The University Committee on Long Range Planning was formed in 1958 under President A. Hollis Edens. The function according to a letter approving the committee was to give appropriate consideration to matters of educational programming and policy where institutional planning and advancement are concerned. The Committee at first dealt with issues dealing with academic life, faculty development, and the development of the quality of students and intellectual life through admissions and enrollment. During the Committee's initial academic year it authorized eleven subcommittees which dealt with the Graduate School, Social Sciences, Duke Press, Research Libraries, Science and Mathematics, Religion, Undergraduate Colleges, the University Arts Center, the Institute of Contemporary Literature, Foreign Student Programs, and the Humanities. The committee issued its first report, Planning and Development at Duke University, in June of 1959.
The Committee's first chairman was Paul M. Gross, the Vice President for Education and Dean of the University. However, on March 23, 1960 in the wake of an administrative crisis known as the Gross-Edens Affair the Board of Trustees stripped Dr. Gross of his committee chairmanship and other administrative posts. Vice-Chairman Marcus Hobbs was named to succeed him, but Hobbs tendered his resignation on March 28, 1960. Hobbs was in turn succeeded by Joseph E. Markee, another member of the committee. These events brought the future of the planning process into question. The committee informed the University's faculty and staff that it was in complete and total disagreement with the action taken by the Board of Trustees at its meeting on March 23, 1960 in removing Dr. Paul M. Gross as a member and the Chairman of the Long Range Planning Committee. In its second Progress Report, (May, 1960) the committee stated that they felt it best to suspend activities until such time as it receive[d] from the Board of Trustees and from the President of the University a satisfactory expression of their approval of the planning operation as it has been carried on (page 73). If approval was given, the committee recommended that the University extend the committee's charge until June 1961 and provide a budget to fund it through that period.
This was done; the committee's third progress report, Duke University in the Decade Ahead, was issued in June 1961. It dealt with enrollment projections, personnel and facility requirements, and financial projections. The committee concluded that systematic planning was essential and that its function should be institutionalized so as to achieve continuity and wide participation throughout the University (pages 53-54). In 1962, the University Committee on Long Range Planning was reconstituted as the University Planning Committee and assumed a stronger role in the University.
From the guide to the University Committee on Long Range Planning Records, ., 1958 - 1962, (University Archives, Duke University)
