No effort was made immediately to find a successor. Dean Harry Burns Hutchins of the Law School, who had once before served as Acting President during Dr. Angell's absence in Turkey, was asked to act again in that capacity. This he did so successfully that on June 28, 1910, he was unanimously elected to the Presidency. He accepted, but upon the condition, expressed in his letter of acceptance, that he serve but five years. The new President assumed his duties when the tide of the University's progress was at the ebb. It is no disparagement of his predecessor to say that for some years the affairs of the University had been allowed to take their course with little aggressive action; his period for vigorous measures had passed. There was much therefore that needed to be set in order in the academic establishment and to this the new executive set himself immediately. President Hutchins is the first graduate of the University to become its President, for he received his degree in 1871 at the same time Dr. Angell delivered his inaugural address. He was born at Lisbon, New Hampshire, April 8, 1847, and came to Michigan in 1867, the year he entered the University. After his graduation he was for one year Superintendent of the Schools of Owosso, Michigan, after which he returned to the University as instructor in history and rhetoric, becoming Assistant Professor in 1873, a position he held for three years. In the meantime, however, he had been preparing himself for the practice of the law and in 1876 resigned his academic duties to enter active practice in Mt. Clemens. He was recalled to the University in 1884 as Jay Professor of Law, a position which he held so ably that when the trustees of Cornell University were looking for a man to organize a law department four years later their choice fell upon him. This work he undertook and completed with great success, remaining Dean of the Cornell Law School for seven years. In 1895 he was once more recalled to his alma mater as Dean of the Department of Law, a position he resigned to become the fourth President of the University.