History
Drury was founded as Springfield College in 1873 by Congregationalist church missionaries in the mold of other Congregationalist universities such as Dartmouth College and Yale University. Rev. Nathan Morrison, Samuel Drury, and James and Charles Harwood provided the school's initial endowment and organization; Samuel Drury's gift was the largest of the group and the school was soon renamed in honor of Drury's recently deceased son.
The early curriculum emphasized educational, religious and musical strengths. Students came to the new college from a wide area, including the Indian Territories of Oklahoma. The first graduating class included four women.
When classes began in 1873, they were held in a single building on a campus occupying less than 11⁄2 acres (0.61 ha). Twenty-five years later the 40-acre (16.2 ha) campus included Stone Chapel, the President’s House and three academic buildings. Today, the university occupies a 115-acre (46.5 ha) campus, including the original historic buildings.
Drury College became Drury University on January 1, 2000. In addition to the academic programs of the early years, Drury students today study in the Breech School of Business Administration, the Hammons School of Architecture, and the departments of education, mathematics and sciences, social sciences, exercise and sport science. The list of majors and minors at Drury has also grown and now includes high tech studies in computer science, computer information systems and e-commerce.
The College of Graduate and Continuing Studies serves nearly three thousand students in Springfield and at nine branch campuses.
On April 28, 1960, Drury College was the setting for an episode of NBC's The Ford Show, Starring Tennessee Ernie Ford. Tennessee Ernie Ford sang his trademark "Sixteen Tons" and the hymn "Take My Hand, Precious Lord".
Read more about this topic: Drury University
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“A man acquainted with history may, in some respect, be said to have lived from the beginning of the world, and to have been making continual additions to his stock of knowledge in every century.”
—David Hume (1711–1776)
“the future is simply nothing at all. Nothing has happened to the present by becoming past except that fresh slices of existence have been added to the total history of the world. The past is thus as real as the present.”
—Charlie Dunbar Broad (1887–1971)
“Every member of the family of the future will be a producer of some kind and in some degree. The only one who will have the right of exemption will be the mother ...”
—Ruth C. D. Havens, U.S. suffragist. As quoted in History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 4, ch. 13, by Susan B. Anthony and Ida Husted Harper (1902)