page_title: University of Wisconsin–Platteville
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: University of Wisconsin–Platteville / History
caption_attribution_description: English: An illustration of the Platteville Normal School, from the 1885 edition of the Wisconsin Blue Book.
context_page_description: University of Wisconsin–Platteville is a public university in Platteville, Wisconsin. Part of the University of Wisconsin System, it offers bachelor's and master's degrees. The university has three colleges that serve over 8,000 students on-campus and an additional 3,000 students through its five distance education programs.
context_section_description: The university grew from the 1959 merger of two schools: Wisconsin State College, Platteville and Wisconsin Institute of Technology. WSC-Platteville was founded in 1866 as Platteville Normal School, the first teacher preparation school in Wisconsin. It was renamed Platteville State Teachers College in 1926 and Wisconsin State College, Platteville in 1951. The Wisconsin Institute of Technology, founded in 1907 as the Wisconsin Mining Trade School, was founded to train technicians for the numerous mining operations around Platteville.  It evolved into the first three-year program for mining engineers in the United States. It changed its name to the Wisconsin Institute of Technology in 1939.  The merged school took the name Wisconsin State College and Institute of Technology. In 1966, along with Wisconsin's other state colleges, it was granted university status as Wisconsin State University-Platteville. It took its current name after the Wisconsin State University system merged with the University of Wisconsin in 1971.
  Starting in the late 1960s, the University of Wisconsin–Platteville expanded its academic program and established new colleges, the largest being a business college. The mining college was transformed into an engineering college encompassing mining, electrical, mechanical, and eventually electronic engineering. In the late 1980s, the mining engineering degree was phased out because of falling enrollment. By that time it had been overshadowed by the other engineering degrees.
  From 1984 to 2000, the Chicago Bears of the National Football League held pre-season training camp at UW–Platteville. They were considered a member of the "Cheese League" that in 1999 consisted of the Green Bay Packers, New Orleans Saints and Kansas City Chiefs, with each team practicing at a different university in Wisconsin. In 2001, the Illinois General Assembly asked the Bears to move to an Illinois practice facility in order to raise funds for remodeling Soldier Field. Before the Bears left, they donated $250,000 to UW–Platteville for a new computer lab, which was named "The Bears Den".
  In the 1980s, UW-Platteville made an effort to bring businesses to the Platteville area to take advantage of university resources. Rockwell Automation started this trend in the 1980s when it recruited two engineering professors at UW–Platteville to start an engineering firm.  Rockwell provided financing and awarded them major contracts. The resulting business was Insight Industries, which later changed to AVISTA Inc. (now a division of Esterline, Inc.).
  On June 16, 2014, an EF2 tornado struck the UW-Platteville campus, causing $18.6 million in damage.
  The Agriculture and Manual Arts Building/Platteville State Normal School, now known as Ullrich Hall, is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
  In 2018, the University of Wisconsin System restructured through the Collaborative Integration Project, which bound the University of Wisconsin Colleges to the Universities.  The University of Wisconsin-Richland and The University of Wisconsin-Baraboo/Sauk County were joined with Platteville as branch campuses, and renamed the University of Wisconsin–Platteville Richland and the University of Wisconsin–Platteville Baraboo/Sauk County respectively.
caption: An Illustration of the Platteville Normal School, from the 1885 edition of the Wisconsin Blue Book.
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