Herbert Schofield , PhD, (8 December 1882 – 18 September 1963) was a leading figure in technical education, a Rotarian and, from 1915 to 1950, a Principal of Loughborough College, which became Loughborough University.
Biography
Herbert Schofield was born in Halifax, the elder son of Alice (née Dawtry) and James Schofield who were married in 1880. James had his own general and textile engineering business in the town.
Education
Herbert’s education began at St James’ School, Halifax. Then, at age 10 he moved to Holy Trinity Higher Grade School. In 1896 he began a seven-year apprenticeship in his father’s company, gaining experience in fitting, turning and forging, and some drawing office work. Schofield continued for eight months or so in business with his father, as a textile engineer, before moving in July 1904 to Messrs G H Gledhill & Sons Ltd., a company noted for its automatic cash till and a variety of important wartime inventions. In 1905 Schofield gained a Carnegie engineering scholarship to the Royal College of Science, part of Imperial College of Science and Technology in South Kensington. Three years later he was awarded a BSc in Applied Mechanical Engineering (First Class Honours), and was first in 1st Class for the diploma of “Associate of the Royal College of Science” (mechanics and physics). That same year (1908) Schofield was appointed by the Governors of Imperial College to conduct research on the thermal efficiency of high speed internal combustion engines; he stayed for 4 years. He was awarded a PhD for this research in 1923.
Early career
In 1912, Schofield (“a distinguished physicist”) became Senior Physics Master at Dover County School, and Principal of the Technical Institute at Ladywell, Dover. Schofield turned down opportunities to continue his research at Cambridge; a research job at Rolls-Royce Ltd.; and a post at Repton School. Instead he moved to Loughborough.
Loughborough College
Following the Technical Instruction Act 1889, and the appointment of Brockington in 1903, the way was clear for him to propose the establishment of a technical institute in Loughborough, which was eventually opened on 29 September 1909. The first Principal was Samuel Charles Laws. When he moved to Wigan and later London, he left behind an efficient and growing institute.
In September 1915 Herbert Schofield moved to Loughborough as the next Principal of the Technical Institute, and also to assist the Director of Education for Leicestershire (William Allport Brockington) in inspecting the county’s evening schools.
As demand for more munitions grew during World War I, Schofield set about training workers in thoroughly practical ways, avoiding the more theoretical approaches of other institutes. Using reconditioned equipment that had been discarded, the first group of 30 trainees, all women, learned how to make shells before moving to factories elsewhere. By the end of 1916 the Loughborough Institute was the third largest such facility in the country; by the end of the war 2209 students had been trained and given jobs in munition factories. Schofield was awarded an MBE in 1917 for his war services. After the war, he introduced a five-year full-time diploma course in mechanical engineering for former officers, based on his ‘training on production philosophy.
In the inter-war years, Schofield oversaw big developments in the college, including: setting-up a department for training handicraft teachers in 1930 establishing an annual summer school in 1931, offering courses mainly in physical education and arts and crafts creating an aeronautical engineering department in 1935 the gradual extension of the college's work in physical education and, throughout, acquiring property for use as student hostels In 1921 he joined the board of directors for Atalanta Ltd. the first company in Britain to employ only women engineers, initially set up in Loughborough with the support of the Women's Engineering Society. The company was run by Annette Ashberry who was a graduate of the Loughborough college BSc engineering course and fellow board members included the leading women engineers of the day Rachel Parsons, Caroline Haslett, Lady Eleanor Shelley-Rolls, and Dora Turner.
During WWII, the college aided the war effort by providing a wide range of technical courses for personnel of all three services, and by housing the RAF medical rehabilitation unit. The immediate post-war period brought a substantial increase in student numbers as former servicemen flocked into the college; and Schofield introduced a full-time course in librarianship in January 1947.
Herbert Schofield retired in December 1950 at the age of sixty-eight.