jhe746-pg640-664


Christine A. Ogren

The author thanks D. J. Chandler, Clif Conrad, Linda Eisenmann, Yvonna Lincoln,
Ernie Pascarella, and John Thelin for encouragement and comments on earlier versions
of this essay. The National Academy of Education and the NAE Spencer Postdoctoral
Fellowship Program supported the research for this article.

Christine A. Ogren is Assistant Professor, Division of Educational Policy and Leader-
ship Studies, University of Iowa.

The Journal of Higher Education, Vol. 74, No. 6 (November/December 2003)
Copyright © 2003 by The Ohio State University 

Since the mid-twentieth century, a host of political,
economic and societal changes have contributed to the diversification of
students in American institutions of higher education. Developments
such as the Allied victory in World War II, the decrease in blue-collar
jobs, and changing gender attitudes, have encouraged members of mi-
nority racial groups, young people with low social-class standing, and
women to attend college (Bean & Metzner, 1985). Beginning in the
1960s, governmental and institutional financial-aid and affirmative-ac-
tion policies explicitly promoted racial, class, and gender diversity for
the first time. Not surprisingly, researchers have recently begun to assess
the impact of these programs and the implications of an increasingly di-
verse student body (see Levine & Associates, 1989; Levine & Nidiffer,
1996; London, 1992; Pascarella & Terenzini, 1998; Westbrook & Sed-
lacek, 1991), using the term “nontraditional” to describe students who
are older than typical college students, work because of financial neces-
sity, belong to the first generation in their family to attend college, do
not live on campus, attend part-time, or are members of minority racial
groups. Bean and Metzner (1985) add, “Nontraditional students are dis-
tinguished by the lessened intensity and duration of their interaction

Rethinking the “Nontraditional” Student
from a Historical Perspective

State Normal Schools in the Late Nineteenth 
and Early Twentieth Centuries



with the primary agents of socialization (faculty, peers) at the institu-
tions they attend” (p. 488).

The term “nontraditional” implies that these atypical students are new
to higher education and that colleges and universities traditionally have
not served people like them. While the intention of research on nontradi-
tional students is to better meet their needs, it may also have the unin-
tended consequence of reinforcing the notion that these students are out
of place, indirectly discouraging them from interacting with others on
campus. One way to soften the effect of this research would be to em-
phasize atypical students’ rich history in higher education. Indeed, his-
torical research indicates that, even without the encouragement of 
explicit governmental and institutional policies, students from unsophis-
ticated, lower-social-class backgrounds have a long tradition of attend-
ing American colleges and universities (see, for example, Allmendinger,
1975; Nidiffer, 1999). While generations of nontraditional students have
attended virtually every type of higher education institution, they were
especially prominent at the precursors of many state colleges and re-
gional universities. S. Y. Gillan, who graduated in 1879 from one of
these institutions, Illinois State Normal University, reflected that it “was
a school of the people existing for and representing the masses and not
the classes.”1

This article focuses on state normal schools, which resulted from
nineteenth-century education reformers’ efforts to adapt the German
teacher seminary and the French ecole normale to train teachers for the
growing system of American common schools. Massachusetts estab-
lished the first state normal schools in 1839, and Connecticut and New
York soon followed. By 1870, 39 state normal schools were located in
New England, the mid-Atlantic states, the Midwest, and California.
During the following decades, southern states established segregated
normal schools, and the institutions spread throughout the country and
its territories; by 1920, there were more than 180. State normals, which
provided elementary-level teacher certification and offered various de-
grees in pedagogy, were low-status institutions of higher education dur-
ing a time when the lines between “higher” and “lower” education were
blurred (Clifford, 1995, pp. 3 –6).

By the end of the nineteenth century, many states began to look to the
normals to prepare teachers for burgeoning positions on high-school fac-
ulties, which the normals saw as an opportunity to gain prestige. During
the 1890s, the schools in Albany, New York, and Ypsilanti, Michigan
adopted the name, “normal college.” As other normals began to offer
four years of college work and grant bachelor’s degrees, they usually re-
placed the title “normal school” with “teachers college.” The majority of

Rethinking the Nontraditional Student 641



state normal schools became teachers colleges during the 1920s and
1930s. In the 1940s, the flood of World-War II veterans seeking all-pur-
pose higher education fueled the normals’ quest for status, and they
began to drop teacher education as their organizing purpose. As a result,
the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s witnessed another flurry of name changes
as the former normals added more prestigious programs and became
state colleges. By the end of the century, continuing “mission creep”
(Selingo, 2000) allowed many to become state universities; institutions
that began as normal schools formed the nucleus of state systems from
New York to California, and former normals make up the majority of re-
gional universities from Northern Michigan to Southwest Texas.

Although institutions whose roots are nineteenth-century normal
schools play a central role in mass higher education at the turn of the
twenty-first century, their story is not well known. In their quest for
higher status, former normals have tended to bury their history as “an
impoverished past thankfully left behind” (Goodlad, 1990, p. 73).
Meanwhile, historians of higher education have concentrated on more
elite institutions, and historians of teacher education have focused on the
normal schools’ leaders and official policies. These historiographical ap-
proaches virtually ignore normal-school students. (For the few excep-
tions to this rule, see Burke, 1982; Herbst, 1980; Herbst, 1989; Clifford,
1983; Clifford, 1995; Ogren, 1995; and Schwager, 1987.) Focusing ex-
plicitly on the normalites, I conducted extensive historical investigations
of more than half of the state institutions that began as normals through-
out the United States. I did archival research at seven campuses—in
Castleton, Vermont; Geneseo, New York; Florence, Alabama; Pine
Bluff, Arkansas; San Marcos, Texas; Oshkosh, Wisconsin; and San Jose,
California—and reviewed various sources on close to one hundred other
former normal schools. These sources include institutional histories,
which I used selectively; like Frederick Rudolph, I “carefully culled
episodes and illustrations” (Thelin, 1990, p. xviii) to use as primary ma-
terial for my own analysis.

This article presents a socio-historical analysis of the students who at-
tended state normal schools and their experiences in the late nineteenth
and early twentieth centuries. I profile “normalites” relative to the por-
trayal of nontraditional students in current literature. Then, I discuss the
ways in which the state normal schools provided a meaningful higher
education experience. While their official mission was preparing teach-
ers, the characteristics of their student bodies forced the normals to ex-
pand their unofficial mission to include welcoming unsophisticated stu-
dents into an engaging intellectual and public life. Indeed, “it was the
normal schools . . . that really brought higher education to the people”

642 The Journal of Higher Education



(Herbst, 1989, p. 142; see also Herbst, 1980). Although the normal
schools’ specific approaches to serving these students were more appro-
priate for their time than the present, it is important for current re-
searchers to understand that these institutions did serve atypical students
effectively. As student bodies continue to diversify in the twenty-first
century, it is helpful to take a look through the lens of history at earlier
nontraditional students.

Nontraditional Students

My in-depth examination of state normal schools reveals that their
students had much in common with today’s nontraditional students.
Race (Westbrook & Sedlacek, 1991) and socioeconomic status (Lace,
1986) are prominent issues in literature on nontraditional students. Bean
and Metzner (1985) acknowledge that these characteristics, along with
gender, “might have differentiated traditional and nontraditional stu-
dents a century ago” (p. 488). A look at the normalites convincingly con-
firms this hunch. At a time when women were an unwelcome minority
on many coeducational campuses, they were a visible majority at state
normal schools. A small number of normals, mainly in the South, re-
stricted their enrollment to women only. But most normal schools were
coeducational, with enrollments made up increasingly of women with
each passing decade. Before the turn of the twentieth century, the enroll-
ments at coeducational normals nationwide were between 25 and 90%
female. At coeducational southern normals, only one-quarter to one-half
of the students were women. Typical of normals outside the South, the
institutions in Cedar Falls, Iowa, and Greeley, Colorado enrolled 70%
women. After the turn of the century, throughout the country the per-
centage of students who were women was consistently well over 50, and
occasionally higher than 90%.2 The large numbers of female normalites
are consistent with the schools’ official mission of preparing students for
the female-dominated profession of teaching.

In addition to women, state normal schools made higher education
available to a significant number of students from minority racial and
ethnic groups. Like Arkansas, which established the Branch Normal Col-
lege at Pine Bluff euphemistically “for the poorer classes,” most south-
ern states established segregated normal schools for African-American
students. Oklahoma and North Carolina also established segregated nor-
mal schools for Native American students.3 In addition, evidence sug-
gests that several northern, majority-white normals served at least a lim-
ited number of minority students. In New York, Albany matriculated
twenty-six Native American students in the late nineteenth century and

Rethinking the Nontraditional Student 643



many South-European, Polish, and Jewish immigrants in the early twen-
tieth century, and Oswego graduates of the 1890s remembered “an ami-
able American Indian girl,” “popular young men from the Hawaiin 
Islands,” “a shy, quiet Negro girl,” and a “much respected” African
American man. African American students, many of whom were from
the South, had begun appearing at state normals from Westfield, Worces-
ter, and Framingham, Massachusetts, to Normal, Illinois, soon after the
Civil War. The normal schools in Pennsylvania welcomed several stu-
dents from Puerto Rico and South America beginning in the 1890s, and
Cecil E. Evans, who began his presidency at Southwest Texas State Nor-
mal School in San Marcos in 1911, once noted, “Very few Mexican stu-
dents ever get high enough in the grades to reach us,” implying that at
least a few Mexican students did “reach” the institution.4

Regardless of their race or gender, most normalites shared rather low
socioeconomic status; they were, for the most part, the daughters and
sons of working people, many of whom were struggling financially.
Throughout the late nineteenth century, skilled, semiskilled, unskilled,
and agricultural workers headed the homes of two-thirds of normalites
in Massachusetts. The normal in Worcester reflected the growing indus-
trial city, drawing primarily the children of skilled workers and laborers.
During the first decade of the twentieth century, Southwest Texas kept
very detailed records of the occupations of its students’ parents. Only
6% engaged in the professions of medicine and law; physicians,
lawyers, teachers, ministers, druggists, engineers, editors, “newspaper-
men,” and architects amounted to only 14%. The parents of San-Marcos
students were more likely to work in agriculture than any other trade:
47% were farmers, and ranchers, fruit growers, stockmen and dairymen
were another 10%. In fact, farming, which was in economic crisis
throughout most of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in
the United States, shaped the lives of a majority of normalites. During
the late nineteenth century, nearly two-thirds of students at Cedar Falls,
Iowa, were from farming families. Likewise, in 1889, the parents of 428
of the 639 students at Emporia Kansas, were farmers. Students at Pine
Bluff often had to arrive at school late in the fall and leave early in the
spring, in order to help their families with harvests and plantings.5

The families of many normal-school students could not afford tradi-
tional higher education. For example, George Martin graduated as vale-
dictorian of his Massachusetts high-school class in 1855 and was unable
to fulfill his plan to attend Amherst College because of a lack of funds.
Martin then worked for seven years and was finally able to enter Bridge-
water Normal in 1862. Some normalites were from such impoverished
backgrounds that the schools gained a reputation for serving the poor. A

644 The Journal of Higher Education



Vermont newspaper described the normal in Castleton as catering to the
“calico-attired country girl of limited means,” and in Westfield, Massa-
chusetts, where the normal school enrolled an especially high number of
children of small farmers, “normal” was a disparaging name for a poor
person. Similarly, some residents of Oswego, New York, referred to nor-
malites there as “state paupers.” Pine-Bluff students made light of their
reputation in the following lines from a late-1920s school cheer: “State
School, State School, yes we are the state school / Nothing new or for-
mal, no Sir! / Our hair is shaggy and our clothes are baggy / But they’ll
soon be raggy, Yea!” Throughout the country, many normal-school stu-
dents could have yelled along.6

In addition to being female, minorities, or of low socioeconomic
standing, today’s nontraditional students often are older than the typical
eighteen to twenty-two years (Bean & Metzner, 1985; Bendixen-Noe,
1998; Lace, 1986; Metzner & Bean, 1987; Pascarella & Terenzini, 1998;
Zwerling, 1992). Although Bean and Metzner do not acknowledge it,
this is another factor that also differentiated traditional and nontradi-
tional students in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Many
normalites—as well as some students at colleges and universities—were
mature in age. Throughout the country, most normal-school students
were older than the minimum state-stipulated fifteen or sixteen years.
Michael Dignam, who graduated in 1882 from Westfield, Massachu-
setts, remembered, “The pupils were all mature, no one under 20; the
ages ranged as high as 26 or 28.” A member of the class of 1888 at
Oshkosh, Wisconsin lyrically explained: “In age the class varies all the
way from the blushing maiden in her teens, filled with anticipation of
the future, and the aspiring youth yearning for independence, to the ret-
rospective and reflective minds of maturer years.” From Oneonta, New
York to Greeley, Colorado, normal schools in the late 1880s and early
1890s reported that on average their entering students were more than 20
years old. In 1886, the first class at Tempe averaged 19.4 years in age; at
26 and 30 years old, respectively, Julia A. McDonald and James M. Pat-
terson were among the oldest students. When the all-female state normal
in Greensboro, North Carolina opened in 1892, the average age of enter-
ing students was close to 20 years. Throughout the 1890s and 1900s,
women students at Oneonta continued to enter at an average age of over
20 years, while their male classmates were closer to 22. In 1903, the first
class at San Marcos signed in at 20.1 years, with one student who was 38
years old. The normal school in Plattsburgh, New York, had at least a
couple of mature students during the 1910s—there were two mother-
daughter pairs on campus.7

The literature on nontraditional students further characterizes them as

Rethinking the Nontraditional Student 645



part-time attenders and commuters (Bean & Metzner, 1985; Gilley &
Hawkes, 1989; Lace, 1986; Metzner & Bean, 1987; Pascarella & Teren-
zini, 1998). At West Virginia’s normal in West Liberty, some students
commuted to campus in an effort to save money. Similarly, many nor-
malites at the Territorial Normal School in Tempe, Arizona, during the
decade or so after it opened in 1886, commuted. One male student later
explained, “I rode horseback from Mesa to Tempe and returned each
day, milked six cows morning and evening, and each morning had to run
my horses down before I could go to Tempe. It took nearly 45 minutes to
make the distance.”8 Aside from a few scattered examples, however,
commuting from home was rare among normalites whose families
didn’t happen to live within walking distance of campus; after all, trans-
portation was limited. There is no evidence that any students in atten-
dance at a normal school attended part-time. Looking at the normalites
serves as a reminder, though, that attending part-time and commuting
are not intrinsic personal characteristics in the way that age, race, class,
and gender are. Present-day students attend part-time and commute be-
cause they cannot afford to attend full-time or live on campus and/or
their family or life commitments prohibit them from devoting them-
selves exclusively to the pursuit of higher education. Normalites clearly
shared the personal traits that create the special conditions of attendance
for today’s nontraditional students, but they lived under different histor-
ical conditions. Thus, although most were not commuters, many nor-
malites, like today’s nontraditional students, arrived with significant
work experience and found it necessary to work while attending normal
school.

Many state normal-school students had work experience, usually as
teachers, prior to matriculation. As early as the 1840s and early 1850s at
Bridgewater, “nearly all” of the students had themselves taught school.
Of the 2,500 students who enrolled at Oswego between its opening in
the mid-1860s and 1880, more than 1,000 had teaching experience, with
an average of three years in the classroom. During the late 1880s, more
than half of the students at Farmington, Maine arrived with teaching ex-
perience. Outside the Northeast, it was also very common for normalites
to have work experience as teachers. At Oshkosh in 1879 as well as in
1884, half of the students had taught, and among them the average time
spent in front of a class was 2.6 years. Between 1892 and 1908, the col-
lective student body at Oshkosh averaged one year of experience. In
their class histories, students conveyed the same idea a bit more cre-
atively: The class of 1895 taught “more than a thousand months,” and
the brains of members of the class of 1896 bore “unsightly marks . . .
caused by patient efforts to impress the American youth in our rural dis-

646 The Journal of Higher Education



tricts with the precept, knowledge is power.” Nearly half of the nor-
malites at Emporia, Kansas, in the late 1880s taught before entering the
normal, many for five or more years. Tempe’s Julia McDonald and
James Patterson were former teachers, as were more than 34% of the
students at Florence, Alabama, around the turn of the century.9

Many normalites worked while enrolled, and self-supporting students
were not unusual at the state normals. In 1882, President Edwin Hewett
of Illinois State Normal University reported, “Many of our students . . .
are dependent upon their own exertions for means”; and a decade or so
later Principal John Mahelm Berry Sill of the State Normal School in
Ypsilanti, Michigan, said, “Our students are working young men and
women who earn their little money by the hardest toil.” Just after the
turn of the twentieth century, one-third of the students at Florence
“earned their own money to pay expenses,” while Oregon’s State Super-
intendent of Public Instruction expressed concern about the large num-
bers of “self-supporting” normalites, urging, “Greater precaution must
be exercised to prevent the ambitious from overworking than to rouse
the sluggards.” Gender often determined the term-time jobs normalites
were able to find: in New York, female students at Oneonta worked as
babysitters or maids, while male students at Oswego shoveled snow,
sold various products, or worked as janitors.10 Throughout the country, it
was common for normalites to take leaves of absence to earn the neces-
sary money to continue their education, an earlier approach to being a
part-time student. Most often, they taught in rural schools for one or
more terms before returning to normal school. For example, a student at
Nebraska’s Peru State Normal School in 1873 soon found himself short
of money. He later remembered:

My graduation looked far off to me and my limited means made it necessary
to quit school for a while and return to the farm. But Dr. Curry, then princi-
pal, learning my predicament found me a country school in Otoe county that
enabled me to return again after I had finished my school. This I continued to
do, alternating between teaching and going to school until I finally graduated
in the spring of 1879.11

Like today’s nontraditional students, normalites found ways to over-
come their financial limitations.

Although work experience as well as age must have fostered a certain
level of maturity among normal-school students, they were hardly
worldly-wise. In fact, socio-historical examination of normalites reveals
that many were quite provincial, or lacked sophistication. This signifi-
cant characteristic is curiously absent from the literature on nontradi-
tional students, but it is unmistakable in accounts of the normal schools.
A chronicler of Bridgewater State Normal School observed, “It is hard

Rethinking the Nontraditional Student 647



for us to conceive how provincial these students were. Most of them had
never been far from their own towns. . . .” Sarah A. Dixon, who gradu-
ated from Bridgewater in 1885, called herself “a sip of a girl from an
isolated shore home.” Throughout the country, normalites were predom-
inantly from very small, often very rural, towns and villages. At
Arkansas’ Branch Normal College for black students, the vast majority
of students were from the rural areas surrounding Pine Bluff. Between
the 1880s and the 1900s, 23 to 30% of all Oshkosh, Wisconsin, students
hailed from Oshkosh, which was a booming lumber town. Another 8%
or fewer of the students came from other lumber towns in the area, and
only a few hailed from the bigger cities of Milwaukee, Madison, and,
occasionally, Chicago. More than half of the students were from much
smaller, rural towns. The 1890s football cheer for the normal in Gene-
seo, New York, included a line that would also have suited most other
normals: “We came to the gridiron fresh from verdant farms.” Mean-
while, many of the students at California’s state normal in Chico were
from very remote mountain settlements in the northern part of the state.
When they arrived at the normal, Chico was the largest town they had
ever seen.12

It is hardly surprising that students from such remote areas tended to
be unpolished. For many years after the 1868 establishment of the state
normal in Peru, the many students there who had lived “isolated lives”
tended to be “ignorant of the social ways incident to more thickly settled
portions of the country; hence, they sometimes appeared reserved and
awkward.” A student at Peru in the late nineteenth century remembered,
“Girls with brown faces and plain clothing” and “boys with calloused
hands.” Early in the twentieth century, the principal at Willimantic, Con-
necticut, complained, “Many of our students are crude. Their manner of
talking, their table manners, their actions often show a decided lack of
culture.”13 Sensitive to the implied class prejudice, present-day adminis-
trators and researchers would hesitate to make observations such as
these. Nontraditional students likely have similar rough edges, however,
and a non-pejorative understanding of their provincialism might be an
important step toward serving them more effectively. While the nor-
malites’ lack of sophistication frustrated Willimantic’s principal, it also
made them hungry for inspiration. For example, an Oshkosh student 
declared:

When one for the first time beholds an imposing structure, whether reared by
man’s stalwart arm or nature’s majestic art, impressions are made upon the
delicate parchment of the mind which age can not dim nor time obliterate.
Such is the character of my first impressions on beholding the Oshkosh Nor-
mal. Its architectural symmetry symbolizes the noble educational system in

648 The Journal of Higher Education



which it forms an important factor; . . . its spacious assembly room and its
commodious recitation rooms silently insinuate to the pupil the possibilities
of mental expansion, while each high ceiling proclaims the aphorism, “There
is always room at the top.”14

Attendance at state normal schools was a significant departure in the
theretofore unsophisticated lives of many students. As the next section
explains, the state normals not only accepted students from nontradi-
tional backgrounds, but they also engaged their sense of awe to create an
atmosphere that embraced them.

Embracing Nontraditional Students

This examination of state normal-school students has suggested that
the types of students now considered to be nontraditional were promi-
nent in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries on state normal-
school campuses. A century later, researchers have reported on—and
forecasted further—demographic changes in higher education. To meet
this challenge, Arthur Levine has called for “better serving the under-
served” (Levine & Associates, 1989, p. 172), and much of the literature
on nontraditional students is concerned with how to do this (see, for ex-
ample, Astin, 1993; Gilley & Hawkes, 1989; Lace, 1986; Richardson &
Skinner, 1992). It might also be useful for current administrators, as well
as researchers, simply to understand that they are not pioneers in their
efforts to welcome atypical students to college campuses. State normal
schools hardly “underserved” these students, but instead enabled them
to take advantage of an engaging intellectual life and to become in-
volved in public life, which encouraged them to move far beyond their
humble backgrounds. Normal-school administrators and faculty mem-
bers’ first step, more than a half-century before government programs
designed to bring underprivileged students into institutions of higher ed-
ucation, was to ensure that the normals were accessible and affordable
for all students.

Admission requirements at state normal schools were fairly loose and
somewhat flexible. They did not require matriculants to be high-school
graduates until education at that level was attainable by most residents
of their states, which generally was not until the early twentieth century.
Before they required high-school graduation, normal schools adminis-
tered admission examinations, but prospective students could present
teaching credentials or diplomas instead of sitting for them. Previous
years’ exams were often published in normal-school catalogues, making
them available to students preparing for future admission. In the late
1870s, San Jose, California published questions in arithmetic, grammar,

Rethinking the Nontraditional Student 649



geography, and spelling for admission to the junior class and additional
questions for admission to the “middle” and senior classes. Applicants
to Oshkosh, Wisconsin, during the 1880s had to score 70% or better in
reading and spelling, arithmetic, grammar, geography, and U.S. history.
In Vermont, Castleton’s admission exam in the early 1890s covered
spelling, arithmetic, physiology, grammar, geography, Vermont history,
U.S. history, and civics.15 In addition to academic qualifications, other
admission requirements were fairly easy to acquire. Applicants had to be
15 or 16 (or 14, at Pine Bluff, Arkansas) years in age, and usually of
good “moral character” and health, presumably as prerequisites for
being good teachers in the future.16

In addition to setting fairly easy standards for admission, many state
normal schools assured accessibility by providing detailed directions to
campus and individual assistance with settling in. Many normal schools
did everything short of printing train schedules in their catalogs. For ex-
ample, an Oshkosh catalog described the “numerous lines of railroad
and river steamers entering the city, as well as its favorable location.”
Similarly, a bulletin for the normal in Florence, Alabama, explained that
the “main line of the Southern Railway from Chattanooga passes
through Sheffield, and all passenger trains are met there by electric cars
which deliver passengers in Florence in about twenty minutes.”17 After
careful instructions helped many students reach campus, the administra-
tion—which often consisted solely of the president or principal—liter-
ally reached out to individual new students. During the 1870s, 1880s,
and 1890s, Oshkosh’s Principal George Albee helped each new student
get situated and plan a course schedule. The 1907–1908 Geneseo, New
York, catalog declared, “Students both old and new are urged to consult
the Principal freely regarding their work and their plans for the future.”
Clark Davis, who attended Ypsilanti State Normal School in Michigan,
remembered that upon arrival in Ypsilanti, “I made my first call upon the
man whom I had been writing—namely, President Jones. He treated me
cordially and courteously, received me at his home, took me to his of-
fice, and walked over some of the city streets to show me rooming
houses and boarding houses.”18

While attainable admission requirements and approachable principals
eased many students’ adjustment to normal school, probably the most
important factor in accessibility was affordability. Most state normal
schools charged a modest tuition, which they waived for students who
signed a pledge to teach in the state after graduation, usually for no more
than a few years. The 1879 catalog for Bridgewater, Massachusetts, ex-
plained: “Tuition is free to all who comply with the condition of teach-
ing in the schools of Massachusetts.” Such contracts were in the states’

650 The Journal of Higher Education



interest because they increased the teacher supply, but tuition waivers
also made a normal-school education affordable for many students.
Those who signed pledges to teach had only to buy or rent books, and
pay for supplies, transportation, room, board, and perhaps activities fees
or music lessons. And at many institutions, financial help from the state
was also available for these expenses. The Bridgewater catalog also ex-
plained: “The State makes an annual appropriation . . . which is distrib-
uted at the close of each term among pupils from Massachusetts who
merit and need the aid, in sums varying according to the distance of their
residences from Bridgewater.”19 Similarly, during the 1880s the state of
Kansas began to reimburse Emporia students three cents per mile for
travel beyond one hundred miles; and until 1897, Geneseo students who
signed the declaration to teach received reimbursement for travel costs.
Ypsilanti’s Principal Sill persuaded the state legislature to provide free
textbooks, arguing that “the cost of books is often ‘the last straw that
breaks the camel’s back.’ ” In other states, government officials were di-
rectly involved in granting subsidies. Beginning in 1897, each member
of the Alabama legislature was able to nominate a student for a two-year
normal-school scholarship, which covered tuition and incidental fees;
those students appointed by senators also received a grant for boarding
costs. Between 1903 and 1909, normalites in Texas could also earn
“scholarship appointments,” which covered boarding costs, through ap-
pointments by their senators, congressmen, or even the governor.20

Increasing numbers of campus scholarships and loan funds helped
normal students pay expenses that the state did not cover. As early as
1878, Pine Bluff, Arkansas, had an “honorary scholars” program, which
provided scholarships for students who passed an exam. For many years
beginning in 1882, the Nashville-based Peabody Fund provided for six-
teen annual scholarships at Florence, and additional scholarships at
other southern normals. Fairly widespread by the early twentieth cen-
tury, institution-based scholarships were usually funded by and named
for former faculty members or graduating classes.21 If all else failed, the
personal efforts of principals and faculty members occasionally enabled
individual students to overcome remaining financial obstacles. Long-
serving principals, such as Edward Sheldon at Oswego, New York
(1861–1897), Percy Bugbee at Oneonta, New York (1898 –1933), Cecil
Evans at San Marcos, Texas (1911–1942), E. E. Smith at Fayetteville,
North Carolina (1883 –1933), and many others lent their own money to
students in distress. Smith and Pine Bluff’s Joseph Corbin (1875 –1902),
both principals of all-black normal schools, were purposely lax in col-
lecting tuition and fees from students they knew to be struggling; Smith
also accepted farm products in lieu of currency.22 These individual ef-

Rethinking the Nontraditional Student 651



forts, which filled some of the cracks between state-sponsored tuition
waivers and subsidies, as well as campus scholarships and loan funds,
helped to make normal schools affordable—so affordable that, during
the early 1910s, Geneseo catalogs included the assurance that “no wor-
thy student ever leaves Geneseo because of lack of funds with which to
complete the course.”23

Beyond assuring that students from atypical backgrounds enjoyed
easy access, state normal schools offered an atmosphere in which these
students thrived. The literature on today’s nontraditional students
stresses “academic integration” (Metzner & Bean, 1987, p. 30), or “in-
corporation or support of the students’ needs” in “a new, stronger acade-
mic community” (Gilley & Hawkes, 1989, p. 34; see also Astin, 1993).
Another important issue is scale: the smaller the scale of the institution
as a whole or designated programs within it, the higher the comfort level
of nontraditional students (Richardson & Skinner, 1992). Most normal
schools were small in scale, but size was only one factor in an atmos-
phere that embraced students from “underserved” backgrounds. Their
needs subtly yet ubiquitously shaped these institutions in such a way
that serving them was simply intrinsic to the normals’ strong academic
community. Without special services or programs aimed at nontradi-
tional students, normal schools offered them a comfortable and inclusive
intellectual life and numerous opportunities for leadership and involve-
ment in public life. Indeed, state normal schools played a “total adult so-
cializing” (Bean & Metzner, 1985, p. 488) role in the lives of their stu-
dents, suggesting an alternative to the notion that nontraditional students
are “not greatly influenced by the social environment” (Bean & Met-
zner, 1985, p. 489) in institutions of higher education.

State normal schools created a lively and challenging intellectual life
for all students. The bedrock of a strong academic community, the for-
mal curriculum constructively recognized students’ limited background
and helped them reach further. The normal principals and faculties
found that many of their students, especially before the turn of the twen-
tieth century, arrived with little more than an elementary-level educa-
tion. Because they sought to prepare well-rounded teachers, the normals
began from where the students’ prior education left off, offering basic
and more advanced studies in academic disciplines as well as teaching
methods. All students focused on a core of academic studies in mathe-
matics, the sciences, history and civics, and English and language arts.
The normals’ approach to teaching these subjects allowed students com-
fortably to gain a certain amount of high-status knowledge.

Western culture wove its way through the required curriculum. Begin-
ning with Greece and Rome, historical studies covered the highlights of

652 The Journal of Higher Education



Western civilization. In 1894, for example, the catalog for Westfield
Normal School in Massachusetts explained that the “General History”
course included “Europe from the beginning of the Middle Ages to the
present time.” Bridgewater imported from London “casts, models, and
flat copies” of great art works. The aspect of Western culture that occu-
pied the largest part of the required curriculum was what the normal in
Willimantic, Connecticut, called, “The best literary works.” There, ac-
cording to the 1890 catalog, the English literature course covered “Dick-
ens to Burns” during the second term, “Burns to Bacon” during the third
term, and “Bacon to Chaucer” during the fourth term. Shakespeare was
ever-present on normal-school reading lists; at Westfield, students read
The Merchant of Venice, Julius Caesar, Hamlet or Macbeth, as well as a
comedy. In addition to English literature, students at Bridgewater stud-
ied American poets and writers such as Longfellow, Whittier, and
Hawthorne. Modern and ancient languages were generally optional
studies, but institutions as diverse as Castleton, Pine Bluff, and the Ter-
ritorial Normal School in Tempe, Arizona, required Latin.24

Through both required and elective subjects, normal-school students
also immersed themselves in another passion of the middle and upper
classes in the late nineteenth century: the natural sciences. Between the
1870s and the 1900s, virtually all normal students took short courses in
physiology, geography, botany, and natural philosophy (called nature
study after the turn of the century), as well as at least a few of the fol-
lowing subjects: geology, mineralogy, chemistry, zoology, physics, and
astronomy. Together, they performed physical and chemical experiments
with rudimentary apparatus, dissected animals, and undertook field ex-
peditions to study local land forms and flora. In keeping with the late-
nineteenth-century zeal for scientific collecting, many normal schools
amassed sizable collections of mineralogical, geological, physiological,
zoological, and even entomological “specimens.” For example, begin-
ning in the 1860s, the state normal in Winona, Minnesota, had a growing
collection of fossils and minerals from quarries and railway cuts. In
1875 the school purchased a collection of “minerals, fossils, casts,
corals, sponges, and shells,” which also contained “the partial remains
of a Mastodon skeleton.” By the 1880s, the normal’s museum of natural
history also had a bird collection. Science instruction and collections not
only enabled students to study fossils, minerals, and animals, but also
invited them to share the passion for science.25

While the normal schools’ formal curriculum established a comfort-
able academic community, activities outside the classroom strengthened
it, intensifying students’ intellectual socialization. By the 1870s and in-
creasingly each year thereafter, normal students founded and partici-

Rethinking the Nontraditional Student 653



pated in countless societies, clubs, and publications. These organiza-
tions contributed to the vibrant campus intellectual life, which enabled
students to grow immensely through intense interaction with one an-
other, their professors, and campus visitors. Academic clubs focused on
a variety of topics, primarily in the sciences and foreign languages, and
tended to be fairly short-lived. Other student organizations, as well as
visiting speakers and performers, exposed students to areas of high cul-
ture that were generally outside the formal curriculum, especially classi-
cal music and art history.

But it was the literary societies, by far the most long-lived, popular,
and far-reaching student organizations, that most facilitated the involve-
ment of these nontraditional students in the life of the mind. Societies
met weekly or biweekly, usually on Friday or Saturday afternoon or
evening, to execute well-planned programs of orations, debates, moder-
ated discussions, skits, and musical entertainment. In San Jose, the State
Normal School’s 1900 catalog reported, “The purpose of these societies
is to acquaint their members with the customs and practices of delibera-
tive bodies, to give an impetus to literary investigation, and to develop a
talent for literary pursuits, public speaking, and extemporaneous discus-
sions.” Meetings were occasionally open to the public, and “joint meet-
ings” between two societies were quite common; one at San Jose in
1887 drew over 400 spectators. At the state normal in Greeley, Colorado,
the two literary societies were great rivals, and competed each spring in
oratory, essays, and debate in the town’s Opera House before a large au-
dience. In the South and the East, where social mores were generally tra-
ditional, literary societies were usually single-sex. In a unique arrange-
ment, New York’s normal schools housed branches of statewide
societies. Those for women included Clionian, Arethusa, Alpha Delta,
and Agonian; and those for men included Delphic and Philalethean.
Gender segregation was less rigid in the Midwest and West. The
Lyceum, Literati, and Belles-Lettres societies at Emporia were all coed-
ucational, as were the Roosevelt, Sophoclean, and Emersonian societies
at New Mexico Normal University in Las Vegas. Throughout the late
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the majority of normalites be-
longed to literary societies. Beginning in the late 1880s, some normals,
such as those in Tempe, Arizona, and Cedar Falls, Iowa, had the added
incentive of earning credit for society work. A few normals, such as Illi-
nois Normal University, and Oklahoma’s Southwestern State Normal
School, required membership.26

Literary societies enabled students to further pursue some of the top-
ics covered in the curriculum. The main focus, of course, was literature;
societies regularly studied a variety of British and American authors.

654 The Journal of Higher Education



The Browning clubs at Florence and Oshkosh were named for Elizabeth
Barrett Browning, a favorite among their members, just as the Shake-
speare(n) societies at Cedar Falls, San Jose, and San Marcos were
named for the great playwright. Other popular British authors included
Charles Dickens, Jane Austin, and Alfred, Lord Tennyson. Studies of the
poetry and prose of John Greenleaf Whittier, Henry Wadsworth Longfel-
low, Washington Irving, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Mark Twain, deep-
ened students’ familiarity with American literary culture. San Marcos’
Every Day Society declared Irving its “patron saint,” and imitated him in
the 1909 yearbook, presenting a supposed “unpublished tale” in which a
lost hunter dreamt of “the girls of the land where the sweet peas grow,”
who were suspiciously similar to Every-Day members. In many literary
societies, students also explored great literature by performing it. At
Oneonta, for example, various societies staged Tennyson’s The Princess
in 1892, Shakespeare’s As You Like It and The Merchant of Venice in
1901, and Dickens’ Tom Pinch in 1905.27

Perhaps the most clear illustration of how the normals’ academic
community allowed students comfortably to broaden their horizons is
the societies’ vicarious travels throughout the United States and the
world. In 1876, members of the Normal School Philologian Society at
Westfield enjoyed “an illustrated lecture. . . . An Account of his (Mr.
Diller’s) Geological Vacation . . . up the Valley in the State of New
York.” In 1899, “Miss Dopp favored” Oshkosh’s Phoenix “society with
some of her experiences among the Mormons in Salt Lake City.” A
decade or so later, a program entitled “Travels in the West” took Flo-
rence’s Dixie society, figuratively, to Salt Lake City and Yellowstone
National Park. Students’ vicarious travels also took them to Europe and
more foreign locales. In 1880 –1881, one literary society at Oshkosh
studied Spain and Germany, and in other years both San Marcos’
Comenian and Oshkosh’s Phoenix studied China. The normal students’
world shrank as they acquainted themselves with many distant regions.
Together, the literary societies and the formal curriculum created an at-
mosphere that welcomed normalites into a new intellectual world. Burtt
N. Timbie, Bridgewater ‘96, remembered, “These were years of mind
and soul awakening. We came to love learning for learning’s sake.”28

Normalites’ socialization was not limited to academic areas; as com-
plete socializing institutions, state normal schools also enabled students
to refine the way they carried and presented themselves. The formal cur-
riculum required all students to polish their style of written and oral ex-
pression. Rhetoric, composition, and declamation were curricular sta-
ples. Through these and other classes, the normals sought to provide
“practical training in the correct and effective use of our mother tongue”

Rethinking the Nontraditional Student 655



and “cultivate the individual student’s powers of expression in both oral
and written language.” Students honed their powers of expression
through numerous writing assignments, as well as public speaking re-
quirements. Most normal schools required each student to present some
sort of schoolwide public declamation at least once, but often on a
weekly or monthly basis. For example, “Friday Afternoon Exercises”
began at Geneseo in 1877; for the next few decades, classes took turns
presenting programs of essays, readings, and recitations. At most normal
schools, commencement addresses by all or some of the graduating stu-
dents, depending on the size of the class, were the culmination of terms
of work.29

Literary societies also focused on refining their members’ styles of
expression and composition. Students wrote and delivered orations and
essays on different subjects from week to week. Several of the all-male
groups, such as The Normal Congress at Bridgewater and The Standard
Society at Buffalo, focused on parliamentary procedure. A debate was
usually the focal point of the literary society meeting; debating fostered
poise, precision, and accuracy in oral communication. In the Midwest,
statewide and even interstate normal-school debate and oratorical con-
tests were common and attracted large crowds. After Oshkosh’s Eliza-
beth Shepard won the Wisconsin state contest with her speech on
Ulysses S. Grant, her classmates reported, “For Grant when she spoke in
electrical tones . . . She made the cold shivers run down our backbones.”
Buoyed by the normals’ vibrant academic community, women com-
monly orated and debated in public in the Midwest and West, and occa-
sionally in the East. When they did so, they ironically gained cultural
polish while violating the gender conventions of high society. Society
members also refined their writing skills by producing serial newspapers
or magazines; many normal-school student publications began in the so-
cieties. Typical titles were: Normal Thought, published by the Standard
Society at Buffalo; Normal Ray, published by the Baconian Literary So-
ciety at the State Normal School of Troy, Alabama; and The Students’
Offering, which was a coordinated effort by all of the literary societies at
Cedar Falls.30

Not only did the literary societies increase students’ comfort with
public speaking and writing, but they, along with class organizations and
organized athletics, also fostered normalites’ self-confidence as leaders
and participants in public life. Students took advantage of multiple lead-
ership opportunities. The societies, as well as organizations ranging
from academic clubs to YW- and YMCAs all had student officers. By the
1880s, classes elected officers and, beginning in the 1890s, student gov-
ernment associations began to appear. Men served as presidents of coed-

656 The Journal of Higher Education



ucational organizations in numbers disproportionately greater than their
representation on campus, but women did occasionally serve as presi-
dent and often occupied other class offices. The constitution of the cam-
puswide self-government association formed at Oshkosh in 1896 stipu-
lated that each class would be represented by one woman and one man.
When San Jose’s Student Body in 1898 elected Harriet Quilty its first
president, The Normal Pennant remarked, “Miss Quilty needs no further
introduction to our students, her great abilities as a leader are known
from Juniors to Seniors.” Quilty and other normalites seized the unusual
opportunity to serve in a leadership role.31

On the athletic fields and basketball courts, normalites gained further
experience as public actors in a strong community. Physical activity was
a long-standing part of normal life, and by the mid 1890s, athletic com-
petitions were quite prominent. Illinois Normal held its first annual field
day in 1895, including running races, shot-put, discus and hammer
throws, tennis, and bicycle races. In team sports, men participated in
football as well as baseball and basketball, but the relatively small num-
bers of male students meant a relatively low profile for these intramural
and occasional intercollegiate teams. Basketball was really the territory
of female normalites, and it soon became wildly popular. Illinois Nor-
mal inaugurated intramural competition among women’s teams in 1895,
as did Ellensburg, Washington, where a local newspaper reported, “The
ladies are getting to be splendid players.” In 1902 Ellensburg’s women
players began interscholastic competition. Beginning at the turn of the
century, women and men diversified their athletic endeavors to include
sports such as tennis and hockey, but women’s basketball continued to
draw the most spectators. At Oshkosh, the men reported, “They did
make plays and no mistake / Those girls in blue and yellow; / And to
spur on the lusty crowd / We cheered them to a fellow.” Along with im-
proving their level of fitness, these athletes undoubtedly gained poise as
they performed in a public setting.32

Finally, the broader social atmosphere of the normals was remarkably
vibrant, prompting one observer to write that San Jose exuded “enthusi-
asm and mutual confidence.” At the most formal level, students attended
all sorts of anniversary celebrations and building dedications, which
brought a sense of history and grandeur to campus. Usually spanning
several days, graduation ceremonies generally included a baccalaureate
sermon by a local minister, academic speeches by all graduates or stu-
dent representatives of the senior class, and speeches by the principal or
perhaps a visiting dignitary, as well as the ceremonial conferring of de-
grees. In addition, students created their own tradition of more- and less-
formal events. In end-of-the-year “class day” celebrations, they took the

Rethinking the Nontraditional Student 657



stage to read the class history and prophesy and make other speeches. At
Castleton in the late 1890s, celebrations included addresses to the ju-
niors that offered advice as well as gentle gibes. From week to week,
campus life was alive with other student-initiated events; all sorts of re-
ceptions and socials provided normalites with opportunities to grow
more comfortable as public actors. At one such reception, sponsored by
the YWCA at San Jose, a leader announced at regular intervals new con-
versation topics including “the last book I read,” the weather, and even
“women’s sphere.” This gathering, like countless others on normal cam-
puses, was virtually a seminar on the mores of polite society. With so
many opportunities to involve oneself in a robust and inclusive academic
community, it is hardly surprising that the “sip of a girl from an isolated
shore home” in Massachusetts described attending normal school as,
“not unlike birth into another world.”33

Conclusion

State normal schools in the late nineteenth and early twentieth cen-
turies not only welcomed women, members of minority groups, and stu-
dents with other nontypical characteristics, but also included them in a
rich intellectual and social community and encouraged them to reach be-
yond their unprivileged backgrounds. While the official mission of the
normal schools was simply teacher preparation, the unofficial mission of
serving nontraditional students was integral to these institutions. Re-
flecting on the later transformation of former normal schools into uni-
versities, E. Alden Dunham (1969) observed, “One of the ironies of this
movement is that a first-class teachers college may become a third-class
university as it grows and changes its function” (p. 1). Thus, in the
search for status, the former normals gave up their distinctive identity,
including the behind-the-scenes yet ground-breaking mission of serving
nontraditional students. More than three decades ago, Dunham (1969)
saw the “question of model, of institutional purpose” as “the greatest
single problem” facing state colleges and regional universities, because
they lost “institutional coherence, warmth, and friendliness” as “the at-
mosphere” changed “from soft to hard” (pp. 155 –156). The new “hard”
environment marginalized the needs of nontraditional students. Rethink-
ing the notion of “nontraditional” from the historical perspective of state
normal schools is an important reminder not only of atypical students’
rich history in higher education, but also of what higher education insti-
tutions and society stand to lose in turning away from the mission—
whether official or unofficial— of serving these students.

658 The Journal of Higher Education



Notes

1Gillan quoted in Semi-centennial history of the Illinois State Normal University,
1857–1907. Normal, IL: Illinois State Normal University, 1907, p. 202.

2David Sands Wright, Fifty years at the Teachers College: Historical and personal
reminiscences. Cedar Falls: Iowa State Teachers College, 1926, p. 130; William Freder-
ick Hartman, The history of Colorado State College of Education: The normal school pe-
riod, 1890–1911. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Colorado State College of Educa-
tion, 1951, p. 153; United States Commissioner/Bureau of Education, Reports and
Bulletins. Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1868 –1945.

3Most black normal schools later became agricultural and mechanical colleges, then
universities. North Carolina established a normal school for Native American students in
Pembroke, and Oklahoma established one in Tahlequah.

4William Marshall French & Florence Smith French, College of the Empire State: A
Centennial history of The New York State College for Teachers at Albany. Albany, 1944,
pp. 95, 258; Oswego students quoted in Dorothy Rogers, Fountainhead of teacher edu-
cation: A century in the Sheldon Tradition. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1961,
p. 59; Robert T. Brown, The rise and fall of the people’s colleges: The Westfield Normal
School, 1839–1914. Westfield, MA: Institute for Massachusetts Studies, Westfield State
College, 1988, pp. 61–62; Robert McGraw, A Century of Service. In Herb Taylor (Ed.),
The first 100 years: Worcester State College. Worcester, MA: Worcester State College,
Office of Community Services, 1974, Section 4 (no page nos.); Louie G. Ramsdell, First
hundred years of the first state normal school in America: The State Teachers College at
Framingham, Massachusetts—1839 –1939. In First state normal school in America: The
State Teachers College at Framingham, Massachusetts. Framingham, MA: The Alumnae
Association of the State Teachers College at Framingham, Massachusetts, 1959, p. 11;
Helen E. Marshall, Grandest of enterprises: Illinois State Normal University,
1857–1957. Normal, IL: Illinois State Normal University, 1956, p. 133; Elizabeth Tyler
Bugaighis, Blackboard diplomacy: The role of American normal schools in exporting
education to Latin America, 1891–1924. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the
American Educational Research Association, New Orleans, April 2000; Tom W.
Nichols, Rugged summit. San Marcos, TX, 1970, p. 94.

5David A. Gould, Policy and pedagogues: School reform and teacher professionaliza-
tion in Massachusetts, 1840–1920. Unpublished doctoral dissertaion, Brandeis Univer-
sity, 1977, p. 87; Brown, The rise and fall of the people’s colleges, p. 79; Percentages of
Southwest Texas parents calculated from data in Announcement of the Southwest Texas
State Normal School for the annual session 1904–1905, 1905–1906, 1906–1907,
1907–1908, 1908–1909, 1909–1910, 1910–1911. Austin: State Printers, 1903 –1910;
Irving H. Hart, The first 75 Years. Cedar Falls, IA: Iowa State Teachers College, 1951.
p. 116; A history of the State Normal School of Kansas for the first twenty-five years.
Emporia, KS, 1889, p. 45; Elizabeth L. Wheeler. Isaac Fisher: The frustrations of a
Negro educator at Branch Normal College, 1902–1911. The Arkansas Historical Quar-
terly, 41 (Spring 1982), 5.

6Arthur Clarke Boyden, Albert Gardner Boyden and the Bridgewater State Normal
School: A memorial volume. Bridgewater, MA: Arthur H. Willis, 1919, p. 30; newspaper
quoted in Irene Goldgraben, And the glory of the latter house shall be greater than that of
the former. In And the glory of the latter house shall be greater than that of the former:
An informal history of Castleton State College. Castleton, VT, 1968, p. 19; Brown, The
rise and fall of the people’s colleges, p. 89; Rogers, Oswego: Fountainhead, p. 58; cheer
quoted in The Arkansasyer. Pine Bluff, AR: Faculty of Arkansas Agricultural, Mechani-
cal and Normal College, 1 (1928), p. 1. In Keepers of the spirit: The L. A. Davis, Sr. His-
torical Collection, Exhibit, Isaac S. Hathaway-John M. Howard Fine Arts Center, Uni-
versity of Arkansas at Pine Bluff, Pine Bluff, AR, May 1995.

7Dignam quoted in Work Projects Administration in the State of Massachusetts, The

Rethinking the Nontraditional Student 659



State Teachers College at Westfield. Boston: State Department of Education, 1941, p. 53;
Class day program, 1888, University of Wisconsin—Oshkosh Archives, Area Research
Center, Polk Library, Oshkosh, WI, p. 18; Carey W. Brush, In honor and good faith: A
history of the State University College at Oneonta, New York. Oneonta, NY: The Faculty-
Student Association of State University Teachers College at Oneonta, 1965, pp. 45, 46,
114; Hartman, The history of Colorado State College of Education, p. 154; Ernest J.
Hopkins & Alfred Thomas, Jr., The Arizona State University story. Phoenix: Southwest
Publishing Co., 1960, pp. 85 –86; Elisabeth Ann Bowles, A good beginning: The first
four decades of the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Chapel Hill: The Uni-
versity of North Carolina Press, 1967, pp. 15 –16; ages of San-Marcos students calcu-
lated from data in Student Registers, 1903 –1910, box 70, series 3, Southwest Texas
State University Archives, Special Collections, Alkek Library, San Marcos, TX; Douglas
R. Skopp, Bright with promise: From the normal and training school to SUNY Platts-
burg, 1889–1989. Norfolk, VA: The Donning Company, 1989, pp. 62–63.

8Frank T. Reuter, West Liberty State College: The first 125 years. West Liberty, WV:
West Liberty State College, 1963, p. 121; L. B. Johnson (not Lyndon Baines) quoted in
Hopkins and Thomas, The Arizona State University story p. 93.

9George H. Martin, The Bridgewater Spirit. In Seventy-fifth anniversary of the state
normal school, Bridgewater, Massachusetts, June 19, 1915. Bridgewater, MA: Arthur H.
Willis, 1915, p. 13; Rogers, Oswego: Fountainhead, p. 59; Farmington statistics based on
information in George C. Purington, History of the state normal school, Farmington,
Maine. Farmington, ME: Knowlton, McLeary & Co., 1889, pp. 141–174; Oshkosh statis-
tics calculated from Annual catalogue of the state normal school at Oshkosh, Wis., for the
school year 1879– 80, 1884– 85, 1889–90, 1891–92, 1893–94, 1895–96, 1897–98,
1899–1900, 1901–1902. Oshkosh, WI, 1880 –1902, and Oshkosh State Normal School
Bulletin (Oshkosh, WI), 1 (June 1904); 3 (June 1906); 5 (June 1908); quotations from
Class day programs (Oshkosh), 1895, p. 18; 1896, p. 16; A history of the State Normal
School of Kansas, p. 43; Hopkins & Thomas, The Arizona State University story, 85 –86;
Florence data calculated using statistics in State Superintendent of Education (Alabama),
Reports, 1899 and 1900. Montgomery, AL, pp. 31–32; 1901–1902, p. 117.

10Hewett quoted in Sandra D. Harmon, The voice, pen and influence of our women
are abroad in the land: Women and the Illinois State Normal University, 1857–1899. In
Catherine Hobbs (Ed.), Nineteenth-century women learn to write. Charlottesville: Uni-
versity of Virginia Press, 1995, p. 95; Egbert R. Isbell, A history of Eastern Michigan
University, 1849–1965. Ypsilanti, MI: Eastern Michigan University Press, 1971, p. 138;
State Superintendent of Education (Alabama), Report, 1901–1902, p. 117; Ellis A. Steb-
bins, The OCE story. Monmouth, OR: Oregon College of Education, 1973, p. 46; Brush,
In honor and good faith, p. 114; Rogers, Oswego: Fountainhead, p. 122.

11J. M. McKenzie, History of Peru State Normal. Auburn, NE: The Nemaha County
Republican, 1911, p. 98.

12Martin, The Bridgewater spirit, p. 14; Dixon quoted in Boyden, Albert Gardner
Boyden and the Bridgewater State Normal School, p. 143; State Superintendent of Pub-
lic Instruction (AR), Biennial Report, 1905–1906, p. 70; Annual Catalogue of the State
Normal School at Oshkosh, Wis., for the school year 1879– 80, 1884– 85, 1889–90,
1894–95, 1899–1900; Oshkosh State Normal School Bulletin 2 (June 1905); 7 (June
1910); Rosalind R. Fisher, “. . . the stone strength of the past . . .”: Centennial history of
State University College of Arts and Science at Geneseo, New York. Geneseo, NY, 1971,
p. 146; Maxine Ollie Merlino, A history of the California State Normal Schools—Their
origin, growth, and transformation into teachers colleges. Unpublished doctoral disser-
taion, University of Southern California, 1962, pp. 94–95.

13McKenzie, History of the Peru State Normal, pp. 22–23, 96; Principal’s annual re-
port, 1910 –1911, quoted in Arthur Charles Forst, Jr., From normal school to state col-
lege: The growth and development of Eastern Connecticut State College from 1889 to
1959. Unpublished doctoral dissertaion, University of Connecticut, 1980, p. 101.

660 The Journal of Higher Education



14Class day program (Oshkosh), 1888, pp. 17–18.
15Catalogue and circular of the California State Normal School, San Jose, 1879.

Sacramento, 1879, pp. 47–51; State Normal School, Castleton, Vermont, Flier, 1891,
Castleton State College Archives, Vermont Room, Coolidge Library, Castleton, VT; Al-
bert Salisbury, The normal schools of Wisconsin: A souvenir of the meeting of the Na-
tional Educational Association held at Milwaukee, Wis., July 6–9, 1897 (1897), p. 17.

16For admission requirements, see catalogues and bulletins of individual normal
schools. See also Fisher, “. . . the stone strength of the past . . . ,” p. 60; Susan Vaughn,
The history of State Teachers College, Florence, Alabama. Bulletin of the State Teachers
College, Florence, Alabama, 18 [1930s?], pp. 15, 25; Fredrick Chambers, Historical
study of Arkansas Agricultural, Mechanical and Normal College, 1873–1943. Unpub-
lished EdD dissertation, Ball State University, 1970, p. 68; Estelle Greathead, The story
of an inspiring past: Historical sketch of San Jose State Teachers College from 1862 to
1928. San Jose, CA: San Jose State Teachers College, 1928, p. 15; William Herald Her-
rmann, The rise of the public normal school system in Wisconsin. Unpublished doctoral
dissertation, University of Wisconsin, 1953, pp. 412– 413, 495; John Marvin Smith, The
history and growth of Southwest Texas State Teachers College. Unpublished MA thesis,
University of Texas–Austin, 1930, p. 53.

17Annual catalogue of the State Normal School at Oshkosh, Wis., for the school year
1898–99. Oshkosh, WI, 1899, p. 111; Bulletin of the State Normal College, Florence,
Alabama, 1 (1912), 9.

18The first half century of the Oshkosh Normal School. Oshkosh, WI: The Faculty of
State Normal School, 1921, p. 17; State Normal School, Geneseo, NY, 1907–1908, p. 19;
Isbell, A history of Eastern Michigan University, p. 166.

19Catalog quoted in As we were . . . As we are: Bridgewater State College,
1840–1876. Bridgewater, MA: Alumni Association, Bridgewater State College, 1876,
p. 79.

20A history of the State Normal School of Kansas, p. 29; Clayton C. Mau, Brief his-
tory of the State University Teachers College, Geneseo, New York. Geneseo, NY, 1956, p.
6; Isbell, A history of Eastern Michigan University, p. 138; Catalogue of the California
State Normal School, San Jose, 1895. Sacramento: State Printing Office, 1895, p. 9;
1900 (1900), p. 11; Michael Francis Bannon, A history of State Teachers College, Troy,
Alabama. Unpublished EdD dissertation, George Peabody College for Teachers, 1954,
p. 47; Announcement of the Southwest Texas State Normal School for the annual session
1908–1909, p. 44.

21Chambers, Historical study of Arkansas Agricultural, Mechanical and Normal Col-
lege, p. 80; Vaughn, The history of State Teachers College, Florence, p. 38; on scholar-
ships, see catalogues and bulletins of individual normal schools.

22Rogers, Oswego: Fountainhead, p. 71; Brush, In honor and good faith, pp. 32,
102–103; Nichols, Rugged summit, pp. 92–93; E. Louise Murphy, Origin and develop-
ment of Fayetteville State Teachers College, 1867–1959—A chapter in the history 
of the education of negroes in North Carolina. Unpublished doctoral dissertation,
New York University, 1960, p. 167; Thomas Rothrock, Joseph Carter Corbin and negro
education in the University of Arkansas. The Arkansas Historical Quarterly, 30 (Winter
1971), 289.

23State Normal School, Geneseo, NY, 1911–1912, p. 28; 1912–1913, p. 25.
24Excerpt from Westfield catalog reprinted in Brown, The rise and fall of the people’s

colleges, 134 –140; Arthur C. Boyden, The history of Bridgewater Normal School.
Bridgewater, MA: Bridgewater Normal Alumni Association, 1933, pp. 54, 41– 42; Forst,
From normal school to state college: The growth and development of Eastern Connecti-
cut State College, pp. 68, 70 –71; Paul Stoler, Castleton Normal School in the nineteenth
century. In Holman D. Jordan (Ed.), And the glory of the latter house shall be greater
than that of the former: An informal history of Castleton State College. Castleton, VT:
Castleton State College, 1968, p. 52; Chambers, Historical study of Arkansas Agricul-

Rethinking the Nontraditional Student 661



tural, Mechanical and Normal College, 1873 –1943, pp. 66 –68, 143, 188, 218; Hopkins
& Thomas, The Arizona State University story, p. 89

25School catalogs, bulletins and histories (various); C. O. Ruggles, Historical sketch
and notes: Winona State Normal School, 1860–1910. Winona, MN: Jones & Kroeger
Co., 1910, pp. 143 –145.

26School catalogs, bulletins and histories (various); Catalogue of the California State
Normal School, San Jose, 1900. Sacramento: State Printing Office, 1900, p. 8; The Nor-
mal Index. San Jose, CA: Students of State Normal School, 3 (Nov. 1887), 32; Hartman,
The history of Colorado State College of Education, p. 159; Mau, Brief history of the
State University Teachers College, Geneseo, p. 17; W. Wayne Dedman, Cherishing this
heritage: The centennial history of the State University College at Brockport, New York.
New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1969, p. 124; A history of the State Normal School
of Kansas, pp. 62–73; Deward Homan Reed, The history of teachers colleges in New
Mexico. Nashville: George Peabody College for Teachers, 1948, p. 136; Hopkins &
Thomas, The Arizona State University Story, pp. 111–112; Wright, Fifty Years at the
teachers college, p. 116; Melvin Frank Fiegel, A history of Southwestern State College,
1903–1953. Unpublished EdD dissertation, Oklahoma State University, 1968, p. 27.

27School catalogs, bulletins, and histories (various); Vaughn, The history of State
Teachers College, Florence, p. 31; Oshkosh State Teachers College: The first seventy-five
years. Oshkosh, WI: Oshkosh State Teachers College, 1946, p. 68; Wright, Fifty years at
the teachers college, p. 74; The Normal Pennant. San Jose, CA: Students of State Nor-
mal School, 4 (June 1901), 18; The pedagogue. San Marcos, TX: Students of Southwest
Texas State Normal School, 1905, p. 61; Brush, In honor and good faith, p. 288.

28Work Projects Administration, The State Teachers College at Westfield, p. 72; The
normal advance. Oshkosh, WI: Students of State Normal School 6 (Oct. 1899), 33;
Dixie Club, Roll and minutes of meetings, Oct. 25, 1912, in Organizations, Files, Uni-
versity Collection, Collier Library Archives, University of North Alabama, Florence, AL
(no page nos.); Ladies’ Literary Society, Minutes, Oct. 8, 1880 and Feb. 4, 1881, in Uni-
versity of Wisconsin-Oshkosh Archives, Area Research Center, Polk Library, Oshkosh,
WI, pp. 127, 136; The Normal Star (San Marcos, TX: Students of Southwest Texas State
Normal School) 2(Feb. 23, 1912), 1; The Normal Advance, 18 (Jan. 1912), 128; Boyden,
Albert Gardner Boyden and the Bridgewater State Normal School, p. 146.

29School catalogs, bulletins, and histories (various); Catalogue and Circular of the
California State Normal School, San Jose, 1890 (Sacramento, 1890), p. 31; Vermont
State Normal Schools, 1909–1910 (Catalog, no publication information provided), p. 11;
Fisher, “. . . the stone strength of the past . . . ,” pp. 86 –87.

30Boyden, Albert Gardner Boyden and the Bridgewater State Normal School, pp.
116 –117; New York State Teachers College at Buffalo: A History, 1871–1946. Buffalo:
New York State Teachers College at Buffalo, 1946, pp. 143, 129; The Normal Advance,
5 (March 1899), 120 –123; Bannon, A history of State Teachers College, Troy, Alabama,
1954, p. 41; Hart, The first 75 years, p. 148.

31School catalogs, bulletins, and histories (various); Class day programs (Oshkosh),
1888; The first half century of the Oshkosh Normal School, p. 25; The Normal Pennant,
4 (May 1898), 4

32School catalogs, bulletins, and histories (various); Marshall, Grandest of enter-
prises, pp. 199 –200; Samuel R. Mohler, The first seventy-five years: A history of Central
Washington State College. Ellensburg, WA: Central Washington State College, 1967, p.
97; The Normal Advance, 3 (March-April 1897), 78.

33S. E. Rothery, Some educational institutions: Pilgrimages about San Jose. The
Overland Monthly, 30 (July 1897), 75; School catalogs, bulletins, and histories (vari-
ous); Commencement Programs, Castleton State Normal School, 1874–1940, Castleton
State College Archives, Vermont Room, Coolidge Library, Castleton, VT; The Normal
Index, 6 (March 25, 1891), 73; Boyden, Albert Gardner Boyden and the Bridgewater
State Normal School, p. 143.

662 The Journal of Higher Education



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