With just a handful of students and professors, no sports or extracurriculars, and just one major, there really was only one truly important position on campus back in the 1890s. With the retirement of Dr. Isaac Hopkins, that position was now vacant. Since it seemed every adult on campus, from head of Mechanical Engineering John Saylor Coon all the way down to shop supervisor John “Uncle Heinie” Henika, was a colorful personality, the question of who would replace him became more of a question of which one bubbled up to the top at the right time.
The word interim seems not to have existed back in the 1890s.