August 4, 1858 – Under the dynamic leadership of its newly-appointed director, D. Franklin Wells, SUI’s Normal School – which opened its second school year (1856-57) with 124 students – 83 men and 41 women – in attendance, graduates its first class.
The State University of Iowa – which was created by an act of the Iowa State Legislature on February 25, 1847 – didn’t actually start offering classes in Iowa City until 1855. And even with the initiation of those first classes – March 15, 1855 in Mechanics Academy – SUI barely survived that first decade. In truth, if it hadn’t been for D. Franklin Wells and his highly-successful SUI Normal School, our illustrious university – located today in the center of Iowa City – wouldn’t have made it past the 1860’s.
You see, when SUI opened its doors in 1855, there were two branches of the university – the “undergraduate” department – called the SUI Normal School, and the SUI “graduate” program which was geared for training “college-level” students for more-advanced professional occupations. So, in those first few years (1855-1860), when SUI first opened its doors for business, it was the Normal School that attracted the most attention, while the “university” side of SUI floundered, even closing for two years (1858-1860) due to low student enrollment.
READ MORE ABOUT THIS IOWA STORY HERE.
This Day In History is an Our Iowa Heritage blog series that offers you a little bit of Iowa trivia from a large selection of stories on our website. Subscribe to this FREE blog and you’ll get a new email from us daily.
Join us for Our Iowa Heritage blog posts.
Learn some historical facts about Iowa City, Johnson County, or Eastern Iowa.
Amaze your friends.
Pingback: August 3, 1857. | Our Iowa Heritage