The university's Westside campus houses the Ives Concert Park, one of the premier performance venues in the area.

WCSU was founded in 1903 as a teachers' college, training the primary and secondary school educators for Connecticut's Fairfield County and surrounding areas.

In 1968, WCSU's radio station, WXCI (91.7 FM), then going by the call sign WCST and broadcasting with AM transmission, was established.

In 1973 WCST was switched from AM to FM transmission, obtained an FCC license, was renamed WXCI, and went on air under that call sign.

It popularized among residents of the Northeastern U.S. the West Coast punk group Black Flag and the Georgia-based R.E.M., while also providing greater listenership to New York City's Talking Heads.

Thurston Moore, a founding member of Sonic Youth, attended WCSU for a quarter during the fall of 1976, though he left afterward.

The center is a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization dedicated to environmental stewardship and conservation, and wildlife education and research, being the result of a partnership between Western and the Jane Goodall Institute (JGI).

Since the center's founding, its namesake, primatologist Dr. Jane Goodall, has visited Western on at least a dozen occasions to give lectures on the issue of ecology.

The center has also hosted a number of seminars and public talks by other environmentalist speakers at the university: Notably, Smithsonian ethnobotanist Mark Plotkin and veteran ecologist Thomas Lovejoy spoke at the university in 1998, and in 2013 ocean conservationist Fabien Cousteau presented a public seminar on campus.

In April 2013, startup of a newly installed fuel cell power unit for the Science Building on the university's Midtown campus began.

The PureCell System, provided by ClearEdge Power, supports the university to reap significant energy cost savings and enhanced electricity and heating efficiencies.

From here, students and advisors Ron Drozdenko and Donna Coelho restructured the organization to be more professional and resume oriented.

The university offers intercollegiate competition in 18 sports: men's baseball, basketball, cross country, football, golf, lacrosse, soccer, tennis, and swimming and diving; and women's basketball, cross country, field hockey, lacrosse, soccer, softball, swimming and diving, tennis and volleyball.

WCSU offers competition at the club level in six sports: cheerleading, dance team, ice hockey, men's rugby, ultimate frisbee and powerlifting.

The university also offers a variety of intramural activities depending on the semester as well as group exercise classes, a fitness zone and access to the O’Neill Center pool.

"[11] From 1975 to 1978, the school adopted the nickname Canners to honor the region's fish canneries, and in conjunction with a sponsorship with the Candlewood Canning Company of Connecticut.

But once the sponsorship was deemed illegal by the NCAA, the official mascot became Chuck the Colonial, a man in a blue Tricorne hat.

Following the murder of George Floyd and pressure from alumni and students in June 2020, the university announced the formation of a committee to determine the fate of the mascot and the Colonials nickname and decided to no longer use these.

The program prepares students for graduate studies in meteorology and earth sciences and provides the necessary coursework for employment with the National Weather Service.

The West Side campus houses a large-format thermoelectrically cooled CCD camera and is specifically used for astrophysical studies.

It also includes non-WCSU affiliated personal papers, local government and organizational records, visual materials, maps, journals and other media that document the history of this region.