History
The foundations of Old Dominion University began in the minds of administrators and officials at the College of William and Mary in the first decades of the twentieth century. Notable among these men were Robert M. Hughes, a W&M Board of Visitors member from 1893–1917, and J.A.C. Chandler, the 18th president of that school. With the collective efforts of many, a two year branch division was established on March 13, 1930, and first held classes in September of that year with 206 students (125 men and 81 women). “The Division,” as it was affectionately called, started out in the old Larchmont School building and allowed people with less means to attend a school of higher education for two years. Tuition for the first year was 50 USD. The following September, Virginia Polytechnic Institute, more commonly known as Virginia Tech, began offering classes at “The Division,” expanding the number of courses taught.
Created in the first year of the Great Depression, the college benefited from federal funding as part of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal. The Public Works Administration provided funds for the Administration Building, now Rollins Hall, and Foreman Field, named after A.H Foreman, an early proponent of the college. From these humble beginnings the college grew southward along Hampton Boulevard, turning an empty field into a sprawling campus. After completion at the Norfolk Division, students would move on to schools offering degrees or would seek careers locally. “The Division” began by educating teachers and engineers, evolving into a full four-year college, and gaining independence in 1962, becoming Old Dominion College. Considerable growth in enrollment, the expansion of research facilities and preparation for the addition of graduate programs led the Board to approve the name change to Old Dominion University in 1969. Since this time, the university has continued to grow and now has an enrollment of over 24,000 students.
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Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Modern Western thought will pass into history and be incorporated in it, will have its influence and its place, just as our body will pass into the composition of grass, of sheep, of cutlets, and of men. We do not like that kind of immortality, but what is to be done about it?”
—Alexander Herzen (1812–1870)
“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)
“If man is reduced to being nothing but a character in history, he has no other choice but to subside into the sound and fury of a completely irrational history or to endow history with the form of human reason.”
—Albert Camus (1913–1960)