 1926, eroded the promises and the plans. Construction started, but slowed to a halt as money ran out. As the time to start classes approached there was no place to hold them and little money to sustain them. Fortunately, a partly built hotel in Coral Gables, the Anastasia Hotel, became available to the regents. They accepted the offer of the unfinished structure as a temporary site and renamed it the Anastasia Building. The University of Miami had its first home.

The Anastasia Building

Late 1926 or early 1927. The lettering on the front states "Class of 1930"	Several years later
The interior courtyard	Early aerial view

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The Chemistry Department

By 1925 he had risen to the rank of professor at Grove City and headed the department. But in 1925, with his son suffering from osteomyelitis, he left Pennsylvania for the promise of a more pleasant and perhaps more healthful climate of Florida. He also developed an interest in the university being created in Miami. In search of a new career, he had professional recommendations sent from the Pittsburgh area to Bowman Ashe in Miami.

Impressed with Sieplein's credentials and with a visit from Sieplein for a personal interview, Ashe invited Sieplein to join the university as the first and only member of its chemistry faculty, at the rank of assistant professor. During his brief tenure at the University of Miami, Otto Sieplein remained the only chemist on the faculty. From 1926 to 1932 the Chemistry Department was Otto J. Sieplein.

Otto J. Sieplein

Although not among the first few appointed to the faculty, Sieplein was the first to arrive personally in Coral Gables to begin setting up his academic programs, classes and laboratories. By 1927 he had been promoted to associate professor; the following year he advanced to professor. The 1931 Ibis, the university's yearbook, has this to say about him:

Initially, Sieplein offered two sets of chemistry courses. For students who had taken chemistry in high school there was the Chemistry 1 and 2 sequence, General Inorganic Chemistry; for those with no chemistry background, Chemistry 3 and 4, Elementary Inorganic Chemistry. He also created a set of six lectures under the title, "Chemistry and Daily Life." Although this was offered as a non-credit course, students might obtain credit with the approval of various administrative units. And even from the beginning Sieplein recognized the importance of research with the promise of still another course,

The chemistry curriculum developed at a steady pace with the addition of:

1927-28, Chemistry 5 and 6 sequence, Organic Chemistry.

1928-29, Chemistry 7 and 8, Analytical Chemistry, which alternated with the organic chemistry sequence.

1930-31, Chemistry 9 and 10, Physical Chemistry. Still another course introduced this year, among a college-wide group offered in the late afternoons and Saturdays, was Modern Chemistry: "A course in the principles of chemistry as related to the applications of chemistry in the industries and the home."

1931-32, Chemistry 11 and 12, Calculations of Chemistry, which was not available for major or minor credit.

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Growing Pains of the Early Years

In his second UM CHEM newsletter, Schultz describes the ambiance of the Anastasia Building:

Except for its freshman classes and laboratories, the chemistry department (together with a few others) remained at the Anastasia Building until 1967, when it moved into the newly constructed Cox Science Center on the main campus.

The same economic conditions that kept the university in the Anastasia Building for so long also played a role in the dismissal of Otto Sieplein. As the financial condition of the university deteriorated in the early 1930's, affected by both local conditions and the national depression, faculty sensed a growing insecurity. On July 23, 1930 President Ashe wrote a letter to the faculty expressing his own unease about the future. In it he told the faculty: I do not wish to take the personal responsibility for the payment of your salaries in full next year . . . .

A feeling developed among many of the faculty that President Ashe was maintaining his own financial status at the expense of the university community. Believing that something must be done, Otto Sieplein and six other faculty filed a formal complaint against Ashe, containing a variety of charges. After examining the complaint, a board of five former regents found Ashe innocent. The seven complaining faculty soon received notice that their contracts would not be renewed and Otto J. Sieplein was forced out of the University of Miami.

But the financial distress continued. It soon became so severe that on December 6, 1932, the board of regents filed a voluntary petition of bankruptcy. It was resolved in 1934 with the reincorporation of the university under a new charter very much like the original.