John J. Tigert

John J. Tigert
Born	(1882-02-11)February 11, 1882 Nashville, Tennessee
Died	January 21, 1965(1965-01-21) (aged 82) Gainesville, Florida
Education	B.A., Vanderbilt University, 1904 M.A., University of Oxford, 1907
Occupation(s)	University Professor University President Athletics Coach Political Appointee
Spouse	Edith Jackson Bristol Tigert

John James Tigert, IV (February 11, 1882 – January 21, 1965) was an American university professor, administrator and political appointee. Tigert was the U.S. Commissioner of Education from 1921 to 1928, and the third president of the University of Florida located in Gainesville, Florida, serving from 1928 to 1947.

Tigert was born in Nashville, Tennessee, in 1882,^[1] the son of a Methodist Episcopal minister, John James Tigert, III, and his wife, Amelia McTyeire Tigert.^[2] Tigert received his primary education in the public schools of Kansas City, Missouri, and Nashville, and earned his diploma, with honors, from the Webb School in Bell Buckle, Tennessee.^[3] He was admitted to Vanderbilt University in Nashville, where he was a member of Phi Delta Theta fraternity (Tennessee Alpha Chapter) and a standout athlete in baseball, basketball, football and track.^[3] As as senior, he was honored as an All-Southern football halfback.^[4] Tigert graduated from Vanderbilt with a bachelor of arts degree in 1904; he was selected for Phi Beta Kappa, and was later chosen as a Rhodes Scholar, the first from the state of Tennessee.^[4] While at Oxford University, he completed his master of arts degree at Pembroke College in 1907,^[3] and he continued to participate in competitive university athletics, including cricket, rowing and tennis.^[5]

After returning to the United States, Tigert taught at the Methodist-affiliated Wesleyan Central College in Fayette, Missouri,^[6] and, at the age of twenty-seven, he was appointed president of Kentucky Wesleyan College in Owensboro, Kentucky. That same year, he married the former Edith Jackson Bristol.^[7] He later received an appointment as a professor of psychology and philosophy at the University of Kentucky in Lexington. While a professor at Kentucky, Tigert also served as the athletic director from 1913 to 1917, the basketball coach in 1913,^[8] and the football coach from 1915 to 1916.^[9]

President Warren G. Harding appointed Tigert as the U.S. Commissioner of Education in 1921, and he served for seven years during the administrations of Harding and Calvin Coolidge. As commissioner, he was an energetic advocate of education reform and greater educational opportunities for all classes of Americans, and he traveled widely and spoke often to virtually any group interested in education.^[10] In particular, he took an interest in rural education, and advocated innovative ways to impart public education to a wider audience, including the use of radio.^[11] During his time in Washington, he also served a term as the national president of Phi Delta Theta Fraternity.^[12]

The Florida Board of Control selected Tigert as the third president of the University of Florida in 1928.^[1] He assumed leadership of the university during an extended period of economic crisis in the state of Florida.^[13] When the Great Depression began with the Wall Street crash in 1929, Florida was already suffering from the after-effects of the 1920s land boom and bust, as well the devastating aftermath of two major hurricanes in 1926 and 1928.^[13]

The common thread of the nineteen years of Tigert's administration was doing more with less.^[13] Faculty salary cuts were common; Tigert himself never drew his full authorized annual salary of $10,000.^[13] Among Tigert's many significant reforms, he decentralized the university budget to the level of the individual academic colleges, allowing them to set their own spending priorities.^[14] The University Council, composed of the president, the registrar and the college deans, retained final approval authority.^[14]

Tigert also established the faculty senate, the Institute of Inter-American Affairs and the Bureau of Economic and Business Research.

One of his most influential reforms as president was the creation of the new University College in 1935.^[15] The college was modeled on the general education college at the University of Chicago, and administered the freshman and sophomore liberal arts education of undergraduates before they were accepted to the university schools or colleges that administered their majors.^[15] The college's stated purpose was to "stimulate intellectual curiosity" and "encourage independent work," with new distribution requirements in biology, English language and literature, the humanities, logic, mathematics, physical sciences and social sciences, and thereby counter the growing trend toward "trade school" education.^[15][16]

As a former university athlete and coach, Tigert took a particular interest in athletics-related policy issues while he was president.^[17] He was responsible for the construction of the university's first and only permanent football stadium, Florida Field, in 1930.^[18] He borrowed $10,000 to begin construction of the stadium, and then raised $118,000 to pay the construction costs of the 22,800-seat facility.^[18] Tigert was also instrumental in the organization of the Southeastern Conference (SEC), which the University of Florida joined as one of the thirteen founding institutions in December 1932.^[17] Tigert subsequently served four separate terms as SEC president (1934–1936, 1945–1947).^[13] As a key leader within the SEC, he worked to impose a uniform set of rules and standards for academic eligibility for SEC athletes.^[17] Appalled by the under-the-table payments to college athletes that were prevalent at the time, he advocated the grant of scholarships to athletes which would become the grant-in-aid of other university athletic programs and as mandated by the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) in the years to follow.^[19]

Like his predecessor, Albert A. Murphree, Tigert was elected president of the National Association of State Universities, serving from 1939 to 1940.^[20]

Following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, students began to withdraw from school in large numbers to enlist in the U.S. military.^[21] The financial impact on the university had the potential to be devastating, but Tigert navigated the war years by making the university campus, dormitories and class rooms available for the training of Army Air Force flight crews.^[21] Tigert kept the lights on, and the bills paid. Veterans began to return to school with support from the GI Bill, and by the fall term of 1946, over seventy percent of University of Florida students were returning World War II veterans.^[22] Contributing to the shortage of facility space, the Florida Legislature reinstituted co-education in 1947.^[23] The university suddenly had more students than its available housing and classroom space could serve.^[24]

Tigert resigned as university president in 1947.^[23] Afterward, he worked as an educational consultant to the government of India as a member of the Indian Higher Education Commission, and taught philosophy at the University of Miami until 1959.^[23]

Tigert served as president of the University of Florida for nineteen years, longer than any of the other ten presidents of the university.^[25] During his term, the university awarded its first doctoral degrees in 1934, a chapter of Phi Beta Kappa was installed in 1938, and the student enrollment grew from approximately 2,162 in 1928 to over 7,500 in 1947.^[26] As university president, he was responsible for significant and lasting academic, athletic and administrative reforms.^[27]

In recognition of Tigert's service as its president through depression and war, the University of Florida awarded him an honorary Doctor of Letters degree during its 1953 centennial celebration,^[25][28] and renamed its main administrative building, Tigert Hall, for him in 1960.^[29] Tigert died in Gainesville, Florida on January 21, 1965.^[29]

As a fitting final tribute to an education administrator and reformer who also fervently supported college athletics, Tigert was elected to the College Football Hall of Fame in 1970.^[4]

• Florida Gators
• Gainesville, Florida
• History of the University of Florida
• Kentucky Wildcats
• List of Phi Delta Theta members
• List of Rhodes Scholars
• University of Florida
• University of Kentucky
• Vanderbilt Commodores football

• Pleasants, Julian M., Gator Tales: An Oral History of the University of Florida, University of Florida, Gainesvile, Florida (2006). ISBN 0-8130-3054-4.
• Proctor, Samuel, & Wright Langley, Gator History: A Pictorial History of the University of Florida, South Star Publishing Company, Gainesville, Florida (1986). ISBN 0-938637-00-2.
• Van Ness, Carl, & Kevin McCarthy, Honoring the Past, Shaping the Future: The University of Florida, 1853–2003, University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida (2003).

• Photos of John J. Tigert and Tigert Hall from the University of Florida Digital Collections.
• University of Florida - Official website of the University of Florida.

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