History
In 1871 the school opened as Oshkosh State Normal School, Wisconsin's third teacher-training school. Oshkosh Normal was the first state normal school in the United States to have a kindergarten.
The university was called Oshkosh State Teachers College from 1927 to 1951, Wisconsin State College–Oshkosh from 1951 to 1964, and Wisconsin State University–Oshkosh from 1964 to 1971. It became part of the University of Wisconsin System in 1971.
Until the 1960s the Oshkosh student body was almost exclusively white. In 1968, when students protested against the lack of black faculty and black-oriented courses, the university expelled 94 students, mostly black, after using baton-wielding riot police to arrest them. The events were marked in a campus exhibit in 2008-09. The administration at the time has been described as "conservative, paternalistic" and "ruled by elderly white males in the twilight of their careers".
The university has been expanding in capacity and infrastructure. Student population and campus changed little through the 1980s and 1990s. Since 2005, the institution has undertaken several green building projects and a Growth Agenda for new programs, faculty hiring and increased student population.
In 2007, the Student Recreation and Wellness Center added a popular student-funded facility to the university waterfront, which has garnered an Innovative Architecture and Design award from Recreation Management Magazine.
In 2010, the campus opened a refurbished dining hall as its new Student Success Center. The building consolidated student services into a single location. It is designed to be one of the most energy efficient buildings in the state, with a geothermal ground source heating system installed beneath a nearby parking lot.
The campus has three major buildings under construction in 2010. A new academic building (Sage Hall), the first since 1971, will house the College of Business and allied departments from the College of Letters and Science, including Psychology, Geography, and Environmental Studies. It is designed to use less than half the energy of similar buildings on campus, and to generate 10% of its energy from renewable technologies. A new residence hall (Horizon Village) will replace three older buildings to provide suite-style accommodations. The building will have numerous green building features, including geothermal and solar technologies. The third facility is the first commercial-scale dry fermentation anaerobic biodigester in the Americas, a waste-to-energy plant that will produce up to 10% of the campus electricity and heat.
Today, the school offers seven baccalaureate, seven masters, and one doctorate degrees in 73 programs spanning four colleges. The college is reputed to be strong in accounting, nursing, business, teaching, and fine arts.
Read more about this topic: University Of Wisconsin-Oshkosh
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—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
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“There is nothing truer than myth: history, in its attempt to “realize” myth, distorts it, stops halfway; when history claims to have “succeeded” this is nothing but humbug and mystification. Everything we dream is “realizable.” Reality does not have to be: it is simply what it is.”
—Eugène Ionesco (b. 1912)