Middle Tennessee State College
1943 - 1964
Middle Tennessee State College 1943 - 1964 |
|
In 1943 MTSTC officially became Middle Tennessee State College. Homer Pittard chronicles the history behind the name change in his book, The First Fifty Years in this way:
Due
to press of competition, to the formula of appropriations based largely on enrollments,
to the wave of
sentiment by students and community leaders and the desire to retain its status
as an important
institution of higher learning, the first official move in the direction of State
College was made on
November 7, 1941. On that date Q.M. Smith and C.C. Sherrod of
Johnson City
recommended to the State Board that State Teachers College, Murfreesboro,
and State Teachers
College, Johnson City, be designated in the future as state colleges.
These two presidents
were instructed to prepare a bill and to request its enactment in the
1943 Legislature.
The news burst on
the campus and there was a celebration as spirited as that accompanying
a Raider victory over
Tennessee Tech. There was also a triumphant note in the lead story of
the Side-Lines:
"It's a fine name!! It happens to be our new name!!"
The celebration would be short lived. Pittard writes, "When the institution became a state college in 1943 a national emergency already existed." The January 12, 1944 Side-Lines carried the following dedication:
|
|
The war had a significant impact on MTSC. Seven hundred and seventy-two students and alumni served in World War II. Enrollment fell to an all-time low during the war years. If not for the use of the campus for the training of military personnel, the college would have appeared deserted. Enrollment figures demonstrate the decline during the war years and the tremendous enrollment increase resulting from the GI Bill.
| Year | Male | Female | Total Headcount |
| 1940 | 342 | 390 | 732 |
| 1941 | 225 | 311 | 536 |
| 1942 | 129 | 224 | 353 |
| 1943 | 28 | 238 | 266 |
| 1944 | 20 | 180 | 200 |
| 1945 | 43 | 188 | 231 |
| 1946 | 513 | 243 | 756 |
| 1947 | 677 | 399 | 1076 |
| 1948 | 718 | 309 | 1027 |
| 1949 | 740 | 476 | 1216 |
courtesy of MTSU Institutional Effectiveness
Bob Womack, MTSU professor and alumni ('48) recalled the post-war years on campus: "After the war, most of us or a a lot of us were married and we lived in a little trailer town. A lot of us had children. My oldest son Andy was born during the war. We brought him here as did many others. It was a wonderful, wonderful time. It was a reunion. We'd all been gone and scattered all over the world for three years. We came back and we were serious students." (Q.M. Smith/MTSU Oral History Project)
|
Dr. David Dodd,('53) remembered, "I was present on the campus when there were two populations. The still wet-behind-the-ears kids who had just graduated high school, then there were the veterans who were mostly five years older returning to the campus. The population of the students just swelled almost overnight with returning veterans. Due to the age differences, the scholastic milieu was very competitive. In that immediate post World War II era with a swelling student population, one could feel that this college, big things were going to happen for it." (Q.M. Smith/MTSU Oral History Project) |
| A massive building program was proposed by President Q.M. Smith to keep up with the increasing student enrollment. The James Union Building, Smith Hall, the Memorial Health and Physical Education Building (now Alumni Gym), Monohan Hall, and Saunders Fine Arts Building were all results of this growth. |
|
|
|
|
