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TEXAS A & M UNIVERSITY @ Commerce
This university was established by William L. Mayo at Cooper, Delta
County, in 1889 and chartered in 1890 as Mayo or Mayo's College,
a private institution where Mayo "could be at liberty to put into
operation his idea of a democratic school of a college type." The
school grew for five years, but the building burned in 1894; and since
Cooper had no railroad at the time and Mayo was in financial straits,
he proposed to move his school to the town offering the best
incentives. Commerce put up land and $20,000 cash, so the college
was rechartered there in 1894 as East Texas Normal College. It
started with thirty-five pupils. The first session was held in a small
business house, but soon a two-story administration building and two
frame dormitories were erected. Mayo continued as president until
his death in 1917. The school operated as an independent private
college with no endowment or income except tuition and a small
profit from its dormitories. Between 1889 and 1917 more than
30,000 students received their basic educational training in this
school; records show that the college prepared more teachers for the
public schools than any other college or university in Texas in the
same period. The college had six degree programs.
Mayo wanted to perpetuate his school as a state teachers' college,
and he started a move to place it under the authority of the board of
regents of the state normal schools. After the Thirty-fifth Legislature
passed an act to do this, the board of regents paid the Mayo estate
$80,000 for the institution; Mayo died in March 1917, the same
month that the state purchased the plant and fifty acres of land.
Commerce donated $40,000 to renovate the buildings. The board of
regents of the state teachers' colleges took over the plant and staff of
East Texas Normal College, and its name became East Texas
State Normal College.
In 1923 the name was changed again to East
Texas State Teachers College. Graduate courses were offered for
the first time in 1935. Enrollment in 1947-48 was 1,593.
The educational scope of East Texas State Teachers College
became much broader than teacher education, and consequently
"Teachers" was dropped from the name in 1957. In 1962 the first
doctoral program was initiated. University status was authorized by
the legislature in 1965, and the name was changed to East Texas
State University. ETSU was reorganized into three schools:
graduate, education, and arts and sciences.
Buildings on the 150-acre main campus numbered eighty-seven in
1965, and twenty-five were on the 1,052-acre college farm. The
value of the physical plant grew steadily from $175,000 in 1917 to
$2,328,000 in 1947 and $19 million in 1965. The university
operated on a $6 million budget in 1965, when sixty-nine
undergraduate majors were offered in twenty-five academic
departments and master's degrees were offered in thirty fields.
Student enrollment in the regular 1974-75 term was 9,241. In the
1990s the campus occupied 1,883 acres, and the physical plant was
valued at $150 million. The main 140-acre campus was eight blocks
southwest of the business district in Commerce. In 1994 the James
G. Gee Library, built in 1959 and enlarged in 1969 and 1986,
housed over 1,000,000 volumes, 2,000 periodicals, series of 68
newspapers, and 350,000 government documents. The McDowell
Administration-Business Administration Building was constructed in
1970. In 1990 ETSU was accredited by or belonged to the
Association of Texas Colleges and Universities,qv the American
Association of Colleges for Teacher Education, the American
Association of State Colleges and Universities, the American
Council on Education, the American Association of University
Women, the National Commission on Accreditation, the Council of
Graduate Students in the United States, the Association of Texas
Graduate Schools, the Council of Colleges of Arts and Sciences, the
Federation of North Texas Area Universities, the
Inter-University Council of the North Texas Area, the National
Association of Schools of Music, the American Assembly of
Collegiate Schools of Business, the Texas Education Agency,qv the
Southern Association of Colleges and Schools, the National Council
for Accreditation of Teacher Education, the National Association of
Schools of Music, and the Council on Social Work Education.
ETSU is a regional state university. In addition to the Commerce
Campus, it has operated an upper-level institution in Texarkana since
1971 and maintains the ETSU Commuter Facility in Garland, a
branch focused on graduate offerings. The university is divided into
the College of Arts and Sciences, the College of Business and
Technology, the College of Education, the Graduate School, and the
Division of Continuing Education. In the fall of 1990 the faculty
numbered 265; 7,900 students were enrolled in Commerce and
9,000 in the entire complex. ETSU offered more than 100
undergraduate and fifty graduate majors to students in twenty-six
departments. Nine undergraduate degrees and seven graduate
degrees were conferred. In cooperation with the Federation of North
Texas Area Universities, ETSU offers a Ph.D. By 1988 the
university had conferred 72,000 degrees. Presidents of ETSU have
included Mayo, S. H. Whitley (1924-46), A. C. Ferguson
(1946-47), James G. Gee (1947-66), and F. Henderson McDowell
(1972-82).
In 1996, the university became part of the Texas A & M University system. TAMU-Commerce is the second largest university in the system.
Read more at http://www.tamuc.edu/aboutUs/historyTraditions/default.aspx
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