This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon, Jan. 31, 2013 - Among the many events being planned as part of the 50th anniversary celebration of the University of Missouri-St. Louis is one in April called “50 Years of Great Chemistry.”
For many of the people who were involved in the campus when it was being transformed from a country club golf course to a fledgling public university, a strong sense of personal chemistry was there from the start.
“The thing that struck me when I first arrived,” recalls Shirley Martin, founding dean of UMSL’s college of nursing, “was that everyone was so serious about their programs. I think UMSL is unique in that it started with a very unique group of people, and they stayed on.
“When I was there, a large number of people who had been there since the very beginning, since the clubhouse days, were still there, and they really had a special feeling for the campus and their programs. It was really a unique place to work.”
Today, with 84,000 alumni – 62,000 of them still in the St. Louis area – a growing number of programs, 350 acres, an endowment of $60 million and 13,000 degree-seeking students, UMSL is getting ready to mark its jubilee year with a big kickoff Friday night (Feb. 1), plus dozens of other events like lectures and symposia, a special symphony being written for the occasion -- even its own special brand of beer, Jubilee Brew by neighboring Ferguson Brewery.
But the celebration won’t just be looking backward. Chancellor Tom George says that coming off a successful fund-raising drive that blew past its original $100 million goal to bring in $154 million, UMSL is poised to take advantage of its new status to combine reach more students in more locations.
“Even 10 years ago we could not have done a campaign like that,” said George, who has been chancellor since 2003. “Now we have an alumni base that has matured, people who have resources to give. That’s an excellent gauge that we really have matured.”
Not just par for the course
How did that growth begin?
More than 50 years ago, the Normandy School District formed the so-called Committee of 28 to study the north county district’s future education needs. At that time, the novel concept of junior colleges was operated primarily by K-12 districts, and Normandy pushed through a $600,000 bond issue to buy the former 128-acre site of the Bellerive Country Club, which had moved farther south.
The time was ripe for higher education to be expanding. Returning vets from World War II and Korea were taking advantage of the GI Bill and wanted to earn their degree, though they often had to fit their classes around obligations of work and family.
The University of Missouri system, looking for a presence in the state’s two major urban areas, merged with the private University of Kansas City in the west and established a residence center on the newly purchased Normandy site.
Wayne Goode – a newly elected member of the Missouri House who went on to serve more than four decades in the legislature and is now head of the University of Missouri Board of Curators – recalls that when the Junior College District was established in the St. Louis area, plans to use the Normandy site changed. Goode introduced legislation to make it part of the university system instead.
“Urban universities were popping up around the country,” he said. “The needs of the baby boomers were coming along, and education was moving toward state-operated urban institutions.”
A dedication ceremony was held on Sept. 15, 1963, for the new St. Louis campus, which really was just the old Country Club building, with a capacity of 500 students tops. University officials knew that enrollment would quickly top that figure, so they knew that new space would be needed fast.
The first building was Benton Hall, whose science labs and other space opened for business while scaffolding was still in use as it received finishing touches. Other circumstances also showed how rudimentary the new school was. In place of a cafeteria, students ate food out of vending machines.
With few places to study, they camped out on the stairwells with their books and notes and typewriters. A storefront down the street, next to a laundromat, was rented for extra space. Faculty members had to get a special key to use the elevators so they wouldn’t be crowded out by students.
In a video titled “From Golf Balls to Hallowed Hall," pioneering faculty members recalled those rudimentary, almost primitive beginnings, a time where the promise and the opportunities that UMSL had to offer may have been difficult to see.
Lawrence Barton, now an emeritus professor of chemistry, recalled being recruited by Charles Armbruster, whose charisma helped attract instructors who often were not much older than their students.
“He was so absolutely positive and enthusiastic,” Barton said, recalling why he was persuaded to take a new job after his experience at Cornell and Liverpool.
Blanche Touhill, a pioneering member of the history faculty who went on to serve as chancellor for 12 years, said that early on, anyone hired to teach at UMSL was told they would have to have classes both during the day and at night, to accommodate the campus’ special student body that often had to juggle the demands of family and work as well as school.
“It was a very different kind of place,” she said. “It was very exciting. We were building a university, and the students understood that, too.”
University life cycles
George likes to place UMSL into the context of how higher education has grown in general in the United States over the past 150 years.
From the middle of the 19th century, when federal legislation established land-grant colleges and universities, higher education became more accessible to a wider segment of the American public and moved from being operated largely by churches to having a broader responsibility.
That wider access grew during the first half of the 20th century; then, with the scientific demands of initiatives like the Manhattan Project and the space race, coupled with the needs of baby boomers and the help from government tuition aid, the second half of the century – the UMSL era – saw new growth of campuses and programs.
“We’re a baby boomer, so to speak,” George said of the campus.
Now, as the campus joins a lot of other boomers in turning 50, George says it will be able to take advantage of the next wave in higher education, including increased use of digital technology. Befitting that revolution, George expects that future evolutionary cycles in higher education will be more compressed, into perhaps 10-year periods instead of those lasting 50 years.
But, he added, because the campus remains relatively young, it will be able to keep up with the pace.
“We can adapt to change a lot more easily than universities that are older,” George said.
Change is constant
Changing and adapting are two skills where UMSL has plenty of practice.
Touhill, who wrote a history of the campus when it turned 20, is now working on both a pictorial look back and a more formal history of its 50 years. She recalls its beginnings as “a tiny little place” to one that has “just grown like Topsy.”
UMSL has added undergraduate, graduate, professional and other programs, plus expanded partnerships with institutions like the Missouri History Museum and the Science Center as well as corporations like McDonnell Douglas/Boeing and Express Scripts.
Each chancellor has made a particular mark on the campus, she said.
After consolidation in the early days, Arnold Grobman, who headed UMSL from 1975 to 1985, helped set the campus on the road that it still travels today.
“He was the one who said we’re an urban campus and really have to get our roots into the community,” Touhill said. “But he really didn’t know how to do it.”
That task fell to his successor, Marguerite Ross Barnett, who was chancellor from 1986 to 1990 and brought an energy that had been lacking before.
“She came in with the partnership idea,” Touhill said. “We would do something for the community, and the community would do something for us. That is what gave us the power to grow.
“She also saw that it’s going to be a global society. If you have a university in your midst that does not make that change, you’ve got a very different kind of institution, not an institution that has to respond to the public. These institutions are part of the economic development of a community. If you don’t do something like make a move toward biotechnology, then the community will suffer.”
Notable UMSL alumni
- Warner Baxter, chairman, president and CEO, Ameren Missouri
- William Carson, chief of police, Maryland Heights
- Marie Casey, CEO, Casey Communications
- Frank Cusumano, sports reporter, anchor, KSDK (Channel5)
- Daniel Isom, former St. Louis chief of police
- Elizabeth Fitzgerald, president, The Magic House
- William Jackson, CFO, St. Louis Public Library
- William Knoedelseder, investigative reporter, best selling author of “Bitter Brew” the Anheuser Busch saga
- Joe Keaveny, state senator
- Kevin Mansell, chairman, CEO, president, Kohls Corp.
- Art McCoy, superintendent, Ferguson/Florissant School District
- Ron McMullen, president, Christian Hospital
- Thomas Minogue, chairman, Thompson Coburn LLP
- Martin Mlynczak, research scientist at NASA
- John Nations, president, CEO of Metro
- Chris Nicastro, Missouri commissioner of education
- Juli Niemann, executive vice president, Smith Moore and Co., financial and investment advisers
- Margaret O’Dell, superintendent, National Mall, Washington, D.C.
- Deborah Patterson, president, Monsanto Fund
- George Paz, president, chairman and CEO Express Scripts, Inc.
- Dennis M. Reagan, president, CEO, Muny Opera
- Vincent Schoemehl Jr. president, CEO Grand Center, former mayor St. Louis
- Rick Stream, state representative
- Grayling Tobias, superintendent, Hazelwood School District
- Sandra Van Trease, group president, BJC Health Care
- Clint Zweifel, Missouri treasurer
When Touhill succeeded Barnett, she focused on increasing the number of academic degree programs – 60 when she took over, the fewest of any of the university system’s four campuses, and nearly 100 when she left. The campus also added space and, eventually, built the performing arts center that bears her name.
What’s next?
While UMSL has a history it is proud of, the jubilee celebration is about looking ahead as much as it is about looking back.
George, the current chancellor, notes that the success of the university’s fund-raising efforts can in large part be tied to the fact that it has attracted not just philanthropy but what he calls “philanthropy that is associated with getting something done.”
He points to the presence of the Express Scripts headquarters on campus, and the relationship the company has built with the university in terms of helping employees gain advanced degrees, as the kind of partnership that helps both entities.
He noted that the school also has partnered with Washington University and Saint Louis University in a variety of programs and efforts, including the Cortex business incubator, and offers programs at the St. Louis Community College site in Wildwood, among other places. And, it recently opened a building in Grand Center that is the new headquarters of St. Louis Public Radio as well as home to some classroom space.
“You can get an UMSL degree at seven or eight locations,” George said. “We’re not necessarily looking to do a major expansion elsewhere, but if an opportunity comes along, we’re happy to explore it.”
That may be a far cry from the days where every program was housed in the former golf course clubhouse. Touhill, though she was a big part of the progress, sounds a little wistful when she talks about those days as a young teacher seeking tenure and teaching classes whenever they were needed.
“It’s been a ride that I never would have dreamed I would be a part of,” she said. “Because American society changed and brought women and African-Americans into higher education to get degrees and work as professionals when they graduate, the whole society changed.
“I think when you’re going through it, you’re not fully conscious of it. I can remember the struggles. It’s when you get old and look back and have the perspective that you can say, ‘That was quite a ride, and I’m grateful to have been a part of it.’”
UMSL has put together a website to celebrate its jubilee. Click here to see an UMSL history timeline, old photographs, event listings, news, personal stories from some of UMSL’s 85,000 alumni and other items.