Whitley led the institution from the hosiery mill years (1958-62) through its move to the permanent campus he also oversaw the transition to senior college status (approved by the Board of Regents in 1965) and handed out the institution’s first bachelor’s degree diplomas in 1970. His folksy manner and rural colloquialisms immediately made him popular with the local promoters of the junior college, many of whom became charter members of the Columbus College Foundation. degree in junior college administration, had served as dean of South Georgia College, and was working for the Board of Regents at the time. A native of south Georgia, Whitley had earned an Ed.D. Whitley as Columbus College’s first president in May 1958, on the same day that they voted to make the school part of the University System. Junior College to Four-Year Institution, 1958-1979 The agreement of 1958 thus was not formalized until January 1963, when Columbus College began operating on its own campus.
In May 1958 the local school board agreed to donate these properties once built to the University System’s Board of Regents in exchange for University System membership and the promise of long-term system funding for faculty, staff, and future construction.īecause therouting of a major transportation artery through a portion of its campus delayed construction of buildings, Columbus College opened its doors in September 1958 in a renovated hosiery mill a few miles away. By 1958 they had raised the monies necessary to construct the junior college’s first four buildings. In the late 1940s and the 1950s, local promoters of higher education solicited funds to purchase the campus on farmland six miles northeast of downtown Columbus and to furnish it with roads and sewer and water lines. FoundingĬommunity support is a legacy of the university’s origin in an effort by the Muscogee County school board to create a junior college. CSU’s 1996 partnership with the state of Georgia and Columbus-based Total System Services in the training of computer programmers marked the first application of the University System’s Intellectual Capital Partnership Program ( ICAPP), a venture in regional economic development. The foundation’s support has helped gain regional and national recognition for the university’s Schwob School of Music. Some of them are members of the Columbus State University Foundation (chartered in 1963 as the Columbus College Foundation) and contribute to making this private fund-raising group among the most successful organization of its kind among the University System of Georgia’s regional state universities. Many of these professionals could not have afforded higher education without access to CSU. Hundreds of alumni are local business and political leaders. More than 55 percent of the area’s teachers, including 90 percent of its music teachers, are CSU graduates, as are more than 70 percent of its law enforcement officers and 80 percent of its nurses. In the fall of 2003 CSU enrolled 6,937 students. Founded in 1958, Columbus State University (CSU) has played a significant role in the cultural and economic development of the city of Columbus and Muscogee County.
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