Robert Lincoln Slagle Biography


	This biography appears on pages 582-585 in "History of Dakota Territory" 
	by George W. Kingsbury, Vol. IV (1915) and was scanned, 
	OCRed and edited by Maurice Krueger, mkrueger@iw.net.

	This file may be freely copied by individuals and non-profit 
	organizations for their private use. 

	Any other use, including publication, storage in a retrieval 
	system, or transmission by electronic, mechanical, or other 
	means requires the written approval of the file's author.

	This file is part of the SDGENWEB Archives. If you arrived here inside
	a frame or from a link from somewhere else, our front door is at

	http://usgwarchives.org/sd/sdfiles.htm


				ROBERT LINCOLN SLAGLE. 

	South Dakota has every reason to be proud of her State University 
at Vermillion, as since its founding it has grown steadily and rapidly 
in excellence and in influence and has had much to do in developing the 
mind and spirit that must always keep pace with material progress if 
the commonwealth is in the end to occupy a place of honor in the world. 
It has been fortunate in its administrators as its presidents have from 
its establishment been men possessing the virility of character that is 
only associated with the west and also men who have combined fine 
intellectual training and broad culture in the best sense of that word 
with business and executive ability of a high order. 

	The present head of the institution, Robert Lincoln Slagle, was 
born in Hanover, York county, Pennsylvania. March 17, 1865, a son of 
William Augustus and Margaret Elizabeth (Stine) Slagle. After receiving 
a thorough elementary and secondary education he entered Lafayette 
College at Easton, Pennsylvania, and there took his undergraduate work 
receiving the degree of Bachelor of Arts in 1887. At the completion of 
a further course of study he was given the degree of Master of Arts in 
1890 by his alma mater and four years later Johns Hopkins University of 
Baltimore, Maryland, conferred upon him the degree of Doctor of 
Philosophy. For one year he was an analyst and food investigator in New 
York city, being an associate of Professor W. O. Atwater, the first 
pure food expert of the federal government. 

	Since 1895 Mr. Slagle has been a teacher and educational 
administrator. In that year he became professor of chemistry in the 
South Dakota State College and held that chair until 1897, when he 
became professor of chemistry in the South Dakota State School of 
Mines, and in 1899 was elected president of that institution. In 1906 
he returned to the South Dakota State College as chief executive and 
held that position until 1914. On the 1st of February, 1914, he was 
installed as president of the State University of South Dakota at 
Vermillion. All of the above named institutions are under the control 
of the same governing board. His ability to plan wisely, to direct 
efficiently the labors of others and secure the cooperation of the 
governing board, faculty and students has grown from year to year and 
as his responsibilities have increased his power as an executive has 
increased in like proportion. He makes a careful study not only of 
educational conditions, educational developments and the trend of 
educational movements throughout the country at large, but he also 
seeks to understand fully the conditions peculiar to South Dakota and 
the lines along which her greatest development will probably lie. Only 
by so doing can he so direct the State University that it shall prove 
of the greatest service to the people of the state and so be in truth a 
state university. The institution maintains a high standard of 
scholarship and at the same time all forms of student activity are 
encouraged, as it is believed that they in their proper place form an 
essential part of the best and most efficient college training. The 
University of South Dakota has already gained an honorable place among 
the state universities of the west and a continuance of the present 
wise policy of administration will without doubt gain it more prestige 
and influence in the future. 

	Dr. Slagle was married May 28, 1896, at St. Paul, Minnesota, to 
Miss Gertrude Anna Riemann, a daughter of Paul Riemann. Dr. Slagle is a 
communicant of the Protestant Episcopal church and does all in his 
power to further moral development and the application to life of the 
principles of Christianity. He is a member of the Sons of the American 
Revolution, a Fellow in the American Association for the Advancement of 
Science and a member of the Phi Beta Kappa. Fraternally he is a 
:Knights Templar Mason. In all that he does he manifests not only the 
aggressiveness and willingness to take the initiative that is 
characteristic of the American people, but also that patience and 
thoroughness which goes to the root of a matter even though to do so 
requires painstaking and laborious investigation, this latter 
characteristic being his heritage from his German forbears. The family, 
however, has been in the United States for many generations, his 
ancestors being numbered among the first German settlers in the 
province of Pennsylvania in colonial times. He has been associated with 
the state of South Dakota for more than two decades and has thoroughly 
identified himself with her interests and by so doing has gained honor 
not only among those immediately connected with him in educational work 
but also among the people at large.