Foreward
To those of us who stand on the threshold of the 1980s, it is difficult to grasp the rapidity of change that each new year brings. To us, the event of a man setting foot on the surface of the moon just one decade ago is part of history. We are overwhelmed by the rush of the future, and our eyes are often blinded by the all-encompassing present. It is difficult to fathom the progress mankind has made in the last century, for so much of what now is, we assume must have always been.
In this volume we celebrate the achievements of one institution of higher education, Chicago State University, tracing its roots back more than a century. But we also herald the progress of higher education in America and the contributions which our institutions of higher learning make to national life. This nation, as all countries in the modern world, looks to its universities for the leadership it needs to survive, so much so that often the expectations placed on these institutions are unrealistic. But then that, too, is characteristic of tile national temper, and is, perhaps, a major factor in the achievement of goals when the odds seem overwhelming. It has been characteristic of those who fought through the years for the survival of this particular institution of higher learning.
At the time of the Declaration of Independence, there were only nine colleges in the colonies that became the United States. All but one had been founded by denominational groups which established the schools as colonial seminaries to educate the youth of their communities. By the time of the Civil War, there were approximately 800 colleges in the United States, but only 180 of these would survive into the twentieth century. Seven of these were state universities, but these little resembled what we know today as contemporary institutions of higher education. Yale, having established a scientific school within its structure in 1854., awarded the first American Ph.D. in 1861.
When, in March 1867, the Board of Commissioners in Cook County authorized the establishment of a teacher training school in Blue Island, there was only one postsecondary institution in the state of Illinois, the Normal College in Bloomington. The University of Illinois in Urbana would not open its doors until July of that year, and the State Normal School in Carbondale would not institute its course of study until 1869. Both Michigan and Wisconsin already had opened state colleges. California would not establish its college at Berkeley until the following year, and Stanford would not be founded until 1891. The Cook County Normal School would have twenty-five years of service behind it when the University of Chicago opened its doors in neighboring Hyde Park in 1892.
During its hundred and twelve years of development from a small country teacher-training school to a University with a faculty numbering more than 250 and a student enrollment over 7,000, Chicago State University has experienced many proud moments in providing a professional education to the people of Chicago and the State of Illinois. With a new comprehensive charge from the State of Illinois, Chicago State University now stands on the threshold of even more distinctive accomplishments. As Dr. Kearney observed ten years ago:
The growth of the institution has been neither constant nor without difficulty; it has had to prove continuously its right to exist and its ability to contribute. Having weathered the early struggles for survival, it stands as a monument to all the people whose dedicated efforts have made it endure whether principals or presidents who persistently pursued a vision, faculty members who by their determined and skillful pedagogy taught others to teach, school board officials who farsightedly understood the value of the institution, or interested citizens who supported the institution in its many battles . . The record that follows is not intended to be a formal history; it is an overview a somewhat impressionistic image of a stormy but significant corner in the history of American education.
E. Maynard Moore Chicago
June, 1979
