Alumni College of Education and Professional Studies. . . The First Years

The first alumni came from the first class that started the University of Central Oklahoma, which at that time was called the Territorial Normal School. Twenty-five students (six men and nineteen girls) had responded to Richard Thatcher’s call “to qualify and train persons in the art of school-teaching.” They found a temporary home in the unfinished First Methodist Church located at 19 North Broadway in Edmond. Thatcher, who had been a teacher and principal in Kansas schools before coming to Edmond in 1890, was the total faculty. He taught all of the subjects during the first year. The students met on November 9, 1891 for the very first time.

Students continued to enroll throughout the year. Eight dropped and did not return after the Christmas holiday, twenty-nine continued after January 2, 1892, and twenty-seven more were added after the first of the year. Thus, during the first year more than half-a-hundred students attended the Normal School. At the end of the Spring, 1892, 56 students between the ages of 13 and 21 were on the roll. Among these students was Minnie Morton Kibby who became the first teacher sent out by the Central State Normal School, a name that remained until the institution became a four year college in 1919.

Minnie Morton Kibby