Viking_Yearbook_47

The staff of this first issue of the VIKING affec­ tionately dedicates it to Dr. Stephen E. Epler, organizer and director of the Vanport Extension Center. None of us have been here long. None of us will take our degree here, but on all of us Dr. Epler has made more of an impression than many a university president does in four years. Ask the average old grad of the average institution, and he will tell you that the "prexy" of his Alma Mater was merely a degree fes­ tooned name in the catalogue, stock copy for inter­ viewers when visiting dignitaries gathered, or an august presence who emerged from behind his sec­ retarial barricades only to drape a hood over the stu­ dent's shoulders upon his departure. But everyone of us who has tarried even a term at VanPOrt will carry away with him a vivid, personal memory of a tall, erect, quiet, friendly, dignified man in a dark suit who was ever ready to listen with grave attention or a shy, kindly smile to our problems, however trivial, and whose one driving interest was the solution of those problems-academic, occupational and emotional­ that beset the postwar seeker after higher education. To the students many a president and dean is the man nobody knows. Dr. Epler is the man everybody on the campus-students and faculty alike-knows, re~ spects and admires. We salute him-a new breed of administrator that has created a new kind of schoo!.