History
In March 1863, a Normal School Act passed into law, and that fall, Farmington was chosen from a list of possible locations for a normal school — the first public institution of higher education in the State of Maine. The first class graduated from the Western State Normal School in 1866. The school merged into the University of Maine System in 1968 to become "the University of Maine at Farmington."
Many early graduates attended the school for its liberal arts offerings alone. Among these were the Stanley brothers, famous for building the Stanley Steamer automobile; and John Frank Stevens, engineer of the Panama Canal. Another famous graduate from the university is comedian Bob Marley, who graduated with a degree in community health. Interest in the liberal arts continued unabated until the college offered its first degree programs in the liberal arts in 1971. By the 1974–75 school year, nearly 300 students were enrolled in liberal arts majors.
Read more about this topic: University Of Maine At Farmington
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Gossip is charming! History is merely gossip. But scandal is gossip made tedious by morality.”
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)
“The history of the genesis or the old mythology repeats itself in the experience of every child. He too is a demon or god thrown into a particular chaos, where he strives ever to lead things from disorder into order.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Literary works cannot be taken over like factories, or literary forms of expression like industrial methods. Realist writing, of which history offers many widely varying examples, is likewise conditioned by the question of how, when and for what class it is made use of.”
—Bertolt Brecht (1898–1956)