A Decade of Progress
Illinois Teachers College
Chicago South
The history of Cook County Normal School—Chicago Teachers College—Chicago State University closely parallels the development of teachers colleges elsewhere in the nation. By 1967, when the institution had completed its one hundredth year, it was named Chicago State College and thus completed a transition that was occurring widely across the land. Virtually every "normal school" in the country had followed a similar line of development. The normal schools had their beginnings largely as a result of the missionary zeal of men like Horace Mann who, in the 1830s and 1840s successfully argued for common, or elementary, schools for all children. The phenomenal growth of elementary schools led inevitably to the quest for teachers for these schools. The colonial colleges, largely enrolling men, simply were not providing enough teachers, and the private academies for women did not see such training as part of their mission.
The first public normal school in the United States opened at Lexington, Massachusetts in 1839, under the direction and administration of James G. Carter. Today this institution is the State College at Framingham. In 1844, the New York State Normal School at Albany came into existence. By 1890, it had become New York Normal College and required a high school diploma for entrance. Its next phase, in 1914, saw its expansion to include a liberal arts curriculum, and it became New York State College for Teachers. When the State University of New York was established in 1948, the former normal school at Albany was thus ready to assume a role as one of the four major university centers within the SONY system. Since 1962 it has been a comprehensive university.
Similar stories of institutional growth and transition can be told of literally hundreds of our major institutionso higher education, including UCLA, Portland State University, Texas Woman's University, University of Akron, Virginia Commonwealth University, Northern Michigan University and many more. All have unique features and different histories, but all share the common characteristic of evolving in curriculum and mission to meet the changing needs of their regions.
At the height of the normal school movement, in 1919, there were 264 such institutions in the United States, enrolling 132,000 students. Of these, 151 were run by the states, 40 by city and county authorities, and 73 by private sponsors. Sixty years later, there were only a handful left. The last of the breed was Lewis-Clark Normal School in Lewiston; Idaho, and it today has joined the ranks of the others as Lewis-Clark State College. In 1979, there are 363 institutions of higher education classified as state colleges and regional universities. These institutions vary greatly in size, from the enormous California State University at Long Beach at one extreme, with an enrollment of 36,000, to the University of Maine at Fort Kent, with 600 students. All have significantly broadened missions that include teacher education within a comprehensive institutional structure. Chicago State University shares this in common with them.
When Chicago Teachers College: South came under State control in 1965, Dr. Frederick H. McKelvey, Executive Officer of the Board of Governors, became Acting President for an interim period and Raymond M. Cook continued to serve as Dean. At Cook's death, Dr. John M. Beck, second in command at the College, became Acting Dean. A joint committee from the Illinois Board of Governors and Illinois Teachers College: Chicago South, throughout the •early months of 1966, conducted an extensive search for a new president of the College. The committee interviewed candidates from coast to coast, as well as members of the administration and faculty at the home campus, one of whom was Beck. A number of faculty and staff at the South Campus were under the assumption that Beck would be named president, consistent with what had occurred when Dr. Jerome Sachs, former dean at Illinois Teachers College: North had been appointed its first President. The committee, however, at the eleventh hour made a different decision.
Named as the new President of Illinois Teachers College: Chicago South was Dr. Milton Bruce Byrd, at the time the Academic Vice President at Northern Michigan University. A cum laude graduate of Boston University (1948), where he was honored with Phi Beta Kappa membership, Dr. Byrd earned both his Bachelor of Arts degree and Master of Arts degree in English there, and was awarded his doctorate by the University of Wisconsin in 1953. He was a post-doctoral fellow in college administration at the University of Michigan from 1961 to 1962.
Byrd began his teaching career at the University of Wisconsin, as a teaching assistant in English, serving there later as Associate Professor of Humanities and head of the Division of Humanities. As Associate Dean of Instruction from 1960 to 1962, he was intimately involved in the planning of academic facilities for the new $25,000,000 commuter campus of Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville, which enabled that school to grow from an enrollment of several hundred to almost 3,000 students.
As second ranking administrator of Northern Michigan University, Byrd had been active in a program to develop Northern Michigan from a normal school and teachers college into a university with a much broader program. As the new president of Illinois Teachers College: Chicago South, Byrd faced a similar challenge. The Master Plan for Higher Education in Illinois had called for the building of an entirely new commuter campus and the development of the school from a single focus college to a multipurpose university with a strong liberal arts curriculum.
Dr. Byrd's appointment came at perhaps the most critical moment in the College's history. Pressed by rising enrollment and out-of-date facilities, situations common to many older schools, Byrd not only had these problems to face, but also the major task of planning the development of a new campus and an entirely new institutional character within the next four or five years.
Further, political and social unrest characteristic of the sixties was brewing on the Illinois Teachers College: Chicago South campus. Elementary, college and university faculty across the country were taking a second look at how salary, benefits and grievance procedures could best be negotiated. Thousands of young men and women, armed with a different view of reality, demanded a new approach to the old profession of teaching. Arid as black people marched on Selma, Alabama, Washington, D.C., and in Chicago for civil rights legislation, black students on college campuses across America marched on student lunch rooms and presidents' offices demanding constitutional rights, black studies programs and the appointment of black professors.
Dr. Byrd assumed his duties as President in September 1966. Almost at once, the institution began to move toward meeting the expanded mission which had been assigned to it by the Illinois legislature. Plans were begun for liberal arts and science curricula and, in September 1968, the first students were admitted to these programs. At the same time, long range plans for non-teaching pre-professional programs were inititated.
Faculty governance had evolved as a vital force within the institution by 1966. Emerging from the fairly powerless Faculty Council of the pre-1965 period had come a system of governance based upon the principle of different rights and responsibilities and shared assent by each of the distinct units within the collegial system—administration, faculty and students. Like people in other occupations, teachers were faced with many problems related to their jobs, and they tended to feel that collective bargaining and arbitration would help to resolve those problems. But many of them seemingly felt that "unionism" and "professionalism" were incompatible.
Before transferral to the State, much had been done by the College Chapter of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) to achieve Board of Education recognition of faculty rights, but it wasn't until later, after the Cook County Teachers Union (CCTU) successfully negotiated a contract for Chicago City College teachers, that there was any change, and by that time the Teachers College was under State control.
Teachers College Faculty and union representatives made local headlines during the summer of 1967 when the Board of Governors voted not to approve the appointment of Staughton Lynd as a professor. Lynd was a renowned historian, an advocate of civil disobedience and an active member of the civil rights movement. Lynd had been invited to teach at Illinois Teachers College: Chicago South by Henry Patin, chairman of the Education Department. Formerly a teacher for three years at Spelman College for Women and three years at Yale University, Lynd had built himself a national reputation. He had published several books and had become something of a public figure after visiting North Vietnam and China with Tom Hayden, founder of Students for a Democratic Society. He also drew considerable national attention following his statement that "deliberate law breaking should become a routine form of democratic dialogue."
The Board of Governors, in defending its decision, said that they in no way denied Lynd's right to dissent on any issue, nor his freedom to seek and support the causes he espoused. "But beyond dissent, the Board/believes that the teacher has a responsibility to support and to stay within the laws of this country." Of the seven members of the Board of Governors, six opposed the appointment of Lynd. Richard Nelson, chairman of the Board, cast the only vote in Lynd's favor. In the early part of August, Lynd filed suit in Sangamon County Circuit Court, charging the Board of Governors with breach of contract. Joining Lynd in the action against the Board was the Cook County Teachers Union.
The decision to drop Lynd brought under question the legality of Lynd's contract, and whether a teacher's outside life should have any bearing on his qualifications for appointment. The Illinois Committee for Academic Freedom, a special group of professors at several universities and colleges in Illinois, invited teachers of both public and private institutions to sign a public statement on the Staughton Lynd case.
The newly appointed president, Dr. Byrd, remained in the background until a Chicago Tribune editorial charged him with "giving aid and comfort to this country's communist enemies. if that's the best judgment Byrd can display as a college president, he should be fired." Byrd defended his position and admitted endorsing Lynd, but pointed out that the hiring of faculty members was left to the deans and to the department heads. Further, he indicated, at no time had the college administration or faculty cone out in support of Lynd's activities; rather their criteria had been his professional qualifications.
In October, the Board of Governors reversed its previous decision in the Staughton Lynd case. Lynd began teaching at the College that following January under terms of a one year contract. In return for his employment, Lynd and the Cook County Teachers Union, co-plaintiffs in the court case, withdrew their suit. Lynd also withdrew his complaint to the American Association of University Professors and advised the Illinois Committee for Academic Freedom and other groups working in his behalf that the negotiated agreement with the Board had been approved by him.
To a degree the Staughton Lynd case marked a victory for the union in its first dealing with the Board. However, Lynd was never given a meaningful teaching position, and his goal of teaching social and intellectual history was never realized.
Developments in the College's instructional program reflected a basic commitment to serve the urban society. In order to provide this service, the College set out to adopt a long range view of societal needs and plans to organize its resources to meet those needs.
A major focus in this area was on the education of personnel in urban education. The College, though continuing to train elementary and secondary school teachers, devised programs to provide special preparation for those teaching or planning to teach in the rapidly expanding community college system of Illinois. Existing programs of education for school personnel, in which the College had a base of experience and expertise, continued to be developed to serve wider populations and emerging needs. Among those areas were the training of personnel in guidance and counseling, education of the handicapped, industrial education, home economics, physical education, school and general librarianship, and various other educational specialties.
While the objectives long held by educators as vital in liberal education continued to be important to and consistent with the ideals of a democratic society, techniques for achieving those objectives were subject to increasing question both by students and by society at large. As part of its commitment to educational pluralism, the College re mained flexible to experiment and open to change in its liberal arts programs.
While waiting for the completion of the new campus, the old campus continued to grow physically and academically. A modern facility was opened in 1967 (under the directorship of Dr, Floyd K. Smith and later Dr. Leslie 011ie) for the convenience of students living on the west side of the city, to serve the educational needs of the junior college graduate, the transfer student, and the college graduate who was a practicing or prospective teacher.
West Center was the second major effort the college had made to bring its facilities and programs to the western communities. Since 1957, the college had operated a branch which shared facilities with Crane High School and Junior College. Crane's limited facilities had not been able to handle the growing numbers of junior college graduates and graduate students from the western communities. The West Center was designed to replace and expand the programs and facilities of Crane.
Located at 500 N. Pulaski Road, West Center occupied 47,000-square-feet on the second floor of the Newark Electronics Corporation Building and had about 12 classrooms, a library, student and faculty lounge, cafeteria, and office space. Programs at the West Center were planned by the Academic Departments of the Teachers College and the regular faculty members who served as instructors at the West Center. All course work taken was supposedly equivalent to that offered at the main campus, except for programs which required highly specialized equipment.
While an assortment of undergraduate programs at the West Center were offered during the day, most graduate and undergraduate classes were held in the late afternoon or evenings. More than two-thirds of West Center's faculty were full-time, some of whom also taught at the College's South campus. During the first school term of the Center in 1967, some 55 different courses were offered on both undergraduate and graduate levels and more than 600 students were enrolled.
The initiation of the academic programs at the West Center in 1967 was but one more example of the Teachers College responding to the demands of new clientele and the implementation of a broader mandate. Within a four year span, the institution underwent two more changes in name, each reflecting its movement toward fulfilling its new role as a miltipurpose, urban institution of higher education. Soon after the state took control, a campaign began in Springfield to remove the title of Teachers College from all state institutions. The issue was successfully resolved, and in 1967 the school was renamed Chicago State College. The sister BOG institution, Illinois Teachers College: Chicago North, became Northeastern Illinois State College.
