If not for a William & Mary president in the 1960s, there would be no marine science program to benefit from the school’s recent largest financial gift.
Davis Y. Paschall, the college’s president from 1960-1971, was instrumental in the development of the substantial academic programs of the Virginia Institute of Marine Science at Gloucester Point.
The Virginia Fisheries Laboratory was established in 1940 as a joint effort between W&M and the Virginia Commission on Fisheries (now the Virginia Marine Resources Commission). It was initially organized by Donald W. Davis, head of William & Mary’s biology department.
On Wednesday, the university announced that philanthropist Jane Batten had donated $100 million for enhancement of its marine science program — the largest gift in W&M’s 331-year history. The existing school will be renamed the Batten School of Coastal & Marine Sciences.
Originally established “to pursue research and educational activities relative to the seafood industry of the state and to develop into a prominent center for the study of Marine Biology,” Paschall said in a 1970 report, the laboratory operated as a quasi-state agency.
When Paschall became president, master’s degrees in marine science were offered by the University of Virginia, Virginia Tech and William & Mary. Paschall took a recommendation from an outside study to urge the board of visitors in 1961 to create a school of marine science with the faculty also becoming staff members of the lab.
The next year, the General Assembly renamed the laboratory the Virginia Institute of Marine Science, making it an independent state agency with its own administrative board. The three schools continued to provide all the graduate academic work.
In 1964, the State Council of Higher Education approved doctoral programs in marine science for W&M and UVA.
In the late 1960s, Paschall, along with UVA President Edgar F. Shannon Jr. and Virginia Tech President T. Marshall Hahn Jr., discussed the future of academic programs at VIMS. It was decided that William & Mary would take over the programs. Primarily “because of the location (of W&M and VIMS) and the fact that the VIMS staff was part of the W&M faculty,” Paschall told reporters.
By 1970, the 35-member VIMS staff “served as faculty of the School of Marine Science that offered more than 30 courses at the Gloucester Point campus,” Paschall wrote in a 1960-1970 report. Additional professors from other departments at W&M were associated with VIMS “to strengthen its offerings to students.”
Virginia Tech decided to move to an academic program focused on fish and wildlife conservation, while UVA decided its new direction would be on what now has become environmental science.
Davis Y. Paschall was president of William & Mary when Wilford Kale was a student at the school. Kale and Harry L. Smith were co-authors of “Davis Y. Paschall: A Study in Leadership,” about Paschall’s time at W&M and when he was state superintendent of public instruction. This story uses information from that publication.
