History of the University of North Alabama
The North Carolina native was also the professor of moral science and belles lettres and taught geography and mineralogy.
The first board of trustees had a total of 50 members, including two Native Americans, a Choctaw politician and a Cherokee leader.
Among the local trustees was Henry Stuart Foote of Tuscumbia, who would move to Mississippi and defeat Jefferson Davis in the 1850 Governor's race.
[2] LaGrange graduate R.H. Rivers, after becoming president of the college, led most of the students and all but one faculty member from the mountain in late 1854 to relocate to Florence.
[1] Those who accompanied the school across the Tennessee River to Florence fully expected that the institutional name, LaGrange College, would be carried over as well.
After the move, however, the Alabama Legislature passed a bill to reincorporate the institution under a new name, Florence Wesleyan University.
[1] Following the firing on Fort Sumter on April 12, 1861, and President Lincoln's subsequent call for 75,000 troops, four professors and more than one hundred students left the school to take up arms.
[8] General William Tecumseh Sherman is considered the most famous Union occupant of Wesleyan Hall during the war.
[7] In late 1864, shortly before his ill-fated involvement in the battles of Franklin and Nashville, Confederate General John Bell Hood occupied the building.
The surrounding grounds were occupied by his troops and served as a meeting place for military personnel and townspeople for parties, dances and concerts.
By 1897, when Powers left to assume the presidency of the University of Alabama and was replaced by Marshall Clark Wilson, the campus had changed little.
The Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist and author also outsold contemporaries William Faulkner and Ernest Hemingway during the interwar period of the 1920s and 1930s.
[7] The institution functioned as a normal school for more than 50 years until 1929, when it became a state teachers college offering a four-year curriculum in elementary education.
In 1956, the institution crossed another academic milestone with the formation of a graduate course of study in education leading to the Master of Arts degree.
The same year, the Alabama Legislature voted to change the institution's name to Florence State College to reflect its expanding academic mission.
[11] Compared with other southern institutions of higher learning, particularly the universities of Alabama and Mississippi, integration occurred almost painlessly at Florence State College.
[13] The tuition and board there had become unaffordable for his family, and he applied to Florence State College in order to be able to live at home while attending classes.
Norton sent Gunn a letter informing him that the Alabama Legislature and Board of Education would not allow the college to accept his application.
[12] Gunn, who later earned degrees from Florence State College and the University of Chicago, went on to a distinguished career in finance and in 1982, was appointed an international trade adviser to President Ronald Reagan.
Scarcely a year later, the new board voted for another name change to Florence State University, once again symbolizing the steady expansion of the institution's academic offerings and mission.
Guillot also directed a substantial expansion of the university's physical plant, including the construction of the Education and Nursing Building (now Stevens Hall), additions to Collier Library, Flowers Hall, and the Student Union Building (later renamed Guillot University Center), and renovation of Braly Municipal Stadium.
In 1993, the Board of Trustees, anticipating continued and steady enrollment growth, adopted a new master facilities plan to ensure that UNA ultimately will be equipped to accommodate 10,000 students.
[11] Robert L. Potts, who succeeded Guillot following his resignation in 1989, undertook a series of measures to compensate for shortfalls in state funding, including the reactivation of the UNA Foundation as the university's charitable arm.
A Philadelphia native, Cale came to UNA from Pennsylvania State University-Altoona, where he served as chief executive officer and dean.
[17] After an interim by John G. Thornell, then vice-president, the presidency was assumed in 2015 by Kenneth D. Kitts, formerly provost at the University of North Carolina at Pembroke.
