A long look back at KSU history
By Cheryl K. Miller
Forty years ago a dream was born in the hearts of the residents who lived
in the pine forests of Cobb County, Georgia. That dream of an institution of
higher learning for Cobb County citizens was as shiny as a new penny when the
newly graduated Frederick Roach arrived on campus to teach history in the fall
of 1968. Known by several names during its infancy, this institution is known
today the world over as Kennesaw
State University, popularly known as KSU.
"When I came here to interview for the position, I had two other job offers,”
said Roach. “In 1968, this was a brand-new junior college with 1,200 students
and 50 faculty. I took one look at this campus and decided it would not remain
a junior college because of where it was located and the type of facilities
it had.”
That prophecy took ten years to be realized, but eventually KSU lived up to
its original promise and became a four-year state college. Visionaries of all
types contributed towards building the current success of KSU, which just celebrated
the graduation of its 28,000th student.
KSU was chartered in 1963, founded in 1965, and was a full-fledged junior college
in 1968 when Dr. Roach came on campus. At that moment in time, the Internet
was still a figment in someone’s imagination, the movie “2001: a
Space Oddessy” was the top-grossing movie, followed by the original “Planet
of the Apes.” O.J. Simpson had just won the Heisman Trophy and the top
song of the year was Dion’s “Abraham, Martin and John.” Politically,
Richard Nixon was elected President with a margin of 500,000 votes, the Civil
Rights Act of 1968 is just passed, and the Viet Cong launched their deadly Tet
offensive on Saigon.
Since then, Dr. Roach has seen quite a few changes in his 35 years on campus
as the dream of Kennesaw Junior College has unfolded. Highlights include the
frenzy that accompanied the incredible growth. “When I was in graduate
and undergraduate school the Baby Boomers were starting college and schools
didn’t have enough professors, enough rooms or anything else.” Roach
has seen the student population at KSU grow from 1,200 students to over 16,000
in 2002, with a faculty of 50 in 1968 to one of over 400 professors in 2002.
“We went from a junior college to a four-year college in 1978 to a regional
university,” said Roach. “Since Dr. Siegel’s been here we’ve
seen student body enrollment and faculty numbers double every five years. The
growth we’ve seen is unique.”
One massive change for the KSU campus was the orientation of the buildings.
The original school buildings built in 1965 face towards U.S. Highway 41 to
the west, which was the main traffic artery slicing through the county at that
time. In 1976, the Interstate system was enlarged and I-75 carved its impressive
swath through Cobb on the east side of campus. A dilemma arose as to what the
“front” of KSU should be. With the addition of KSU Hall, facing
I-75, the campus now faces both east and west.
Growth such as KSU has seen takes an incredible amount of work on the part of
administrators to manage the transitions necessary to accommodate the changes.
There’s scheduling, hiring of new professors, developing new programs,
building new buildings, the list is nearly endless.
Interestingly enough, in managing that massive change, there have only been
two presidents in KSU’s history. The founding President was Horace W.
Sturgis, who retired in 1980. Dr. Roach was the Chair of the Search Committee
that brought Dr. Betty Siegel to KSU in 1981. “She was the first woman
president in the history of the University System of Georgia,” said Roach.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if she wasn’t the first woman president
of a university in the Southeast that wasn’t considered a woman’s
college.”
Dr. Roach calls Dr. Siegel “A rare individual. She is just a unique person
with people.” During their twenty years operating together on opposite
sides of the administrative and faculty fences, Dr. Roach said, “She has
been a much more dynamic and effective president than I ever dreamed she would
be when we sent her name down to the Board of Regents.”
A progressive leader, Dr. Siegel has dramatically advanced KSU through several
bold initiatives. “That’s probably her greatest strength,”
said Dr. Roach. “She really has been very aggressive at doing things that
are on the front edge. An example would be the KC-101 course, which teaches
the fundamentals of how to succeed in college life. Now she’s working
on a senior experience course which will prepare students for the workplace.”
Dr. Siegel recently released a new book called Becoming an Invitational Leader
that was designed to capture the techniques of her unique management style.
In 1988, twenty-five years after the dream began in 1988, Kennesaw College officially
changed its name to “Kennesaw State University.” Other changes include
the character of the student population at KSU. “During the first fifteen
years,” said Roach, “it was very common to see students who were
the first ones in the history of their family to get a college degree.”
In 1968, the student mix was a combination of suburban students and semi-rural
students. But within the last 15 years, KSU has had an influx of the non-traditional,
older student, changing the make-up of the student body. In the fall of 2002,
the average age of KSU students was 25, well above the average of other schools.
The addition of dorm-style housing on campus promises, once again, to change
the make-up of the student body as KSU begins to look more and more like the
other state universities in Georgia.
One fascinating parallel is the common concern of students in both 1968 and
2002 as to the possibility of war. In 1968, a lot of students were drafted to
go to Vietnam. “We drew our students from Fulton, Dekalb, and Cobb Counties
which had relatively large draft boards,” said Roach. “At that point
in time students would have had a ‘2-C’ deferment as a full-time
student until they graduated, which meant they were taking a full load and had
a ‘C’ average. I heard many people from that era say they had students
come in and say ‘If I don’t pass this course, I’m going to
Vietnam.’”
Today, the future of KSU appears unlimited. Recently Dr. Siegel held a meeting
with university personnel who had been on campus for more than twenty years
to dream some dreams for the future of KSU. “She asked me how big I thought
we would get,” said Roach. “I told her we would probably hit 23,000
or 24,000 eventually in the next decade. Fifteen years ago we were projecting
that 16,000 students would be the maximum for KSU. Now, we’re at 16,000
and don’t show any signs of slowing down.”
The numbers reveal the evolution and growth of Georgia’s university system.
In 1900 – at the turn of the last century – there were 30,000 students
at all colleges and universities combined. Today, just over 100 years later,
there are 16,000 students on KSU’s campus alone!
In terms of academic challenge, Dr. Roach has a philosophy that students should
feel some pressure from professors at some point in their college careers. “I
think it would be tragic if they graduated from college and never got pressed
and never knew how good they might be one day.”
And, that’s exactly what the dream in 1963 was all about – helping
the people of Cobb County to become all they could be through an education at
Kennesaw State University.
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Cheryl K. Miller, an experienced freelance writer, lives on a
lake in Georgia with her writing-partner/husband, Steve and her seven sons.
Copyright © 2002 by Cheryl K. Miller. All rights reserved.
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