Aspiring to Greatness: West Virginia University Since World War II

by RONALD L. LEWIS, Charles Vest (Foreword by)

Overview

Aspiring to Greatness: West Virginia University since World War II chronicles the emergence of WVU as a major land-grant institution. As a continuation of the work of Doherty and Summers in West Virginia University: Symbol of Unity in a Sectionalized State, this book focuses on the modern historical developments that elevated WVU from a small regional institution to one of national prominence.
 
West Virginia University’s growth mirrors the developmental eras that have shaped American higher education since World War II. The University’s history as an innovative, pioneering force within higher education is explored through its major postwar stages of expansion, diversification, and commercialization.
 
Institutions of higher education nationwide experienced a dramatic increase in enrollments between 1945 and 1975 as millions of returning World War II and Korean War veterans took advantage of the GI Bill of Rights. Their children, the “baby boom” generation, continued to supply the growth in college enrollment and the corresponding increase in institutional complexity until the mid-1970s. During this period WVU followed the national trend by growing from a few thousand students to nearly fifteen thousand.
 
From 1975 to the early 1990s, expansion gave way to diversification. The traditional student population stopped growing by 1975, and  “boomers” were replaced by students from nontraditional backgrounds. An unprecedented gender, racial, and ethnic diversification took place on college campuses, a trend encouraged by federal civil rights legislation. To a lesser degree WVU was no exception, although its location in a rural state with a small minority population forced the University to work harder to attract minorities than institutions in proximity to urban areas.
 
The commercialization of higher education became a full-fledged movement by the 1990s. Major changes, such as globalization, demographic shifts, a weak economy, and the triumph of the “market society,” all accelerated the penetration of business values and practices into university life.  Like other public universities, WVU was called upon to generate more of its own revenues. The University’s strategic responses to these pressures reconstructed the state’s leading land grant into the large complex institution of today.
 As the only modern history of West Virginia University, this text reaches into the archives of the President’s Office and makes exhaustive use of press accounts and interviews with key individuals to produce a detailed resource for alumni, friends, and supporters of WVU, as well as administrators and specialists in higher education. 

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781938228421
Publisher:	West Virginia University Press
Publication date:	09/01/2013
Edition description:	1st Edition
Pages:	600
Product dimensions:	6.20(w) x 9.10(h) x 2.10(d)

About the Author

Ronald L. Lewis received the BA degree from Ohio University, and earned the MA and the PhD in American history from the University of Akron. He taught at the University of Delaware for eleven years (1974-1985) prior to becoming professor of history at West Virginia University in 1985. At WVU he chaired the Department of History for six years (1989-1995), was appointed Eberly Family Professor of History (1993-2001), and then Stuart and Joyce Robbins Chair in History in 2001, a position he held until his retirement in 2008. He is currently professor emeritus and Historian Laureate of West Virginia. Lewis is the author of five books, co-editor of dozen volumes, and has published numerous journal articles, book chapters, and essays. In retirement he continues to reside in Morgantown with his wife Susan and canine companion Maggie.

Charles Vest is President Emeritus and Professor of Mechanical Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. A native of Morgantown, Dr. Vest earned a B.S. in mechanical engineering from West Virginia University in 1963, and M.S.E. and PhD degrees in mechanical engineering from the University of Michigan in 1964 and 1967, respectively. He serves on the boards of several non-profit organizations and foundations devoted to education, science, and technology.  Since 2008, he has been a member of the West Virginia University Board of Governors.  He has authored a book on holographic interferometry, and two books on higher education.  He has received honorary doctoral degrees from seventeen universities. He was awarded the 2006 National Medal of Technology by President Bush and received the 2011 Vannevar Bush Award from the National Science Board.  He currently serves as the President of the National Academy of Engineering. 

Read an Excerpt

Aspiring to Greatness

West Virginia University since World War II

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By Ronald L. Lewis

West Virginia University Press

Copyright © 2013 West Virginia University Press
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-938228-42-1

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CHAPTER 1

THE PAST AS PRELUDE: POLITICS OF GOVERNANCE BEFORE THE BOARD OF REGENTS

THE DECADES PRECEDING Irvin Stewart's administration, from 1946 to 1957, were periods of social, political, and economic upheaval: post– World War I, the Great Depression, the New Deal, and World War II. In West Virginia the localized effects of these national upheavals had their counterweights in a conservative political culture in which the "state house" faction resisted the political power of the state's federal delegation. The factional, sectionalized politics of West Virginia set the format of the politics that shaped higher education in the state. The struggles played a major role in hindering the development of West Virginia University as an institution and retarded its ability to achieve its mission as the state's land-grant university, or even fulfill its role as the state's only university. WVU's capacity to respond to the major changes that World War II brought to higher education was seriously compromised by the sectional politics practiced in West Virginia. The University consequently found itself unable to take advantage of federal resources being poured into American research universities to foster scientific discoveries and applications designed to keep the United States as the leading power in a hostile postwar world. The roots of WVU's weakness reached back to the nature of higher education governance before World War I.

SECTIONAL POLITICS AND HIGHER EDUCATION, 1909–1927

In 1907, Governor M. O. Dawson recommended that the nine boards of regents and the sixteen boards of directors governing each of the state institutions of higher learning be replaced by just two boards. In 1909, the legislature responded by passing legislation that reduced the system to a three-member, bipartisan Board of Control charged with administering the building and grounds as well as the financial affairs of state institutions, and a five-member Board of Regents appointed by the governor to administer the educational policy of the University and normal schools. Economy was the obvious motive, but professional educational administrators argued that a separate governing board for each institution was the more efficient way to administer higher education. Obviously, state officials disagreed because this structure remained until 1919 when the Board of Regents was replaced by a seven-member state Board of Education, which included the state superintendent of schools, who served at the behest of the governor. The Board of Control retained its charge set by the 1909 legislation until the system was reformed in 1947.

From its earliest days, WVU believed that the University should neither be governed by the same rules as the state's normal schools nor treated by politicians as though it was just another state agency. Generally, this position was more a hope than a reality, though it did prevail on occasion. In 1911, for example, Senator Stephen B. Elkins, who regarded the University presidency as "proper spoils for the Republicans," wanted to appoint former governor A. B. White to the post. White declined, however, and Governor William E. Glasscock appointed his friend and business associate T. E. Hodges to the position. Glasscock reminded Elkins that Republicans should not ignore the "sentiment in the State," which favored Hodges, and that he, Glasscock, objected to action that looked like "injecting politics into our educational institutions." Nevertheless, Hodges's inauguration became a political event with President William Howard Taft delivering the keynote address in the presence of, according to historian Charles Ambler, "practically all the state elective officers."

During the second decade of the twentieth century, there was a struggle between the "new" and "old" educators, the former being those who were followers of the "progressive" educational philosopher John Dewey, educators who believed that teachers should be professionally trained rather than called to the profession by aptitude and scholarship. The new educators favored substituting practical learning determined by community needs for the standard high school curriculum. They opposed the established practice of the "old" educators of requiring high schools and normal schools to submit complete and accurate data on curriculum and academic performance to the university for entering students. The boards of the state's normal schools were under the control of the "new" educators, and supported by the most influential of the "new" educators of the period, State Superintendent of Schools (1909–1921) Morris P. Shawkey. As state superintendent he sat ex officio as president of the Board of Regents and of the State Board of Education. Shawkey informed President Hodges that he was disappointed with his "old" ideas about university administration. Hodges responded that, fortunately for the University, its policies were established by the faculty. Between 1912 and 1914, Secretary of the Board of Regents J. F. Marsh and President Hodges discussed issues involving university administration and academic freedom. Marsh bluntly informed Hodges that the president must determine university policy, not the "Old Guard" faculty. Hodges emphatically rejected this demand, prompting Superintendent Shawkey to declare, in his 1914 biennial report, that Hodges's administration was a failure, and reserved the right for the board to devise new university policies that would best serve the state. President Hodges saw the handwriting on the wall and took the graceful exit offered by his political friends, who nominated him as the Republican candidate for congressman-at-large in the 1914 election.

No university subject was too small to pass the notice of one political faction or another in a highly sectionalized state. Replacing Hodges prompted considerable political maneuvering and editorial comment framed by the "old" versus "new" education debate. The State Journal called for the next president to be an educator of "national" and, better still, "world-wide" caliber, whatever the cost. The Wheeling News similarly declared the need for "a big man for president of the university," indeed "a very big man." The Morgantown Chronicle announced that "a very big man" was not necessarily the best because the University was not that big, and a "big man could not create off-hand a great university in a state as lacking as was West Virginia" in high schools to prepare students for college.

Even something as basic as the University's location was still a matter for serious political discussion from 1913 to 1915. Should the University remain in the city where it was founded in 1867? Someone from the Kanawha Valley complained to the Morgantown Post Chronicle that the citizens of Morgantown seemed intent on "bleeding to the last cent" students who attended WVU. He pointed out that there was no legal reason for the University to remain in Morgantown, which was so far out of the way for the "greater part of our people." The Chronicle's editors rebutted the charge of gouging the students and called for major defensive measures to save the University. The Huntington Herald-Dispatch heightened Morgantown's anxieties by pointing out that, while the "fine little city on the northern border" was inconvenient to most of the state's residents, southern West Virginia was much more directly interested in the development of Marshall College. Charleston boosters certainly saw their fair city as the more desirable location for the University, and real estate interests in that city sponsored a resolution, which was seriously considered in the state senate, to remove WVU from Morgantown to Charleston. Morgantown supporters countered that "Character is Greater than Geography," and that Charleston, with its "relentless commercialism" and the "political chicanery of a state capital," would stunt the ethical development of students. Naturally, Charleston supporters saw Morgantown as "virtually a suburb of Pittsburgh." True to the state's history of sectionalism, other cities came to the university's aid because they did not like the concentration of power in Charleston. The Wheeling Intelligencer regarded the idea of moving the university from Morgantown as "absolutely silly" and the declared the supposed inaccessibility of Morgantown as a bogus issue because railroads connected every section of the state. With Marshall College aspiring to be the state's second university, the Huntington Herald-Dispatch predictably did not want the relocated WVU next door, competing with Marshall. So the paper sided with WVU supporters and demanded that the University remain in its original location.

Frank B. Trotter, dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, was appointed president by the Board of Regents in June 1916. With considerable support from the Republican politicians, President Trotter began a concerted building effort to anchor the University in Morgantown. Relocation was not the only threat for the University; it could also be decentralized and picked apart piece by piece. The College of Agriculture, for example, might be removed to the eastern Panhandle, which had been proposed in 1910. Other parts of the state regarded the School of Medicine and the College of Law as political plums, and on more than one occasion these units of the University became targets for possible relocation. Partially to deflect the talk of relocation or decentralization, President Trotter inaugurated a major building campaign. Monongalia County offered acreage for the expansion of the College of Agriculture, and the legislature provided funds for a new agriculture building. The legislature also authorized expansion of the engineering building and funds to construct a building for the School of Medicine. Oglebay Hall was completed in 1918, and Women's Hall was completed in 1919. Physical expansion slammed the door on the agitation for removal, the "unseemly scramble among other West Virginia cities and towns to acquire the University." James S. Lakin, a member of the state Board of Control, informed the press in 1916 that the University was now "so well settled, there is little probability that the question of relocating it would be given any serious consideration." Following the fire that destroyed the state capitol building on January 3, 1921, WVU and Charleston interest groups supported each other to prevent removal of either the University or the state capital, which itself had previously been moved several times. The issue was now permanently settled.

Following World War I, the University's major building campaign also provided facilities for the College of Law, Department of Chemistry, a gymnasium, a men's dormitory, a new physical education building for women, an armory, and a new commencement hall. The campaign probably helped President Trotter to retain the presidency, but Regent Morris P. Shawkey, who was just finishing his third term as state superintendent of free schools and had decided not to run again, was regarded by influential supporters as a better choice for president than Trotter. This possibility led to one of the stranger episodes of external political interference in the administration of WVU.

PROMOTING PAROCHIALISM: SHAWKEY AND THE NORMAL SCHOOL BLOC

While Shawkey's friends on the state board of education and in the University alumni association promoted his cause, WVU faculty regarded him as a politician and challenged his academic credentials. Undaunted, board of education members secretly conspired to elevate him to the presidency of WVU. The plan was to be sealed at a special board meeting in November 1920, but Shawkey's supporters failed to anticipate the implacable objections of Governor Howard M. Gore. Shawkey was not prepared to fight for the post, and Trotter continued in office.

Shawkey would not wait for elevation to the presidency of WVU indefinitely, however, and on June 28, 1923, the board of education chose him to become president of Marshall College. Marshall had been essentially a secondary school until 1920, when it was elevated to a four-year college. This episode was a pivotal moment in the history of higher education in the Mountain State. Upon becoming president of Marshall, the struggle against the University began in earnest. Supported by the "normal school bloc," Shawkey claimed that WVU was too distant and conservative in its approach to education to serve the educational needs of the entire state. This claim was especially true in southern West Virginia, and Shawkey's vision was for Marshall to become the leading collegiate institution for the southern part of the state.

The die was cast for what became a century-long competition with WVU. "To friends of the University, as well as to those interested in state finances and in the future of education in general, this was an alarming turn of events," historian Charles Ambler wrote. "Among other things it meant that state support for higher education would be allocated among a number of institutions as determined largely by their political influence, and that none of them could become first rate." With the support of his personal friends on the state Board of Education, and supported by leaders of the other normal schools, Shawkey advocated for increased funding to alleviate Marshall's alleged overcrowding, its underfunding, and a change in its status from teachers training institution into a college of arts and sciences. A storm of protest emanated from all corners challenging the legality of such a course as well as the wisdom of this policy for higher education in West Virginia. Even though the state Board of Education clearly overstepped its authority, in 1924 it authorized Marshall to grant BA and BS degrees. Actually, Marshall had granted its first baccalaureate degrees in 1921 without opposition from either the state Board of Education or the governor. The other normal schools eventually followed without official constraint. By ignoring state legislation and policy, West Virginia officials furthered parochialism in the state's educational system. Aggravated by political sectionalism, each local constituency was politically galvanized to protect its own local college. Thus was born a system with more colleges than the state could afford or made educational sense. Although much bemoaned ever since, the system is now politically impossible to reverse.

Opponents of an expanded role for Marshall and the normal schools pointed out that these schools were created to train teachers, but because teachers were in short supply the normals were "permitted to assume other obligations that were not imposed on them." This in effect turned Marshall into a liberal arts college without legal authorization. A written opinion by former Attorney General William G. Conley, published in a Morgantown paper, claimed that there was no "authority in the state board of education to enlarge that work at the normal schools." A few months later a Wheeling paper predicted a "knock-out contest between the 'normal school bloc' and the forces of the university," because the normal schools had a "thirst for power" that would adversely affect the University's appropriations.

Having led the struggle against the university interests, Shawkey disqualified himself as a candidate when President Trotter offered his resignation in 1926. Consequently, the presidency was offered to native son J. W. Withers, a dean at New York University, with a beginning salary of $15,000. This was a nationally competitive salary, but he did not accept the offer immediately, giving Shawkey the opportunity to write a letter to the state superintendent, dated October 27, 1926, in opposition to paying such a high salary to the new president. He pointed out that paying so much to Withers would undermine the morale of those who had taught in the state for years with a low salary — a political hammer that would become a standard tool in West Virginia. The Marshall president then sent a copy of his letter to each of the Board of Education members. Inevitably, the letter went public, provoking the negative response that prompted Withers to decline the WVU offer.

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from Aspiring to Greatness by Ronald L. Lewis. Copyright © 2013 West Virginia University Press. Excerpted by permission of West Virginia University Press.
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Table of Contents

Foreword, Charles Vest

Preface
Part I The Emergent University: Expansion, 1946-1967
 
Chapter 1. The Past as Prelude: Politics of Governance before the Board of Regents
Chapter 2. Irvin Stewart and the Creation of a  University “Both in Theory and Fact”
Chapter 3. Paul A. Miller and “The People’s University,” 1962-1967
Chapter 4. Student Affairs: The “Silent Generation”
 
Part II The Constrained University: Diversification, 1967-1995
 
Chapter 5. Politics of Governance under the Board of Regents
Chapter 6. The Administrations of James G. Harlow and Gene A. Budig
Chapter 7. The University at Its Nadir
Chapter 8. Neil S. Bucklew, Modernization and Reform
Chapter 9. Faculty, Research, and Economic Development
Chapter 10. In Pursuit of Fairness and Diversity
Chapter 11. Student Culture Takes a Left Turn
Chapter 12. The Game Changes: Intercollegiate Athletics
 
Part III The Corporate University: Commercialization, 1990-
 
Chapter 13. Politics of Governance since the Board of Regents
Chapter 14. David C. Hardesty Jr., Self-Governance Restored
Chapter 15. The University as a Research Enterprise
Chapter16. The Robert C. Byrd Health Sciences Center
Chapter 17. Becoming a Student-Centered University
Chapter18. Intercollegiate Sports and the Marketplace
Chapter 19. Playing on the National Stage: Corporatism and Intercollegiate Athletics
Afterword
Notes
Index (to come—freelance)
About the Authors