Southern Illinois University at 150 Years: Growth, Accomplishments, and Challenges

Abstract

What has happened to Illinois's public colleges and universities? After decades of spectacular growth in the aftermath of the Second World War marked by surging enrollments, proliferation of new programs, and the creation of new campuses, suddenly came crises with shrinking student bodies, fewer teachers, and the dismantling of entire programs, indeed, entire departments. Southern Illinois University at 150 Years lays a foundation for understanding this story of accomplishments and challenges not just for one institution but for the condition of public education at large.Accounting for one institution is a formidable, multifaceted project perhaps best accomplished by a team of experts. John S. Jackson brings five decades of experience as emeritus professor of political science, dean of his college and of the graduate school, and interim chancellor to the task of assembling contributors to this study. Several chapters if read together render essential perspective: Jackson's overview introduction to these years, John Haller's eyewitness account of the Board of Higher Education, David Wilson's history of the graduate school, and Judith Marshall's concise explanation of the budget. Together these chapters illuminate the complex interplay of university-community relations, shifting balances of state politics, the role of the Illinois Board of Education, rivalries with other universities, and concomitant budget priorities. Other chapters on student affairs, the alumni association, buildings and grounds, the library, the schools of law and of medicine, athletics, and special programs, such as archaeological investigations and honors programs, fill in the details. Readers will gain appreciation of this institution's search for identity—in particular its problematic relations with the region and the relationship between teaching and research.This story, while focused on Southern Illinois University Carbondale, begins to answer questions regarding public higher education throughout the state and beyond. The vision that guided policymakers in the wake of the Second World War to open wide the doors of opportunity remains faint memory. Today that investment in the rising generation's welfare seems illusory. Readers who recall that fading dream will find answers here.Another book waits to be written as a companion to Southern Illinois University at 150—this devoted to the generations of students and teachers who made this institution their own. There were, for example, the starry-eyed idealists who arrived to study with Buckminster Fuller and his colleagues in the departments of design and community development. Black students were wrestling with Carbondale's deeply embedded habits of segregation—in the 1930s by joining the college chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, in the 1940s by publicly protesting segregation, in the 1960s by organizing sit-in demonstrations at a lunch counter and by campaigning successfully for the introduction of Black history in the curriculum (a step toward the creation of an Africana Studies program). Students like Dick Gregory were encouraged to come by older Black graduates; three of the nine students who had bravely defied Little Rock's segregated school system chose to come to campus.This rich story of student life is multifaceted. Protests against the Vietnam War focused on the Vietnam Studies Center and eventually led to confrontation with the police and the closing of the university. The university created a department of rehabilitation and led the nation in making the campus available to wheelchairs. Curbs on sidewalks both on and off campus were broken down thus opening opportunity to countless otherwise disadvantaged young people. International students came from such faraway places as Nigeria and Nepal. Many students were the first in their families to enter a university.And there was the faculty. Graduates remember cramming into large lecture halls to join the legendary “Mr. G” (Harold Grosowsky, professor of design) as he invited them to nurture their own creative imaginations. The struggle for union recognition has yet to be told. And perhaps above all, dedicated faculty members persevered through years of grim budget cuts to meet their responsibilities as both researchers and teachers. This too is part of the story that awaits telling.