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A collection of letters addressed to Russell Potter, Director of the Institute of Arts & Sciences, relating to speaking engagerents and conferences. The correspondence, dated 1930-1945, includes letters from Gertrude Stein, Robert Frost, Edna Ferber, Al Smith, Henry Wallace, Anthony Eden, and Harold Laski. Some of the letters are of a personal nature.

This collection consists of the correspondence and administrative records of the University Extension's Home Study Division, which offered not-for-credit courses by mail. The records include communication with faculty members, students, and University administration (Buildings and Grounds, Office of the President, Office of the Secretary, Office of the Registrar, etc.). They document the Home Study division's outreach or promotional efforts (advertising, partnerships with other institutions), operational records (course fees, registrations, mailing services, office supplies), policy matters (academic credit, prison students, high school classes and the New York State Regents exams) and many requests for information from potential students, nationwide and from abroad. In addition to the short-lived Home Study program, there are records of other adult education experiments and initiatives at the University Extension such as courses by radio, extramural courses (held off-campus, across the East Coast), and Guidance Study (a replacement to Home Study). These are the administrative records held in the Office of the Director, mostly from the end of the Home Study experiment and organized alphabetically. The records do not include much about the origins of the Home Study at Columbia. They are more closely related to the evolution of the program and the continued interest in correspondence education after the program was discontinued. There is also an extensive collection of materials documenting other home study and adult education efforts around the country, from correspondence with individual programs to materials from national associations.

These records consist of a wide range of documents: reports, copies of speeches and articles by the Deans, university publications about the academic programs, history, and mission of the School and student publications, alumni office correspondence concerning General Studies and Alumni Association mailings, press releases, newspaper clippings, and student applications to writing courses. These records formed part of the Historical Subject Files, acquired or aggregated at unknown dates. Much of the material in the Subject Files—correspondence, newspaper clippings, invitations, press releases, and publications about the School of General Studies—was collected by the office of Harold Emerson, Assistant to the President and Vice President for Alumni Programs. The Alumni Affairs Office similarly collected materials about alumni programs, events, mailings to alumni, and publications, and the Office of Public Affairs compiled both Columbia press releases and newspaper clippings relating to General Studies news or new programs. This collection thus represents an assemblage from different sources.