Wichita State University

More information Years, Name ... Naming history Years Name 1895 – 1926 Fairmount College 1926 – 1964 Municipal University of Wichita (WU) 1964 – present Wichita State University (WSU) Close The idea behind Wichita State University began in 1886. Joseph Homer Parker founded a private women's Congregational preparatory school which was supported mainly by Wichita's Plymouth Congregational Church, Parker's church. The school never opened its doors. Called the "Young Ladies College," "Wichita Ladies College" and "Congregational Female College" and founded during a boom in college and university creation, the private school was envisioned to admit women twelve years and older. In early 1887, the project's leaders received a land parcel from the developers of the adjacent Fairmount Neighborhood and, in response, renamed their school Fairmount College . Envisioned to be the "Vassar of the West," the streets of the neighboring residential areas were named after prominent women's colleges including Vassar and Holyoke. The street names remain in 2023. In 1892, a corporation bought the property and named the preparatory school Fairmount Institute . Also known as Fairmount Academy, this Congregational church prep school opened in September to boys and girls age 12 and above. In 1895, on the same site, Fairmount College opened collegiate classes for men and women with funding by the Congregational Education Society. The society selected Nathan Jackson Morrison to be the president of the new college. During the 1900s and 1910s, the school grew with structures including a men's dormitory, Fiske Hall, begun in 1904 and dedicated June 1906, and a Carnegie library, built in 1908, occupied in January 1909 and dedicated in January 1910. Fairmount trustees decided to phase out and eventually close the institute after the 1915 school year. For 20 years, students of the institute formed the nucleus of Fairmount College's student body.

The school's mascot, the "wheatshockers," came about during a football game in 1906 and referred to the fact that many of the football players also shocked wheat during the harvest. Amid growing financial troubles in the 1920s, the college's supporters tried to get the city of Wichita to buy it in 1925, but failed. A second referendum passed in 1926, and that fall it became the Municipal University of Wichita (popularly known as "Wichita University" or "WU"). It was the first municipal university west of the Mississippi. By the 1950s, university leaders and President Harry Corbin explored adding the institution to the State of Kansas Regents System along with the University of Kansas and Kansas State University. These two schools had powerful friends who did not feel that the University of Wichita was on par with the state's two main universities. It took a concerted lobbying effort on the part of WU boosters to persuade the legislature and governor to agree to the change. On July 1, 1964, the school officially entered the state system of higher education as Wichita State University. [ 11 ] Located on campus is the original building of the first Pizza Hut. The original building was located at Kellogg and Bluff. An effort to move it out of the path of Kellogg expansion resulted in the building coming to Wichita State University in the 1980s. After three decades of being located near the campus water tower, the building underwent a second move. In 2017, the university moved it to its current location on the Innovation Campus. [ citation needed ]

The main campus is located at 1845 North Fairmount in northeast Wichita, is mostly bounded between the streets of 17th St N, 21st St N, Hillside St, Oliver Ave. The Hughes Metropolitan Complex and Advanced Education in General Dentistry buildings, located at the intersection of 29th St N and Oliver Ave, are considered part of the main campus. There are seven satellite campuses. Since July 1, 2018, the Campus of Applied Sciences and Technology , also known as "WSU Tech" and formerly known as the Wichita Area Technical College, is located at 4004 N. Webb Road in Wichita. [ 12 ]

Hubbard Hall (2011) Ulrich Museum of Art (2007) Grace Memorial Chapel (2011) The university comprises the following academic colleges and schools: College of Applied Studies (formerly College of Education) [ 13 ] College of Engineering [ 14 ] College of Fine Arts [ 15 ] College of Health Professions [ 16 ] Dorothy and Bill Cohen Honors College [ 17 ] Fairmount College of Liberal Arts and Sciences [ 18 ] Graduate School [ 19 ] College of Innovation and Design (Formerly Institute for Interdisciplinary Innovation) [ 20 ] W. Frank Barton School of Business [ 21 ] The Wichita State University Libraries have holdings of more than 2 million volumes, over 350 electronic databases [ 22 ] and more than 70,000 journal subscriptions. The University Libraries consist of the main Ablah Library, [ 23 ] the McKinley Chemistry Library, [ 24 ] the Thurlow Lieurance Music Library [ 25 ] and University Libraries Special Collections and University Archives. [ 26 ] The libraries are open to community users and serve as a regional United States Federal Government Documents Depository, a State of Kansas Government Documents Depository, and is the State of Kansas' only Patents and Trademarks Library. [ 27 ] WSU Special Collections and University Archives contains numerous rare books, incunabula , historical manuscripts collections, maps and photographic archives documenting Kansas history, as well as hosting the Wichita Photo Archives. [ 28 ] The library faculty offer workshops [ 29 ] throughout the year to students and community members.