page_title: History of East Texas State Teachers College
section_title: 1920s
hierarchical_section_title: History of East Texas State Teachers College / 1920s
caption_attribution_description: English: S.H. Whitley, Dean of Faculty at East Texas State Normal College.
context_page_description: The history of East Texas State Teachers College comprises the history of the university now known as Texas A&M University–Commerce from its renaming as East Texas State Teachers College in 1923 to its renaming as East Texas State College in 1957. During this era, ETSTC was led by four different presidents, two of whom served for more than a decade. The ETSTC period was marked by increasing recognition, notably through obtaining membership in the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools in 1925, as well as marked growth in its faculty, student enrollment, and physical plant. ETSTC grew from 65 faculty in 1925 to 132 in 1957, from approximately 1,000 students in 1925 to over 3,000 in 1958–59, and from six buildings valued at roughly $500,000 in the early 1920s to a physical plant valued at over $4 million in 1949.
  While in the early 1920s ETSTC's faculty lacked advanced degrees and was relatively poorly compensated, by 1927 a majority of the faculty held degrees higher than bachelor's degrees and by 1957, 59 of its 132 faculty members held doctorates.
context_section_description: East Texas State Normal College (ETSNC) was renamed East Texas State Teachers College (ETSTC) in 1923, to define its purpose "more clearly". In 1925, the college became a true four-year institution when its "sub-college" program was transferred to its training school; however, it was slow in gaining respect from the University of Texas at Austin, which refused to accept ETSTC credits beyond the sophomore level at face value until 1922. Even before being fully recognized by UT Austin, though, East Texas State students had gained admission at various other prestigious universities, including the University of Chicago, Peabody College, Vanderbilt University, and Yale University. Furthermore, in 1925 ETSTC was granted membership in the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools (SACS), "the South's major accrediting agency for institutions of higher learning".
  On November 20, 1924, President Randolph B. Binnion resigned the presidency to become provost at George Peabody College for Teachers in Nashville, Tennessee, and the board of regents selected Samuel H. Whitley as his successor. Whitley was the Dean of the Faculty at ETSTC and a professor of mathematics at the time of his selection, prior to which he had been a high school principal in Corsicana and, briefly, Assistant State Superintendent. Whitley was inaugurated as ETSTC's third president on January 16, 1926, the same day as the dedication of the Education Building, the first campus building to be paid for by state funds. The building was constructed with an appropriation of $285,000 from the Texas Legislature and was built by the Jones Construction Company of San Antonio; it featured a 2,500-seat auditorium and originally included 35 classrooms. It was later renamed the Arthur C. Ferguson Social Sciences Building and, as of 1993, was still one of the most-used buildings on campus. By that year, all of the buildings constructed during the presidencies of Mayo and Binnion had been demolished and replaced, leaving the Ferguson Social Sciences Building as the oldest structure still standing on campus.
  Like Binnion before him, Whitley subscribed to a conception of "normalism" that was similar to Mayo's, which helped ease the presidential transition. Under Whitley, the college's student population increased, eclipsing 1,000 in 1925 before reaching 1,953 during the 1932–33 school year. State funds failed to keep up with enrollment growth, however, rising only slightly from $253,060 during the 1926–27 academic year to $265,950 in 1932–33. Another challenge facing ETSTC during the 1920s and 1930s was the state of its physical plant; aside from the new Education Building, many campus buildings were in poor condition, especially Industrial Hall and Old Main (which were eventually demolished in 1941 and the early 1950s, respectively). New buildings were constructed to address this issue during the Whitley administration: in 1927, a new two-story, colonial-style president's home was built for Whitley just to the south of the Education Building, and in 1929–30 the school's first dedicated library was constructed, featuring room for 125,000 volumes and a showpiece two-story, 40-foot (12 m) reading room. The library also included classrooms and a museum, and featured such ornate details as dark oak woodwork and bronze chandeliers.
  Just before Whitley became president in 1925, ETSTC employed a total of 65 faculty, which grew to 80 by the 1932–33 academic year. Historian of the university William E. Sawyer described the teaching loads for the 1925 summer normal institute as "excessive": one single teacher was assigned to teach agriculture, physical geography, physiology, and zoology, while another teacher taught ancient history, modern history, Texas history, United States history, and school law. However, due to the relative paucity of the school's budget, salaries remained low: during the early 1930s, department heads were paid $3,600 annually, but salaries as low as $2,500 for associate professors, $1,800 for instructors, and $728 for maintenance staff were recorded. in 1926, the
caption: Samuel H. Whitley in 1921, then the Dean of the Faculty
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