Talk:Charles N. Watkins

Charles N. Watkins
I am really struggling to figure out why we have an article on Charles N. Watkins. Some times leaders of institutions get a pass because the institution later becomes notable, even if it was not when they were the leader. However we need to have independent coverage. All the sourcing I could find in a search for Watkins was from BYU-Idaho, the predecessor of the institution he headed. He clearly does not fall under the university head academic notability guidelines. It is not until George S. Romney that the institution had any college level classes. Watkins was the head of a private high school, maybe the only high school in the region at the time, I would have to look into the matter a lot to figure out where the closest public high school was at the time. However further perusal of the sources seems to indicate that when Watkins was principal there was only one other teacher on the staff, so he was head of a very small high school. The two men who succeeded Watkins at the head of Bannock Stake Academy lack individual articles, their names are just redirects to the list of principals and presidents of BYU-Idaho. Jacob Spori, the first head of the school has the added factor of being an institution founder, and we have coverage of 3 sources, which deal a lot more with him being a missionary for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the Ottoman Empire. One is a full chapter in a monograph published by a center of a university. I am sure one could find more sourcing on Spori. Here is a student research paper on Dalby, who started as head of Bannock Academy a decade after Watkins that gives us a sense of the scale we are dealing with. I do not think unpublished student research papers fit any meaning of independent, reliable, 3rd party sources, but at least if it is correct in 1901 Bannock Academy had 35 students and 6 faculty counting the principal. This is an extremely small institution, and it is very hard to argue later size can retroactively make something that size inportant enough to show notability. Ezra C. Darby may be notable, but we would have to find something better than a photocopied student research paper posted on a university archive to show that he had the level of coverage to be considered notable, because I do not think he passes any understanding of academic notability. I do not think there is a way to use academic notablity to retroactively make heads of secondary schools notable because at some later point the institution evolved into a 4-year college. Now if independent from the college sources feel a need to cover these people in detail because of their connection to it, we can follow suit, but we have to find the sources first. Andrew B. Christiensen clearly would need better sourcing as well. This source does indicate that Dalby was mayor of Driggs Idaho and earlier on the City council of Rexburg and acting mayor. I doubt either position would on its own pass politician notability, but if one could find better sourcing on this, we might make a case. I did actually find this source [ https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Innovative_University/NYU9DwAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=EzraDalby&pg=PA78&printsec=frontcover] the Innovative University by Clayton M. Christensen (a very well respected Harvard Business School theorist) and Henry J. Eyring, that discusses Dalby and his removal in some detail, although the focus is less on Dalby and more on the history of BYU-Idaho. It looks to be an interesting read, but I am not sure it has enough on Dalby per se to develop an article.John Pack Lambert (talk) 14:30, 27 October 2021 (UTC)