Another staff change became necessary when Worrell left DePauw after accepting a Fulbright Lectureship to teach at Al-Hikma University in Baghdad. His replacement in the fall of 1958 was Bruce Danner, a 1956 DePauw graduate and a master's degree candidate at the State University of Iowa. Danner taught Intermediate Physics and several advanced laboratories during his two-year term on the faculty. In 1960, Danner went on to further graduate study at Ohio University and Ohio State, receiving his Ph.D. in physics from the latter institution in 1968. Currently, Danner is professor of physics and director of the Computer Center at Rose-Hulman.

Early in 1958, Correll was informed by President Russell J. Humbert that tentative plans for a new science building were being prepared; the physics department was asked to furnish the administration with a list of the physics facilities that would be needed in the new building. Correll saw in this an opportunity to push forward a plan to make dramatic improvements in the department. While on sabbatical at the HAO in September 1959, Correll completed a 20-page appraisal of the problems faced by the physics department along with an outline of its long-term goals. In this document, Correll called for a thorough revision of the upper-level course work, cited the need to attract more quality students to physics, and gave arguments for additional staffing in the department.

In addition, Correll invited two outside reviewers--Charles Whitmer, chairman of the physics department at Rutgers, and Dean Harold Schilling of Penn State--to, in Correll's words, "help us analyze the status of the physics department and to chart the course for its future development." The Whitmer-Schilling report, based on the reviewers' October 1959 visit to Minshall Lab and interviews with students and faculty, echoed many of the concerns of Correll. They wrote of the need for a course in quantum mechanics and for a lab course in atomic and nuclear physics. The facilities were found lacking; Whitmer and Schilling noted that a fair portion of the lab equipment was "obsolete or in poor repair" and that the physics library was about 20 years out of date. The report concluded with the recommendation that the department staff be enlarged and time given to the faculty for the development of projects to modify and update the curriculum. Furthermore, the reviewers suggested that a sum of $60,000 be provided by the university over a four year period to modernize instructional equipment and to help the faculty initiate research that would involve undergraduates to a greater extent.

Unfortunately, circumstances never allowed Correll the opportunity to follow up on these proposals. The university, which saw the physics instructional budget double from 1956 to 1960, was not ready to commit itself to the large outlay recommended by the Whitmer-Schilling report. Also, the proposed science facility, initially targeted for completion in the early '60s, was now seen to be many years away. Finally, Correll's research activities and his commitments with the AAPT (he became president-elect of the AAPT in February 1960) began to draw more and more time away from his work at DePauw In the end, Correll abandoned his dreams for DePauw and instead looked for new challenges elsewhere. In the spring of 1961, he turned in his resignation and accepted the post of general education director at the University of Colorado.

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