[3] He learned at age 28, when he had enough funds to join a doctor's office as a student, that his lack of knowledge of Greek and Latin would make his studies even longer.
Kelsey's time at Lake Forest allowed him to discover his desires for improvement within his craft of educating the classics and to develop his professionalism.
Within his first couple of years he would write articles for a college journal called the Lake Forest University Review, on his views of the classics and would eventually become editor.
Unfortunately the main funding behind the Lake Forest University Review was from the prior editor so it went defunct within a year of Kelsey being appointed to his position.
While there are a lot of textbooks already about Latin grammar and syntax, his books tried to give context to the actual things he was writing about so people would not just learn the language but the culture.
The amount of detail he put into them was unprecedented and showed within the learning community since one of his textbooks, Caesar's Gallic War, went through twenty one different edition in his lifetime and can still be purchased today.
Post Civil War United States, saw an increase in interest in the German model of higher education that included research and the creation of graduate programs.
The Haymarket Riot in Chicago, the closest major city to Lake Forest University, started over workers feeling they were not treated fairly enough by employers.
[17] Kelsey did not sway one way or another, he agreed with aspects of both, he recognized the importance of science courses but his heart was with the classics and he supported ideas that kept them as a top priority.
His ideas did heavily align with the president of his alma mater, University of Rochester, and for his writings on the topic of higher education he received a PhD in philology.
[18] Similarly to Lake Forest, Kelsey made sure his classes were not just on the languages he was teaching but the culture and the context of the times, he even went as far as to set up a classical fellowship to study archaeology.
"[24] Once Kelsey returned, he saw increased popularity, his time abroad contributing to him becoming the lead American scholar on Pompeii, a current interest of United States citizens.
[27] In his role as UMS president Kelsey was a major factor behind the construction of Hill Auditorium one of the concert halls designed by Albert Kahn and opened in 1913 that is still in use on the campus today.
Kelsey gave Kahn two options of where to construct the building, he eventually picked the location on North State street that thousands of students now walk past and perform in regularly.
In 1913 Hill Auditorium had its induction ceremony and shortly afterwards the Frieze organ, for which Kelsey had raised the funds, was moved into its new home.
[31] Starting in 1919 Kelsey was talking to a successful Detroit manufacturer by the name of Standish Backish who showed interest in putting together an expedition to the Near East.
[32] Backish was talking to a professor, by the name of Caspar Rene Gregory, who, after he died in World War I, inspired him to organize an expedition for the retrieval of biblical documents.
[34] The entire expedition was expected to take two years, one for exploration and the other for writing and research which would be done between London and Paris since at the time, that is where the only copies of other ancient manuscripts were located.
[35] While originally Backish suggested that the main objective be for the retrieval of biblical texts, it was also brought up that documentation of the battlefields that Julius Caesar fought on should also be researched and heavily photographed.