[1] The next year Freeman suddenly struck upon the decision to become a plant pathologist while he was at Wood's Hole in Massachusetts for the summer.

[1] He arranged to go the next year to study at Cambridge University under Harry Marshall Ward, and thus began one of Freeman's most notable accomplishments: Introducing a great deal of European knowledge of plant pathology and methods to American education and practice.

It was one of these - details of seeds residency in a Lolium temulentum-Puccinia rust pathosystem - that also became Freeman's PhD in a few years.

Although in the future universities would embrace applied disciplines, erect new departments for them, and teach courses specifically about them, at the time classical education was the goal.

In 1909, a local high school teacher named Stakman became only the third lecturer in the Division, and its first grad student.