1912-1929
Alonzo C. Reynolds, former Buncombe County superintendant of public schools, became new president of the Cullowhee Normal and Industrial School in 1912. His arrival brought simmering questions about the school’s mission to a boil. Could CNIS realize its founders’s loftier educational aspirations if it remained simply a county high school? By 1918 the institution revised its curriculum to offer a more broadly appealing six-year program: two years of preparatory classes (grades eight and nine) followed by a four-year curriculum that resulted in a junior college degree. Three degree programs, in teaching, classics, and vocational agriculture, were offered; almost all the students continued to choose teaching.
Reynolds also improved campus facilities. Electricity and central steam heat were added or upgraded, and a new classroom/administration building named for state Superintendent of Education and CNIS board member J. Y. Joyner was built. The village and farm community of Cullowhee supported the small, growing school.
By the late 1920s, debate over the school’s future arose again. After Robert Madison’s brief second term as president (1920-23) a new leader, Hiram T. Hunter, oversaw the school’s transition from high school status. The high school program was turned over to the county, and in 1925 the institution became a junior college teacher training institution, the Cullowhee State Normal School. In addition to the change in its mission, the school also increased in size with the addition of Dave Rogers’s 65-acre “Town House” farm in 1924. Enrollment increased from about 200 to about 350 students. Dormitory life became a more important feature of the school scene, along with extracurricular activities.
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