Scrounging through the economics department archival records at the University of Chicago, I came across the 1925 case of a geography graduate student who petitioned to waive the economics examination required for his degree based upon his extensive undergraduate coursework in economics and commerce at Indiana University. The file includes a hand-written list of the courses and titles of the texts/readings used at Indiana University (1919-22). The student, Clifford M. Zierer went on to teach in the UCLA Department of Geography for forty years (see In Memoriam, below).
I find this list to be an interesting artifact for a variety of reasons: it helps to document what the key texts were in teaching economics at a public university right after WWI; Zierer enrolled as an undergraduate at Indiana University just as the School of Commerce and Finance was established; journalism and advertising can be seen to have been born-together-at-the-hip. I was also struck at just how much business and economics course work Zierer brought with him before entering graduate school in geography.
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The University of Chicago
Department of Political Economy
March 14, 1925
Mr. C. W. Wright
Faculty Exchange
I failed to get the accompanying material from Mr. C. M. Zierer before the departmental meeting on Thursday. Will you raise it next Thursday? The essential facts are these:
- The Department of Geography now requests every candidate for the doctorate to meet certain qualifications in the field of Economics. The accompanying carbon of a letter to Mr. J. W. Coulter shows what these qualifications are and also shows a special suggestion for meeting them in the case of Mr. Coulter.
- Sometime since, a Mr. Appleton presented himself to me, showing credentials covering a wide range of work in Economics at the London School of Economics. At that particular time there was a good deal of work ahead of the Department on various matters and I conducted a little quiz of my own orally. It was such a clear case that I did not hesitate to certify to Mr. Barrows that Mr. Appleton was qualified in the field of Economics.
- This may or may not have set a bad precedent. Certainly Mr. Zierer now points out that he took his Bachelor’s degree at the University of Indiana, graduated with distinction, and received the Phi Beta Kappa. He majored in Economics. His dissertation was the “Industrial Study of Scranton, Pennsylvania.”
Zierer would be glad to be excused from a written examination, but I think I made it clear to him that there is no precedent in the matter and that it rested entirely with the Department. - In view of the rather wide range of work that he has had in Economics (for which he showed sufficient credentials from the University of Indiana) I think it would be reasonable to excuse him, maybe with an oral quiz added to protect us.
Yours very sincerely,
[signed]
L C Marshall
Handwritten note: Voted to excuse him from exam if agreeable to Barrows. Barrows had no objections. Notified he was excused Apr.3, 1925. C.W.W.
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Handwritten List of Economics/Commerce Courses
Taken by Clifford M. Zierer at Indiana University
[corrections/additions in square brackets]
| Economics 1
|
[E1. Political Economy]
Principles of Economics by F. W. Taussig. |
| Journalism 2 | Advertising.
Principles of Adv., D. Starch |
| Economics 3 | Public Finance [3a] & Taxation [3b. Special Tax Problems]:
[Introduction to] Public Finance by Carl Plehn |
| Economics 16 | Statistics & Graphics [Introduction to Statistics]:
[Horace] Secrist: [An Introduction to] Statistical Methods. |
| Economics 7a | Principles of Sociology [(a) Social forces] ([Instructor] Weatherly)
[William Graham] Sumner; |
| Economics 6a | Money [(6a)]] & Banking [(6b)]]
Horace White; Moulton; |
| Economics 5 | Advanced Political Economy. [Advanced Economics]
Marshall |
| Commerce 11 | Business Finance
W. H. Lough [Business Finance, A Practical Study of Financial Management in Private Business Concerns (1917)]. |
| Commerce 14 | [Principles of] Salesmanship
Norval [A.] Hawkins [The Selling Process, A Handbook of Salesmanship Principles] |
| Commerce 22 [sic, “23” is correct] | Foreign Trade
[Howard Carson] Kidd [Kidd on Foreign Trade]; |
| Economics 8 | Seminar [Seminary in Economics and Sociology] |
| Commerce 13 | Business Organization and Management
D. S. Kimball [Exter S. Kimball, Principles of Industrial Organization (1913)]; |
| Commerce 15 | Railroad [sic, “Railway”] Transportation
Johnson and Van Metre, Principles of Railroad Transportation; |
| Economics 11 | History of the Growth of Economic Thought [sic, only “Growth of Economic Thought”]:
Haney [Lewis H. Haney. History of Economic Thought]. |
| Commerce 23 [sic, 22 is the correct course number] | Marketing:
C. S. [Carson Samuel] Duncan [Marketing, its problems and methods] |
| Commerce 12 | [Principles of] Investments
Hough. |
Source: University of Chicago Archives. Department of Economics Records. Box 38, Folder 5.
Bracketed additions/corrections by Irwin Collier.
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Clifford M. Zierer
1898-1976
Professor Emeritus
Clifford M. Zierer was born in Batesville, Indiana on July 4, 1898, and attended local schools through high school. For three years, following graduation, he taught in Indiana public schools and spent his summers attending different colleges to improve his teaching background. In 1919 he enrolled at Indiana University and completed an A.B. in economics in 1922. Transferring to geology, he earned an M.A. at Indiana in 1923 and, transferring again, he earned a Ph.D. in geography at the University of Chicago in 1925. Work in three disciplines provided a broad base for his later teaching and research in mineral industries, agricultural land use, and urban geography. Clifford Zierer and Milla Martin, a student at Indiana University, married in June 1925 and in the fall of 1925 the couple came to Los Angeles, where Clifford entered upon his lifetime career of teaching in the UCLA Department of Geography, a career that spanned forty years until his retirement in 1965.
Recent generations of faculty and students cannot appreciate the labors of the developmental building of a university, work that occupied those faculty members whose service began on the Vermont Avenue campus. Years were spent on committees dealing with budgets, buildings, programs, curricula, courses, and course structures. Beyond such service, Zierer not only taught a wide range of courses but he also initiated many of the courses that became standard elements in the departmental program. He spent years with the Library Committee to enlarge the facilities and holdings of the University Library. Clifford and Milla Zierer were both quiet, modest, and soft-spoken members of a small university community that laid the groundwork for the growth of the University, and both participated in their own quiet ways toward that growth. Clifford Zierer was instrumental in developing the departmental program as graduate work was added and, as chairman from 1942 to 1949, he largely structured the expansion of the doctoral program rounding out the departmental offering. A Phi Beta Kappa upon earning his A.B. at Indiana, Clifford also became a member of Sigma Xi at Indiana in 1923, and at UCLA he spent years working with both groups, including a term as president of each.
Zierer’s early years in southern California were spent studying aspects of changing land use and urban expansion. A wide range of research papers broadened into a book, California and the Southwest, of which he was the organizer, editor, and contributor of several chapters. During the middle 1930s he also undertook field studies on several themes in Australia, which resulted in professional papers and in the first course on the geography of Australia to be taught in any American university. In his own quiet way, he was something of an innovator and a pioneer.
Clifford never aspired to immense popularity as an undergraduate lecturer, and his insistence upon quality scholarship often caused the casual enrollee to shun his classes; but there were rewards of insight for those who persevered. For years his seminar students, meeting in the attic library-study-recreation room of his Brentwood home, were treated to provocative intellectual experiences. Students and associates were often surprised at the breadth of his knowledge, the keenness of his mind, and the private enthusiasm for his subject.
Milla Zierer passed away in 1951; thereafter Clifford slowly withdrew from his former active participation in broad University affairs and handed over to newcomers the concerns that had so long engaged him. The large Brentwood home was given up for a smaller house not far away, and Zierer’s last years were spent quietly. He died on October 6, 1976, survived by two sons, Robert and Paul.
Henry J. Bruman J.E. Spencer
Source: In Memoriam, September 1978, posted in University of California, Calisphere
Image Source: Clifford M. Zierer’s Indiana University Yearbook picture, The Arbutus 1922, p. 105.