University of North Carolina at Greensboro

• 1. Introduction

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  In 1891, the University of North Carolina at Greensboro was created by a single act of the state legislature. Its purpose was to provide a public education to the women of North Carolina. When it opened in 1892, 223 students enrolled on a ten-acre plot in Greensboro. That land had been donated by R. S. Pullen and R. T. Gray. The state contributed $30,000 for the first building. Fifteen faculty members taught courses in business, domestic science, and teacher preparation. The man credited with bringing the institution into being was Charles Duncan McIver. He took the title of President from the founding year. What drove the push to educate women through the public university system in the American South of the 1890s? What did the school have to become before it could admit men alongside women? And what endures of that original mission in a research university that today hosts programs from drug discovery to nanoscience?

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• 2. From Normal School to University

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  The school's earliest name, State Normal and Industrial School, stated its purpose plainly. It was built to train women as teachers. The assumption was that educated women would raise their families' literacy and, through them, the state's. In 1896, the institution became the State Normal and Industrial College. North Carolina College for Women followed in 1919. In 1932, the school joined the Consolidated University of North Carolina as one of three charter institutions. It adopted the name Woman's College of the University of North Carolina. The title of President was relabeled Dean of Administration in 1934 and Chancellor in 1945. Through all those changes, the school admitted only women. In 1949, it became the nation's largest all-female institution. The Normal School had become a full-fledged college in 1897. The first baccalaureate degrees were awarded in 1903. In 1963, men enrolled at UNCG for the first time, and the institution took its current name: the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. The first diploma the university ever issued, in 1894, bore the image of Minerva.

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• 3. A Campus in Stone

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  The Julius I. Foust Building dates to 1891 and stands as one of the campus's oldest surviving structures. Spencer Hall rose in two phases, first in 1904 and again in 1907. The Quad was built between 1919 and 1923. The Chancellor's Residence was completed that same year. An auditorium opened in 1927 under the name Aycock; almost a century later, in 2016, it was renamed the UNCG Auditorium. The Alumni House was finished in 1937. These structures chart a span of construction from the university's earliest years through the Depression era. In 2003, a statue of Minerva was erected to the east of Elliott University Center on the Greensboro campus. The following year, 2004, the university launched a graphic identity program built around her image. The Weatherspoon Art Museum also calls the campus home. UNCG's intercollegiate athletic program has sent Spartan teams to national competition since the late 1940s.

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• 4. The Spartan Game

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  Between 1982 and 1987, the Spartan men's soccer team won the NCAA Division III national championship every year except 1984. That run came during the era when all UNCG athletic teams competed first in Division III and then in Division II. All teams moved to Division I competition in the fall of 1991. Today, UNCG competes in the Southern Conference, which includes ten schools across five Southeastern states. The men's basketball team made the Greensboro Coliseum their home court starting in the 2009-10 season. Lynne Agee coached the women's basketball program before retiring after the 2010-11 season. Her career record places her among just 45 coaches in the history of women's college basketball to have won more than 600 games. Under Agee, the Spartans reached the 20-win mark in sixteen separate seasons. The women's team earned appearances in the Division I and Division II national tournaments once each and made the Division III tournament seven times. UNCG was one of only ten teams nationally, across all divisions, to reach the women's NCAA tournament every year from 1982 to 1988. Those seven consecutive appearances covered the entire first run of the women's national tournament. With UNCG's 1998 NCAA appearance, Agee made history. She became the first women's coach ever to take teams to the national tournament in all three divisions. Off the court and the field, the university's academic programs were building their own record. The Joseph M. Bryan School of Business and Economics, founded in 1969, stands among the top one percent of business schools worldwide.

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• 5. Teaching, Research, Discovery

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  In 1973, Louise Gluck held a visiting poet position in the English Department for a brief period. She would later win the Nobel Prize. The department itself had been established in 1893 and was then housed in the McIver Building, which was later demolished. That building had been described as "the ugliest classroom building in America." Today the department occupies the Moore Humanities and Research Administration Building. Fred Chappell and Craig Nova are among its notable emeritus faculty. A writing center opened in 1985. In 2022, U.S. News and World Report ranked the English PhD program 99th nationally and third among programs in North Carolina.

  The Bryan School of Business and Economics is named for Joseph M. Bryan, a prominent figure in North Carolina business and philanthropy. It enrolls 3,200 undergraduates and 460 graduate students, with more than 20,000 alumni. The school holds dual accreditation from The Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business, covering both business and accounting. It has 73 full-time faculty members.

  The School of Nursing was established in September 1966 under its founding dean, Eloise R. Lewis. The first class of bachelor's degree students graduated in 1970. The master's program launched in 1976. The PhD program began in the fall of 2005. More than 4,000 nursing alumni have completed the program. An outreach program in Hickory, North Carolina serves registered nurses pursuing a bachelor's degree.

  UNCG's most distinctive research partnership is the Joint School of Nanoscience and Nanoengineering, a collaboration with North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University. Its biological and chemical research emphasis in nanoscience is the first of its kind in the country. The only comparable professional master's programs exist at Rice University and the University at Albany, SUNY. Neither offers this emphasis. The Graduate School draws roughly 3,600 students from 33 states and 34 foreign countries.

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