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Milestones: Southern Connecticut State University
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Business New Haven
11/24/2003
By: Melissa Nicefaro
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Southern Connecticut State University
501 Crescent Street
New Haven, CT 06515
Phone: 1-888-500-SCSU
Web: www.southernct.edu
Ownership: State of Connecticut
Milestone: 110 years
Timeline: Southern Connecticut State University opened its doors 110 years ago as the New Haven State Normal School, which opened in 1893 with 84 students and three teachers, including the principal, A.B. Morrill. In 1930, the curriculum expanded to three years, and in 1937, under the leadership of Finis Engleman, the normal school became the New Haven State Teachers College, a four-year institution offering a B.S. degree in education. When Engleman joined the military as a lieutenant commander in 1945, E. Ward Ireland became acting president.
In 1947, Samuel M. Brownell was named part-time president of NHSTC. Brownell led the effort in 1947 to purchase 37 acres for a new campus on Crescent Street, and in 1953, classes began at the Crescent Street campus.
The following year, Hilton C. Buley assumed the presidency of NHSTC, replacing Hill, who had become acting president when Brownell resigned in 1953.
NHSTC was renamed Southern Connecticut State College in 1959, and the campus grew from 37 acres and three buildings in 1954 to 148 acres and 18 buildings in 1971.
The presidency of Manson Van Buren Jennings saw a new $15 million science building, later named in Jennings' honor.
As Jennings' successor from 1981 to 1984, E. Frank Harrison presided over the final stage of Southern's evolution from a teaching college to a multipurpose educational institution. In 1982, the college reorganized its academic divisions into the schools of Arts & Sciences, Business Economics, Education, Library Science, Nursing, Social Work, and Graduate Studies & Continuing Education.
On March 1, 1983, the Connecticut General Assembly formally recognized the college as Southern Connecticut State University, and the following year, Michael J. Adanti, '63, became the first Southern graduate to be named president of his alma mater.
Under Adanti, Southern underwent a major campus rejuvenation, which includes construction of a new Student Center, a major addition to Buley Library and renovations and additions to Engleman Hall.
Adanti retired in June after 19 years of leadership and was succeeded on an interim basis by J. Philip Smith, Southern's former vice president for academic affairs.
Achievements and Accomplishments: Today, Southern has more than 12,000 students, two-thirds of whom are undergraduates. Its graduate school is one of the ten largest in New England. And although it still produces Connecticut's greatest numbers of teachers, principals and school superintendents, the SCSU's comprehensive nature is reflected in the fact that political science, nursing, communication disorders and business are numbered among its programs of distinction.
Southern was recently granted approval to offer its first doctoral program, a doctorate in education, specifically geared to offset the shortage of qualified candidates for top school administrative posts in the state.
Southern is in the midst of a $250 million construction program that will again see major additions to Buley Library and Engleman Hall, along with a state-of-the-art, multi-level student center. Other new construction includes a power plant, facilities building, two parking garages and a residence hall.
The original 84 students in the old Skinner School would be astonished by the expanse of Southern's campus - 168 acres and growing. SCSU now offers more than 115 undergraduate and graduate degree programs and enrollment has ballooned to almost 12,200 students - the highest total in more than a decade.
Looking Back on a Changing World: Over the past 110 years, SCSU's character has changed as it evolved from a normal school to a state teachers college to a fully comprehensive university.
The university continues to develop new programs that meet the needs of today's marketplace and anticipate the trends of tomorrow. Recently, Southern added programs in biotechnology, anthropology and early childhood education, introduced a new master's degree in computer science and launched an online version of its existing graduate program in library science.
SCSU recently sent a team of students and faculty to Tanzania for a field school experience in a region known as "the cradle of humanity." Students dug for fossils at the famous sites of Laetoli and Olduvai Gorge, where some of the earliest human remains have been found. A professor and two students were also part of a research team that spent a month in Antarctica, studying the formation of continents.
Of Southern's more than 45,000 alumni, says Interim President J. Philip Smith, "When our students graduate, they stay in Connecticut and become real contributors. At Southern, we produce the legislators, the school superintendents, the business leaders - the professionals who make this state run.
"Given these ties, the stronger and healthier the region, the better we can prosper as an institution of higher learning," adds Smith. "And so we pay special attention to the relationship we have with our off-campus community."
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