several small Midwestern colleges and secondary schools. Jordan obtained a medical degree, M.D., from Indiana Medical College in 1875. The Indiana Medical College in Indianapolis had opened in 1869 and closed its doors in 1878, and has no relation to any other past or extant medical school in Indiana. He wrote in his autobiography that while teaching at Indianapolis High School, "I was also able to spend some time in the Medical College, from which, in the spring of 1875, I received the (scarcely earned) degree of Doctor of Medicine, though it had not at all been my intention to enter that profession." Jordan taught comparative anatomy at the college the following year (1876). (An unrelated history of American medicine observes: “Once a university was closed, it was difficult to ascertain whether someone actually graduated from it.”) He was then accepted into the natural history faculty of Indiana University Bloomington as a professor of zoology in 1879. His teaching included his version of eugenics, which "sought to prevent the decay of the Anglo-Saxon/Nordic race by limiting racial mixing and by preventing the reproduction of those he deemed unfit." Personal life Jordan married Susan Bowen (1845–1885), a biologist and a graduate of Mount Holyoke College (whom he had met at Louis Agassiz's Penikese Island Summer School of Science), in her hometown of Peru, Massachusetts on March 10, 1875. She died at age 39, after 10 years of marriage, following a brief illness. Bowen was six years Jordan's senior. They had three children: the educator Edith Monica (1877–1965), Harold Bowen (1882–1959), and Thora (1884–1886). Jordan later married Jessie Knight (1866–1952) in 1887. At the time of their marriage, two years after his first wife's death, Knight was 21 years old and Jordan was 36. They met while he was serving as president of Indiana University. He and his second wife had three additional children: Knight Starr (1888–1947), Barbara (1891–1900), and Eric Knight (1903–1926). Indiana University presidency In 1885, he was named president of Indiana University and became the nation's youngest university president at only 34 and the first Indiana University president who was not an ordained minister. He improved the university's finances and public image, doubled its enrollment, and instituted an elective system; like Cornell's, it was an early application of the modern liberal arts curriculum. Stanford presidency In March 1891, he was approached by Leland and Jane Stanford, who offered him