The Earliest years
Modest Beginning Paves the Way for College of Education

The first thing to understand about the history of the College of Education at Michigan State University (MSU) is that 1952 was not really the beginning but rather a new beginning. By 1952, nearly all of the departments and programs that made up the new school had had a long history.

In fact, Professor Victor Noll, who headed the Department of Education from 1939 to 1943, wrote a history that traced the university’s roots in preparing teachers, for example, to the institution’s beginning. The first president, Joseph R. Williams, had taught in primary schools while a student at Harvard University. When he took the helm of the brand new Michigan Agricultural College in 1857, he encouraged students to teach as a way to make money for their education. It was a suggestion many students took to heart.

“There can be no doubt that many students at the College engaged in such teaching for the first forty years of its existence,” wrote Noll in his book The Preparation of Teachers at Michigan State University. “Whether or not it can properly be maintained that Michigan State University has been engaged in the preparation of teachers for over 100 years is debatable. That the institution supplied teachers to the common schools for many years prior to the establishment of a program for such a purpose is not.”

It wasn’t until 1902 that Michigan Agricultural College established a formal course in education. In the spring of that year, Dean of Women Maude Gilchrist taught a class in the history of education. It was listed in the catalog as an elective for seniors in the Women’s Division.

That single course marked the beginning of what would be a fifty-year trajectory culminating in the creation of the School of Education. In many ways, the foundation was laid for the college at the turn of the century. Only three years before Gilchrist began teaching the history of education, the Department of Physical Culture had been established. It was the progenitor of what is today the Department of Kinesiology, one of four departments in the College of Education.

Events began to move quickly after 1902. By the 1906–07 academic year, three elective courses in education were available to “young women who expect to teach,” and a student teaching component was also in place. In 1907, the Department of Education was listed in the college catalog for the first time.

In 1909, the department’s name was changed to the Department of Agricultural Education and was made part of the Division of Agriculture. Professor Walter French was appointed to head the new department. He would direct it until his death in 1924.

Under French’s leadership, teacher training was fully established at the university. During those years, the department developed a formal sequence of study for women and men, established its first center for practice teaching at East Lansing High School, began to build a faculty, and offered the first graduate courses in education