Timeline Series

With our upcoming Centennial in 2010, West Texas A&M University takes a look back at the past 98 years. In the months to come, we’ll bring you snippets of WTAMU history through accounts of the past and photos from days gone by.

 

 

The school’s primary mission was to train teachers, and to reflect that, West Texas State Normal College was changed to West Texas State Teachers College in 1922.

Robert B. Cousins, the college’s first president, was succeeded in 1918 by Dr. J.A. Hill, a professor in the history department. Hill served as the school’s second president for 30 years, from 1918-1948. He’s still the longest-serving president in the school’s history and has a visible presence on campus with the chapel that bears his name, J.A. Hill Chapel.

Cousins Hall

 

Cousins had seen the need for a dormitory on campus early in the school’s history, but government vetoes and the burning of Old Main halted the plans. Hill proposed funding for a dorm in the budget in 1918.

When House Representative Lee Satterwhite came to Canyon to discuss the facility, fate stepped in. Satterwhite rode in on a train full of women teachers in a downpour of rain. The women and Satterwhite arrived with no adequate bus service and no paved streets. Hill stated, “dozens of young women in snow-white attire made a scene, as they skip-hopped over town looking for a place to ‘hang out.’” Satterwhite exclaimed, “My God, Doctor, we’ve got to get these girls a dormitory.”

Satterwhite successfully got an appropriation of $155,000 and Cousins Hall was completed in 1920. It has the designation as the first dormitory ever erected by the state on a teachers college campus.

 

Video

 

Looking Forward

 

Another first was the college’s training school. The training school served as a means of education for elementary and high school students while providing teaching experience for the college students. The college housed a training school until 1950.

The Education Building also graced the campus as a new edifice along with Burton Gymnasium and a football stadium. The latter two were located where the Jack B. Kelley Student Center stands today.

Students selected the buffalo over the badger, chaparral, coyote, prairie dog and rattlesnake as the school’s mascot in 1921. Two calves were purchased from legendary cattleman Charles Goodnight and his wife Mary Ann. “Charlie” the buffalo, named after Goodnight, served as the mascot until he died in 1935.

In the 1920s, West Texas State offered only two academic degree programs – a bachelor of arts and a bachelor of science, both in education.

Enrollment ranged from 482 in 1922 to 915 in 1927. By the end of the decade, enrollment had risen to more than 1,000 students.

Interesting Facts

• Cutting classes was a capital offense against the school and a gross discourtesy to the faculty.
• According to the University catalogs of the era, “To destroy the class is to destroy the school. He who does that is an academic outlaw.”
• Residents of Cousins Hall had to be in their rooms for study hours from 7:30-10:30 p.m. weekdays. Lights were out at 10:30 p.m. – every night.
• In 1927, the college’s Board of Regents issued a ruling that “students who marry when in college automatically sever their connections with the school.”