History
The university was founded in March 1863 when the Kansas Legislature passed the enabling act to establish the Kansas State Normal School. The school's first graduating class consisted of two women in 1867, the year the first permanent building was completed.
In 1876, the Kansas Legislature passed the "Miscellaneous appropriations bill of 1876". The end result was that Leavenworth Normal and Concordia Normal were closed so the state funding for normal schools could be directed to Emporia.
In February 1923, the name of the school was changed to the Kansas State Teachers College. In July 1974, the name was changed to Emporia Kansas State College. On April 21, 1977, the college became Emporia State University. The Kansas Board of Regents is the governing body for ESU. Since 1863 more than 150,000 students have studied at ESU.
On January 25, 2006, then ESU president Kay Schallenkamp, Ph.D, resigned to serve as president of Black Hills State University starting July 1, 2006. On September 22, 2006 the Kansas Board of Regents announced the hiring of Michael R. Lane (BS in finance, University of Massachusetts Lowell, 1975; MS in financial accounting, Northeastern University, 1976; Ph.D in financial accounting, Texas A&M University, 1980) as University President effective November 1, 2006. Lane was previously provost at University of Arkansas - Fort Smith. Edward Flentje succeeded Lane until 2012 January 3 when Michael Shonrock became president.
The Center for Great Plains Studies, headed by Jim Hoy, an inductee of the Kansas Cowboy Hall of Fame, is located at Emporia State University.
Read more about this topic: Emporia State University
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—Ellis Meredith, U.S. suffragist. As quoted in History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 4, ch. 14, by Susan B. Anthony and Ida Husted Harper (1902)
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—Catherine E. Beecher (1800–1878)
“To care for the quarrels of the past, to identify oneself passionately with a cause that became, politically speaking, a losing cause with the birth of the modern world, is to experience a kind of straining against reality, a rebellious nonconformity that, again, is rare in America, where children are instructed in the virtues of the system they live under, as though history had achieved a happy ending in American civics.”
—Mary McCarthy (1912–1989)