Memphis State University - DeSoto Yearbook (Memphis, TN)

Page 11 text:

In charge of the construction and the planning, as well as the nomination of the faculty, the issuing of bulletins, and the preparation of a curriculum, was the recently appointed president. Professor Seymour Allen Mynders. He had been largely responsible for tbe passage of the General Education Bill of 1909 which created the school, and his enthusiasm for the project only increased with his appointment. On Tuesday. September 10. 1912. the dreams of President Mynders and of countless other staunch support- ers of the new institution were realized when West Tennessee State Normal School opened its doors and began its first regular term. The faculty totaled seventeen and the student body approximately two hundred. By the end of the first year, however, the original enrollment had jumped to nine hundred-nine. Those first students at Ole Normal. as the school was affectionately called, had fulfilled the following- requirements: 1 ) open and free to white males and females not under sixteen years of age and who had finished at least the elementary school course prescribed by the public schools of the state. 2) letter of good moral character from a responsible person. 3) good health — strong physically and free from chronic defects that would prevent satisfactory work. 1 ) no tuition charge to residents of Tennessee. Only fee collected is a registration fee of two dollars per term. Non-resident students pay twelve dollars per quarter plus the two-dollar fee. 5) sufficient scholastic requirements from high school or previous college.

Page 10 text:

Fifty Golden Years 1912 1962 Soon after the turn of the twentieth century, an old plantation died. Its inevitable fate was to become part of the growing city of Memphis, whose grasping boundaries stretched only two miles from its fields. Yet those forty-eight acres were destined to become more than a few ordinary city lots, for while they lay waiting in the Southern sun for the fatal subdivision, a minor war was being waged in Tennessee. Cities and counties, armed with pointed editorials and heavy arguments, were fighting to gain a promised state school. Memphis and Shelby County w ere the victors, and the old plantation became the birth-site of an institution now known as Memphis State Universih . The first of many names for the school was the West Tennessee State Normal School, an educational institution devoted especially to the preparation of teachers for the state ' s public schools. The former plan- tation land, along with an additional thirty-two acres, was cleared and leveled, plowed and planted, for it was to produce not onlv vegetables and pastures for the new school ' s Department of Agriculture, but a brand new crop as well: teachers. Buildings were constructed: an administration building, a three-winged, three-story women ' s dormitory con- taining one hundred-ten bedrooms (men were to be housed in the basement rooms of the administration build- ing), and a two-storv brick residence for the president. ■mi ■ltd i »l it I! R It H U Tl Flff |k KK If BE E IE IE II t t § - mmim- . I [ 1 [ ' ffaMftmtmt a fi i m m. ' « 2

Page 12 text:

Thev were then ready to pursue either the Academic- Course of study or the Normal Course. The Academic Course was designed primarily to prepare elementary school teachers, while the Normal Course was to prepare teachers for the secondary schools of the state. Upon completion of the Normal Course, the student received a diploma which was a life certificate of qualification to teach in any of Tennessee ' s public schools. The curriculum was divided into nine departments: 1. 2. Q O. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. Education English I including public reading and speaking) History Mathematics Science Languages (Latin, French, German) Manual Training Agriculture 9. Training School (now Messick High School) Several organizations were quickly formed to offer the student extra-curricular activities: four literary societies, two for men, and two for women, a YWCA and a YMCA, and departmental organizations, such as the Home Eco- nomics Club, the Modern Language Club, and the Thalian Dramatic Club. The first student publication of the new school was The Columns, a monthly forerunner of the campus newspaper, The Tiger Rag. The name of The Columns, of course, was derived from the huge columns of the administration building. The name now belongs to the Memphis State Alumni newspaper. During the first school year, and at the beginning of the second, there was practically no library at the school other than the personal collections of individual instructors. Plans were made to begin a school .library, and by the beginning of the third year the school could boast of some four thou- sand volumes. The entire collection was housed in a spa- cious and well-lighted room furnished with studying facili- ties for the students. Just two days after the beginning of the school ' s second year, on September 17, 1913, the faculty and student body, were shocked by the death of President Mynders. The devo- tion and personal sacrifice with which the first president had handled his responsibilities had been costly. President Mynders was succeeded by Professor John Willard Brister, whose first tenure as head of the school lasted until 1918 when he entered in overseas war duty with the YMCA. While Professor Brister served with the Army Educational Corps in France, Andrew A. Kincannon served as president. The school which had begun as a preparatory school offering four years of secondary work and two years of collegiate work, expanded its curriculum in 1919 to include a third year of work on the college level.