00:09 - Hi I'm course debit and today PC on us here at ru Pete

00:12 - also known as the Indiana university of Pennsylvania

00:15 - they have one hundred and fifty years of history

00:18 - and today we have a lot of people to talk to

00:20 - a lot of history to tell you guys

00:21 - so let's go.

00:23 - If.

00:29 - I'm joined today by Charles cash dollar he's the author of the ip story

00:33 - welcome.

00:34 - Can you tell us how does the Indiana university of Pennsylvania

00:38 - get it's founding.

00:39 - Was founded in eighteen seventy five

00:41 - and it's founded as India the normal school

00:44 - in the eighteen forties the state of Pennsylvania started a public school system but

00:49 - without any way of training teachers

00:52 - and that was a bit of a problem

00:54 - and the there was a lot of pressure to try to

00:57 - get normal schools started to train teachers

01:00 - state legislature was reluctant to do that but

01:02 - fine finally the eighteen fifties they did agree

01:06 - to divide the state up

01:07 - into twelve districts

01:09 - and if the local residents of those districts would raise their own money

01:14 - and start a normal school the state would give it a charter

01:17 - and that's basically the way all of those normal schools across the state

01:21 - were founded the first was millersville

01:24 - and eighteen fifty eight and we refunded nation's seventy five.

01:28 - So that means that there had to be a fundraising campaign here.

01:32 - And about one hundred and fifty one

01:36 - people.

01:37 - Contributed

01:38 - money bought stock

01:39 - in this joint stock company.

01:42 - I got a charter from the state.

01:44 - Leading

01:45 - in that

01:46 - campaign were two local merchants John Sutton and a w Wilson.

01:52 - An attorney

01:53 - Cyrus Clark who ended up as one of the state supreme court justices

01:58 - and the state senator here Harry white

02:01 - but there were one hundred and fifty one people who invested their money

02:04 - and raised.

02:06 - About a million dollars which was a good sized

02:10 - amount of money for.

02:12 - What was the time a village of about two thousand people.

02:17 - And it opened then in eighteen seventy five

02:20 - and stayed independent

02:22 - as the rest of these

02:24 - schools did.

02:25 - Until about the world war one period.

02:29 - And a combination of inflation during world war one

02:33 - loss of

02:34 - attendance because people off to war and then

02:37 - you lay an influenza epidemic on top of that.

02:42 - Many of these schools were having financial troubles

02:44 - and the state then agreed

02:47 - to buy out

02:48 - the stockholders

02:49 - and they became state owned.

02:52 - Indiana was actually one of the last to become state owns nineteen twenty

02:57 - and.

03:11 - I'm here with Harrison wake he's the special collections librarian here at ewp

03:14 - and behind us is the original image of sight Hong correct

03:18 - yes

03:19 - this is

03:20 - our first campus building it was built in eighteen seventy five

03:23 - when our school opened as Indiana normal

03:25 - school on may seventeenth eighteen seventy five

03:28 - this was the only building on campus

03:30 - and as the special collections library manage the special collections

03:34 - here

03:34 - could you give us a little tour of it

03:36 - sure.

03:47 - Soviet

03:48 - special collections and university archives collects organizes and preserves.

03:54 - The

03:54 - instinctual history of all European

03:56 - as well as

03:57 - yearbooks and the Pennsylvania collection

04:00 - and these are here for our students and those

04:03 - and

04:04 - researchers.

04:05 - So the furniture we have here is from the Rochester and Pittsburgh coal company and

04:09 - these are just some of our memorabilia

04:11 - including our publications this is a

04:14 - one of our.

04:15 - Yearbooks from nineteen eleven nineteen twelve

04:18 - we also have

04:20 - a lot of different types of memorabilia

04:22 - and over here we have

04:24 - this is a conference table that belonged

04:26 - Rochester Pittsburgh coal company.

04:29 - And we have a lot of displays about

04:31 - the

04:32 - industrial history of

04:33 - Pennsylvania.

04:45 - When the institution opened at eighteen seventy five

04:48 - there was only one building and it was Sutton hall

04:51 - what was inside of it

04:52 - well everything.

04:54 - If.

04:55 - People lived there

04:56 - both the faculty and the students they studied there they ate there.

05:02 - It was the whole life of the place in fact it was so easy to get everything you

05:06 - needed inside that they actually made a rule.

05:10 - That all the students had to go outside for at

05:12 - least a half an hour a day to get some fresh air

05:15 - because otherwise there would've been no reason to leave.

05:18 - Even

05:19 - for worship because they had

05:21 - regular daily chapel services in those days

05:24 - so everything you want to

05:26 - see inside that one building.

05:28 - Up.

05:29 - It was a fairly large building.

05:31 - The state required

05:33 - to open a normal school ten acres of land.

05:36 - A building that would house three hundred.

05:39 - That had an audience and an auditorium that would hold a thousand.

05:43 - Or you had to have

05:45 - faculty and at least six subject made.

05:48 - Six six subject areas

05:50 - and they listed those six subject areas

05:53 - and you had to have a library and you had to have scientific equipment.

05:57 - So those things have remain and you had to have

05:59 - a model school

06:01 - with at least one hundred students in for the history students

06:04 - to do their practice teaching

06:05 - areas

06:06 - of this

06:06 - requirements to be enormous.

06:10 - And.

06:12 - Status state normal school until nineteen

06:14 - twenty seven

06:15 - and then it became a state teachers college

06:19 - and kept students for four years instead of just two

06:22 - and you got

06:23 - a college degree

06:26 - and then

06:27 - in the nineteen.

06:28 - Fifties as the baby boomers started hitting

06:31 - they needed a lot more college places across the state

06:36 - and so all of these

06:37 - pass state

06:38 - normal

06:39 - state teachers colleges became state colleges.

06:42 - Which had not just teacher training but a variety of subjects

06:47 - and then the eight nineteen.

06:49 - That happened in nineteen sixty nineteen sixty five then

06:52 - this became a university.

06:57 - Even though.

06:59 - In nineteen sixty.

07:02 - It lost the word teachers and one would have

07:04 - thought that they'd had a broader mission.

07:07 - It actually had a fairly broad mission and result from the very beginning.

07:12 - Because even back in the late nineteenth century about forty percent.

07:17 - Of the people who were employed were not in education.

07:21 - There were medical doc actors there were politicians

07:24 - there was a governor of the state of Pennsylvania

07:27 - there were judges there were

07:29 - journalists including Nellie bly who was a world famous investigative journalist all

07:35 - sorts of people came out of here and

07:37 - it's a testimony I think.

07:39 - That people's lives don't go in straight lines

07:42 - and so people as they move they change their careers they get different aspirations.

07:48 - In some cases they started here because they could afford it.

07:53 - And then their aspirations took them other places.

08:07 - You mentioned that students would have chapel here inside the hall

08:11 - what would it have been like to attend chapel back in the eighteen seventies

08:14 - it's actually not a very long service

08:16 - probably about a fifteen minute service.

08:19 - In the morning every day of the

08:21 - week

08:21 - Monday through Friday.

08:24 - Some prayers

08:25 - some scripture readings.

08:28 - Some singing.

08:30 - About a fairly short service

08:31 - once a day is this how it would have looked back then no not at all.

08:37 - If you had seen this space back

08:39 - then

08:39 - they would have been pews not chairs.

08:42 - They would have been almost wall-to-wall students tightly packed in.

08:49 - What you're seeing here

08:50 - is what this would look like

08:53 - it looks like now in the nineteen eighties it was turned into a music recital hall

08:58 - and what you have here is the music department's

09:02 - space and they have recitals concerts

09:05 - guest artists and so forth here now.

09:19 - Today

09:20 - r u p is considered a university

09:22 - but how do we go from state normal school to university

09:25 - long story.

09:26 - By the I

09:27 - tour twenties it became clear that you needed

09:29 - more than two years to prepare to be a teacher.

09:33 - Because people were actually teaching high school now as well as just grades one

09:37 - through eight and so they created and changed

09:40 - all of the schools into state teachers colleges

09:44 - you've got four years and a college degree.

09:47 - By the nineteen fifties.

09:49 - As.

09:51 - World war two veterans came back and then the baby boomers

09:54 - started to hit college campuses.

09:57 - They

09:58 - needed more spaces for.

10:01 - Education

10:02 - not just for teachers

10:04 - and so this place became a state college.

10:07 - Not justice.

10:08 - College

10:09 - and then five years after that in nineteen sixty five it became a state university

10:15 - with the ability to offer graduate degrees as well.

10:37 - While he talks a lot about the history of Iowa p spanning one hundred and fifty years

10:41 - the president wanted to sit down and tell us

10:43 - what is the vision for the university and

10:45 - how does the history impact the president.

10:48 - Or u p

10:49 - has been serving Pennsylvania

10:51 - students and the commonwealth overall

10:54 - since eighteen seventy five it's one hundred and fifty years of incredible history.

10:58 - Allowing students to achieve their dreams

11:01 - and we continue to look to a great future doing exactly that

11:05 - providing the workforce the commonwealth need

11:07 - but more importantly expanding students' abilities

11:10 - helping them to learn and grow as individuals

11:13 - I think the key thing that we're looking at is

11:15 - how do we provide

11:17 - what each student needs in terms of fit being in gaps in their background

11:22 - and providing them with the support

11:24 - to navigate

11:25 - their goals.

11:27 - Every student is different nowadays and I think that's different than it was fifty

11:30 - years ago and one hundred and fifty years ago

11:32 - we've stood up a new student success infrastructure

11:36 - that provides a navigator

11:37 - to help every single student

11:39 - the

11:40 - point of contact to help them overcome concerns issues problems

11:44 - or just to give them a pat on the back when they do a great job

11:47 - making a great difference in terms of our student retention.

12:03 - We.

12:05 - Were standing in

12:06 - the Jane Leonard display case and we're inside a

12:09 - building named after her

12:10 - who was she.

12:12 - Probably the most important woman

12:14 - that ever taught at this

12:16 - university.

12:17 - She came here in eighteen seventy five

12:20 - when the place opened

12:22 - and she says the direction and the tone for this she taught here for forty four years.

12:30 - When she died in nineteen twenty four

12:32 - she was acclaimed as the greatest woman educator that Pennsylvania had ever produced.

12:38 - Parents said that they did not send their children to

12:42 - Indiana

12:42 - they sent them commercial letter

12:44 - and in fact most of the students

12:47 - eventually ended up calling her aunt chain.

12:50 - She was

12:51 - the heart and soul of this place

12:54 - and

12:55 - her insistence on excellence.

12:58 - And her insistence

13:00 - that students ought to be ambitious

13:03 - and build lives for themselves that were active in the community.

13:09 - One of her students was the first woman one of the first women

13:13 - elected to the state legislature in Pennsylvania.

13:16 - Jane lynch herself ran for

13:19 - congress.

13:21 - In the first election that she was allowed to run

13:24 - and she was already over eighty years older at that point.

13:28 - So she's just a marvelous woman and

13:32 - much of the spirit of this place.

13:34 - Is.

13:36 - Due to her

13:38 - and

13:51 - her charged to graduating seniors was

13:54 - go forth.

13:55 - Be true

13:56 - be brave

13:57 - be successful.

14:18 - And.