Extension Office Move, 1952

By Frank Jeter, Extension Editor, in the October 1952 issue of Extension Farm-News, published by the Agricultural Extension Service, State College of Agriculture and Engineering, Raleigh

After years of laboring in various dingy basements here and there over the State College campus, the Department of Publications is at long last to be allowed a glimpse of sunlight in a few above ground offices where molds and dampness are brushed away by the free circulation of fresh air. Word comes that the Department shall have a few offices on the first floor of Ricks Hall.

Don’t get us wrong…we have been happy where we were. In fact, those who will be moved upstairs would prefer to stay together as they are, but progress must not be stayed. Not that our meager progress in any way compares to the plush new buildings constructed for our Agronomy, Poultry, Horticulture and Forestry Department. We do understand, however, that the old offices we are to inherit are to be cleaned and perhaps the floors will be polished. We do not hope, for instance, to reach the happy situations we viewed on the trip of inspection through the Agronomy Building on the occasion of their open house. Nor would we aspire to the regal offices about which we hear so many vague rumors in the School of Engineering.

Printer’s ink, heavy paper and crank case grease cups do not permit of such elegance on our part. Nevertheless, the young ladies who toil daily in the Department of Publications are intrigued to know that they may not perhaps in the future have to climb three stories to the nearest rest room, or that the envelopes which they use will not have to be pried open for each mailing because of the damp rooms in which they of necessity have been stored.

Dr. Bill Colwell and his staff held a successful open house in the new Agronomy Building and we share with him and his associates a great pride in the fact that this hall has been named for the late Charles Burgess Williams, for so many years the head of the Agronomy Department and one-time Dean of the School of Agriculture and Director of its Experiment Station.

Naming the walnut-paneled seminar room for Mrs. Katherine McKimmon is a deserved honor and those of us who have worked with Mrs. McKimmon are delighted that her name will be associated with the Department of Agronomy in such an appropriate fashion during the years to come.