Information & Administration: Brief History

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A Brief History of NGCSU

NGCSU: The Military College of Georgia

North Georgia College & State University has educated leaders since the university was established in 1873. North Georgia, the state’s second oldest public university, is Georgia’s first public coeducational university and the first to graduate women.

Military Heritage

Among the most defining characteristics of North Georgia is its military program that has shaped the lives of students since the university’s inception. Midway through the first academic year, 1873-74, the students requested that military training be made a part of the curriculum. The first commandant of cadets and the first military instructor on campus was 1st Lt. Joseph Gerrard, appointed for the 1876-1877 school year. This appointment marked the beginning of what is now the nationally recognized NGCSU Corps of Cadets.

The National Defense Act of 1916  established the Army Reserve Officer Training Corps, and in 1920, the first North Georgia Corps of Cadets class of 180 officers was commissioned as part of the Army ROTC.

On Sept. 20, 1952, North Georgia College officially became a Branch General ROTC Program, allowing cadets to be commissioned into any branch of the Army.

Designated a “Senior Military College,” North Georgia is one of only six institutions of higher education in the country with that classification. With its Corps of Cadets, North Georgia’s military program is unique among almost 500 Reserve Officer Training Corps programs at universities across the nation.

Women are part of the cadet experience since first being admitted into the military program during North Georgia’s centennial in 1973. In May 1976, Cadet Janet Walls, commanding officer of the women’s ROTC program, was the college’s first female cadet commissioned as Second Lieutenant in the U.S. Army.

The Army named North Georgia’s ROTC program the number one college military program in the nation in 1991 and again in 1995.

In 2002 Cadet Douglas Grey became the first bagpiper of the NGCSU Corps of Cadets when he participated in the Summer Transition Program for cadets. By fall 2005, the Pipes and Drums of the Boar’s Head Brigade included three cadets and one graduate student. Their kilts were designed in 1982 at the first International Gathering of the Scottish Clans in the United States during the Stone Mountain Highland Games. The green, blue, red and black plaid is known as the Georgia Tartan. Their uniforms also include a black leather belt with a Boar’s Head buckle, black leather shoes, green hose with red flash, a “sgian dubh” (dagger worn in the hose), a horse hair “sporran” (serving as a pocket) draped on a separate belt, and a green Army shirt with decorations. Their cap, known as a Glengary, is black, and the drummer wears red and white dicing on his cap. Each member of the group wears his own clan’s badge on his hat, which is toped with black bobbles for upperclassmen and red bobbles for underclassmen.

The NGCSU Corps of Cadets has produced generations of military leaders, including more than three-dozen generals and admirals. Among them is Maj. Gen. Alan W. Thrasher, a 1972 North Georgia graduate, who served as commander general of the U.S. Army Cadet Command, overseeing the nation’s Army ROTC programs before his 2005 assignment as the Department of the Army’s deputy inspector general at the Pentagon.

A History of Gold

In 1828, the first major gold rush in the United States began in the area that became Lumpkin County, Ga. In 1833, Dahlonega was named the county seat. From 1828 to 1848, the region produced more than $36 million in gold coins. When, beginning in 1849, the California Gold Rush drew most of the local miners west, the federal government vacated the U.S. Mint in Dahlonega, eventually conferring the building to the state of Georgia for educational purposes. That U.S. Mint stood where North Georgia’s administration building topped by the landmark golden steeple is now located.

Although classes actually had begun in September 1872, what was to eventually become North Georgia College & State University was officially established as the North Georgia Agricultural College on Jan. 6, 1873. It was a land grant school of agriculture and mechanical arts, with a particular focus on mining engineering. That first year the college enrolled 177 students, 79 of them women.

In 1878, North Georgia became the first state-supported college in Georgia to grant a degree to a woman when Willie Lewis earned her degree in the first graduating class of the college. Her father, David W. Lewis, served as the first appointed president of North Georgia from its opening until 1885.

In December 1878, fire destroyed the former mint building, and Price Memorial Hall, the university’s current administration building, was built on the stone foundation of the former structure. It was named for William P. Price, the congressman from Georgia’s Sixth Congressional District who introduced a resolution in Congress authorizing the secretary of the treasury to convey the mint property to the trustees of North Georgia Agricultural College.

As gold mining waned in the area and the role of a state agricultural college moved to the University of Georgia, North Georgia Agricultural College shifted its emphasis to arts and sciences. In recognition of this change, in the summer of 1929 the school was renamed North Georgia College. Three years later, it was put under the governing control of the newly established Board of Regents, as were all state-supported institutions of higher education in Georgia.

In 1933, primarily as a result of lack of funding during the Great Depression, NGC became a two-year junior college. In 1935, Desmond Booth, associate professor emeritus of English, wrote the NGC Alma Mater, which is still in use today.

In the 1940s, after the United States entered World War II, military recruiters regularly visited the North Georgia campus seeking volunteers for the Navy, Army, Army Air Corps, and Marines. The Cyclops yearbooks during those years identify numerous NGC cadets who answered the call. North Georgia students and alumni served in all branches of the U.S. military and in all theaters of operations. Names of those who lost their lives in service to their country during that time are listed on the WW II Memorial on campus.

As the country began to recover from war, NGC reestablished itself as a four-year senior college. North Georgia was known as “America’s only Co-Ed Military College,” according to the Cyclops yearbooks. Dr. Merritt E. Hoag became president of NGC in 1949 and served until 1970.

Five members of the Class of 1950 lost their lives during the Korean War. The Class of 1951 raised money and volunteered labor to build two brick pillars topped by a cast-iron arch with the words “North Georgia College” to stand at the entrance to campus on the east side of downtown Dahlonega. The Arch was built in memory of and dedicated to the Class of 1950. A few years later, the cadet corps initiated the tradition of freshmen walking around the entrance until they became upperclassmen with the privilege of walking under the Arch. In 1989, the Class of 1951 raised money to restore the Arch. In 1995, brick wings were added to the structure with a passageway for freshmen. On Feb. 19, 1997, a redesigned seal reflecting the new name “North Georgia College & State University” was unveiled on the historic Arch.

Inspired by the gold leaf applied to the state capitol dome, in the 1950s the Dahlonega Club began raising funds to gild the steeple on Price Memorial with gold leaf, H.D. Hogue furnished the gold from his Lumpkin County land. A major contribution from U.A. Lawson, NG class of 1915, provided most of the funding for the steeple, with the rest of his gift funding scholarships. The class of 1958 provided the money to spotlight the steeple. But the project was not completed until the college celebrated its centennial in 1973 with the slogan, “One Hundred Years of Excellence, 1873-1973,” and Gov. Jimmy Carter dedicated the steeple, topped by its original weather vane. 

The Vietnam Era brought many changes to the campus. NGC was relatively isolated compared to other colleges. As a result, the turbulence often associated with campuses of the 1960s did not permeate the campus or the Dahlonega area. Unlike situations on more urban colleges’ campuses, there was student support for the Vietnam War. Many cadets were commissioned and sent to war zones.

Named president of NGC in 1970, Dr. John H. Owen served for 22 years, longer than any other person to hold the college’s leadership position. When he began his presidency, NGC could only be reached via rural two-lane mountain roads. At the time of his retirement, the campus was less than an hour’s drive from Atlanta via Georgia Highway 400.

Following the Vietnam War, the anti-military mood of the nation made it difficult for the college to recruit students. Nationwide, there was so much hostility toward the military that enrollment in ROTC at North Georgia dropped from 501 in 1973, the year the draft was abolished, to 313 in 1974. In 1972, in an attempt to ensure the survival of both the college and the military program, President Owen created a policy requiring resident males to participate in the military program. It was optional for women, who first entered the Corps of Cadets in 1973, decades before some other Senior Military Colleges allowed women to participate in their military programs.

Continuing Education developed on campus during the 1970s and in the late 1980s, the Howard Milton Stewart Continuing Education Center was constructed to house some of the widespread courses open to the community.                         

North Georgia had expanded its programs to include the Master of Education degree, its first graduate program, in 1974. The institution added a second graduate program, the Master in Physical Therapy, in 1991; and a third, the Master in Public Administration, in 1996.

In November 1996, the Board of Regents granted university status to the institution, assigning it the name of North Georgia College & State University. The university addressed the area’s need for advanced nursing degrees in 1998 with the addition of a Master of Science in Nursing degree for Family Nurse Practitioners.

In 1998, a new Health and Natural Sciences Building and a multimedia addition to the Stewart Library were approved and funded by the Board of Regents. These became the first new buildings on campus in nearly 15 years. In addition, NGCSU awarded its first honorary doctoral degree to Eugene Patterson, a member of the North Georgia Class of 1942 and the 1967 Pulitzer Prize-winning editor of the Atlanta Constitution.

In July 1999, Nathaniel Hansford was selected to lead NGCSU into the new millennium as its 15th president. In that year, the Board of Regents approved a fifth graduate degree, the Master of Science in Community Counseling, as well as a Certificate in Gerontology. The historic Price Memorial Administration Building was renovated and rededicated in August 1999. In February 2000, the Board of Regents approved the Educational Specialist Degree, moving NGCSU to a new level in graduate education.
           
Thanks to a generous gift from Dr. Bryan Redd, North Georgia Class of 1944, and donations from other alumni and friends, North Georgia’s first Eminent Scholar Chair was established in 2000 with matching funds from the state. The endowed faculty chair in the Department of Biology was named in honor of Harry B. Forrester, who taught biology at North Georgia from 1939 to 1962.

The 21st Century

In 2001, the NGCSU Foundation announced the purchase of approximately 200 acres of land to serve the university’s expansion needs.

The academic year 2001-2002 saw considerable development of  NGCSU programs. NGCSU entered a three-way partnership with Gainesville College and the University of Georgia to create and staff the Institute of Environmental and Spatial Analysis. The university graduated its first students earning the European Union Certificate. Also, the Board of Regents ratified North Georgia’s new Bachelor of Science degree in Athletic Training. North Georgia was the first university in Georgia to offer a Leadership Minor and during 2001-2002 graduated the first 17 students with Leadership Minors.


The John H. Owen Hall, funded through the NGCSU Foundation and opened in 2002, was the first privatized residence hall on campus. The 314-bedroom building, which overlooks the main campus, was officially dedicated to the university’s 12th president on April 5, 2003.

The Pennington Military Leadership Center was dedicated on Veterans Day, Nov. 11, 2004. The renovated and rebuilt structure that formerly housed the physical plant operations now stands next to the main entrance to campus. Plant Operations moved to a newly built facility off of Sunset Drive.

The university continued to expand off-campus programs, offering classes in Forsyth County, at Gainesville College in Hall County, and, via distance learning at Kennestone Hospital in Marietta and Cobb Hospital in Austell. In 2005, the Cobb County programs moved to North Metro Technical College in Acworth.

In January 2005, the university’s 16th president, Dr. David L. Potter, took office at NGCSU. In fall 2005, the university set a new enrollment record of more than 4,800 students, the largest enrollment in North Georgia’s 132-year history. That semester, the university’s first doctoral program, leading to the doctor of physical therapy degree, was approved by the Board of Regents to be administered on the NGCSU campus, beginning in 2006, in association with the Medical College of Georgia and Armstrong Atlantic State University.

The 2006-2007 year marked the beginning of two major construction projects. Work began on a $24.6 million parking deck and recreation center, to include 586 parking spaces and a 54,000 square foot recreation center. The second major project begung was the new $23 million library/technology center, at 88,460 square feet. Minor projects begun included a $4.7 million interior renovation of the Education Building.

Other news that year included a $10 million gift from Mike and Lynn Cottrell to the School of Business, the largest donation to NGCSU in the institution's 134-year history. The School of Business was renamed the Mike Cottrell School of Business in honor of this generous gift.

North Georgia continues to enjoy a reputation for strong academic leadership, high quality liberal arts programs on the undergraduate level, and quality pre-professional, professional, and graduate-level programs. In addition, the university remains committed to providing support services and an environment conducive to  students’ intellectual, ethical, social, and physical development and cultural awareness.
North Georgia seeks to assist all students in their advancement toward knowledgeable and responsible state, regional, national, and international citizenship.

 
[Note: For a more detailed account of the history of North Georgia College & State University, see Georgia’s Best Kept Secret: A History of North Georgia College, written by Dr. William Roberts, former history professor at NGCSU, chronicling the university from its inception in 1873 through the early 1990s.]