before transferring to Amherst College, where he was initiated into the Delta Upsilon fraternity and later became the chapter president. During the Delta Upsilon convention of 1887, Ames played a central role in resolving an intra-fraternity dispute concerning the authority by which the Executive Council of Delta Upsilon had admitted the DePauw University chapter some months earlier. As a student at Amherst, he was particularly influenced by Anson D. Morse, whom he credited with cultivating in him "a judicial attitude in the study of history", years later recalling that he had "never come in contact with a teacher who was so judicially minded". Ames graduated from Amherst with an A.B. degree in 1888, and thereafter entered Harvard University. At Harvard he received an A.M. in 1890 and a Ph.D. the following year for his dissertation The Proposed Amendments to the Constitution of the United States, which was done under the supervision of Albert Bushnell Hart. During his time at Harvard, he was the Ozias Goodwin Memorial Fellow in Constitutional and International Law. Between 1891 and 1894, Ames lectured in history at the University of Michigan under an appointment as acting assistant professor to fill a vacancy created by the resignation of J.H.T. McPherson. Though his interest was in U.S. history, at Michigan Ames was charged with teaching courses covering a variety of periods of world history, an assignment to which he would admit he was "not particularly prepared", but he resigned himself to the idea that "one must make a beginning somewhere, and this was the opening offered". He later recalled this first teaching experience "was a valuable one to me, far more so, I fear, than to the students taught. I was afforded the opportunity to become acquainted with the life and work of the leading state university of the time". Ames spent 1895 abroad, taking advanced studies in history at Leipzig University and Heidelberg University. During his fifteen months in Europe, he also undertook a grand tour. Career Teaching The year following his return from Germany, Ames was hired as an assistant professor in the history department at Ohio State University. In 1897, he moved to the University of Pennsylvania to continue teaching history, and by 1908 had become a full professor. From 1907 to 1928, he served as dean of Pennsylvania's graduate school. As dean, Ames made his office in room 105 of College Hall, a room