1910-1930
U.S. Conn, a longtime friend and colleague of Pile who had taught at NNC in the 1890s and had also served as Wayne County superintendent, was named president of the college in 1910 and remained so for 25 years, not only the longest term of any Wayne State president by a substantial margin, but the longest serving president in the entire state college system.
By 1915, there were 50 graduates from nearly 1,000 students enrolled. With the state and national economies booming, the school received generous appropriations in its early years. In 1912 a new building to house the library and science laboratories was constructed just to the west of the two existing campus buildings. This building, now the oldest structure on campus, is known today as the Humanities Building, but its origins can still be recognized by the permanent “Library and Science” title engraved above the south entry.
Two years later the original College Building was demolished and replaced with a new $100,000 administration and classroom building that served for many years as the center of campus activities. A highlight of the new Administration building was a large auditorium or “chapel” that could seat nearly 1,000 people (attendance at daily chapel was still required of all Wayne State students). The building is in its second incarnation as the Brandenburg Education Building, and the chapel is known as Ley Theatre.
The Great War
The first five years of the new State Normal School were a success by almost any measure. Enrollments doubled between 1910 and 1915, the two new buildings more than doubled classroom and office capacity, and the number of faculty, departments, and course offerings increased as well.
The outbreak of the war had little immediate impact on Wayne State. If anything, it furthered the booming agricultural economy that had been underway since the turn of the century. Enrollments and the number of graduates continued to grow. New faculty positions were added each year, and the college quadrupled in size when it purchased the remaining 30 acres of the 40-acre Nebraska Normal School property. Planning for a third new building, for the physical education and industrial arts programs, began in 1915 and the building was completed in 1918.
Wayne supports WWI
All of that changed once the U.S. entered the war. Despite the strong German background of many Northeast Nebraska communities, Wayne students and faculty strongly supported the war. There was little of the tension and dissent over war issues that marked some other colleges, including the university in Lincoln. Male students began volunteering for the service almost immediately, and football and basketball were cancelled. That summer, faculty and students planted a large “victory garden” in the area that is now the Willow Bowl, selling the produce to the campus dining hall and donating the proceeds to the war effort. Female faculty members and faculty wives made surgical dressings for wounded soldiers.
From co-ed to military base
The full impact of the war hit the campus in the fall of 1918, when the draft age was lowered to 18. When classes opened in the fall there were almost no males on campus.
Wayne State became one of many schools in the country involved in the Student Army Training Corps (SATC), a massive wartime expansion of the army’s officer training program. The SATC unit in Wayne had 114 members and was the second largest in the state, after that at UNL.
Remembering students who served
News also began arriving on campus of six former WSC students who were killed during the final months of the war in the fall of 1918. The following Arbor Day six spruce trees were planted in a circle on the open hillside in front of and to the left of the administration building, in memory of the six individuals who died during the war. They remain there to this day (near the northwest corner of Terrace Hall). In addition, a memorial entryway providing the first automobile access to the campus from Main Street was designed and constructed in honor of the more than 300 Wayne State students who served in the military during the war.
Post-war adjustments and expansion
Leading the way as the most important new development in this decade, and indeed as one of the most important in the college’s history, was the legislature’s authorization in 1921 for Wayne State to begin offering four-year degrees in addition to the traditional two-year normal school diploma. This was accompanied by an addition of “Teachers College” to the official name of the school. The increasingly out-of-date “Normal School” part of the title was dropped a few years later, and for the next four decades Wayne would be known as The Nebraska State Teachers College at Wayne.
New campus additions
Building construction slowed somewhat from the pace of the previous decade as the state became less generous in supporting expensive projects. The most important addition was the construction in 1926 of a “training school” building. As with most other normal schools and teachers colleges, Wayne State had maintained a “campus school” where instruction was carried out partly by students preparing to become teachers.
Another significant project near the end of the decade began the replacement of the older frame dormitories with modern “fireproof” brick buildings. Neihardt Hall was opened in 1930 and is now the oldest residence hall remaining on campus. Earlier in the 1920s the first version of Connell Hall was completed as the school’s kitchen/cafeteria facility.
Black and Gold Wildcats
Wayne State’s athletic teams became known as the “Wildcats,” and the school colors of black and gold were firmly established in 1921. Before that, the team was intermittently referred to as both “Tigers” and the “Teachers” and the colors were either black and gold or black and orange. But in a close-fought game against a much larger and heavier rival, someone decided that “Wildcats” was a more fitting symbol than “Tigers” for the small but spunky team, and the label quickly caught on. One of the most popular and long-lasting events of the school calendar started in the fall of 1924, when Wayne State held its first fall Homecoming in conjunction with a football game.
“We Hail Thee, Mother Wayne”
Wayne State’s “Alma Mater” is also a product of this era. After the school’s name change in 1921, President Conn announced a competition for the selection of a new school song. The winner, announced a year later, was a former outstanding Wayne student and recent University of Chicago graduate Tilly Fay Solfermoser. Music faculty member Leon Beery added the music a few months later.