Bonnie Ethel Cone - Struggle To Become A State University

Struggle To Become A State University

Miss Cone recruited faculty with the promise that by joining Charlotte College they would participate in the building of a great university. Dr. Sherman Burson, later to become dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, was hired as a professor of chemistry on that premise. So was Dan L. Morrill, a professor of history who later was to become the leader of Charlotte's historic preservation movement and the prime mover in restoring Charlotte's vintage trolley system. In 1964 Bonnie Cone beamed as Charlotte College was expanded into a four-year, state-supported college and a year later three years ahead of the date she had predicted she saw the fulfillment of her dream for a university. On July 1, 1965, Charlotte College was elevated to become UNC Charlotte, the fourth campus of the Consolidated University of North Carolina that then included only the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, North Carolina State University in Raleigh, and the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Bonnie Cone was in Raleigh to witness the final vote on the bill authorizing that expansion. That night she drove home expecting to find a dark campus. As she pulled into the main entrance, the lights went up, students, faculty and staff cheered, and she suddenly found herself in the center of a joyous celebration. Her joy was tempered later when she was not named to head the university she had envisioned. Leaders of the Consolidated University wanted a more experienced administrator and chose Dean Wallace Colvard, a North Carolina native, former dean of agriculture at North Carolina State College and previously president of Mississippi State University to become UNC Charlotte's first chancellor. Though that was a personal disappointment, Bonnie Cone never publicly acknowledged it, never spoke of it, and never allowed it to sour her outlook. "We are not here to elevate ourselves but to build the institution," she said. She served as acting chancellor until Dr. Colvard could move to Charlotte in April 1966.

At the faculty's last meeting before the Dr. Colvard's arrival, its members stood to applaud her and unanimously passed a resolution in her honor. The resolution said in part: The members of this faculty, more perhaps than any other group, know personally the debt they, the students, and the community owe Bonnie E. Cone for the development of the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. We take the occasion to express our gratitude for her contribution to an institution which owes its shape and its very life largely to her. Over a period of two decades as Director, President, and finally as Acting Chancellor of the University at Charlotte, she converted a shoestring and a ball of twine into a university with eighteen hundred students, over a hundred faculty members, a campus covering more than 900 acres (3.6 km2), and nine buildings. Here is the realized dream of a great lady Miss Cone was offered the post of vice chancellor for student affairs and community relations. After thinking about it several months, she accepted and continued to work for the University, to motivate students, win friends, and attract benefactors.