During winter term 2025 Dr. Kara Ritzheimer’s History 310 (Historian’s Craft) students researched and wrote blog posts about OSU during WWII. The sources they consulted are listed at the end of each post. Students wrote on a variety of topics and we hope you appreciate their contributions as much as the staff at SCARC does!
Blog post written by Sylas Allen.
In July 1862, the United States government granted thirty-thousand acres of federal land to the states for the purpose of building universities. These universities aimed to fulfill this mission by creating institutions that would instruction in the fields of science, classical studies, agriculture and mechanical arts. Oregon State University (formerly Oregon State College) got its start as a one of these land grant colleges in 1868. In his book The People’s School: a History of Oregon State University, historian William Robbins writes, “Oregon State University exemplifies the importance of federal initiatives in fostering agricultural experiment stations, extension programs, and oceanic and space related research.”1
Today we see many different course offerings at Oregon State and many choices for majors and studies. However, expanding the curriculum took time and effort to get where it is now. One large push towards expanding and diversifying curriculum occurred during World War II. This unexpected change happened in part due to the soldiers Oregon State College (OSC) housed on campus during the war. Many college campuses were charged with hosting Army training operations. OSC’s Army Navy Specialized Training Program (A.S.T.P) created demand for an expanded liberal arts program. The A.S.T.P aimed to create technicians and specialists for the army, and sent these men to a variety of colleges and institutions for the purpose of receiving academic instruction deemed important towards serving their positions for the army.2 The army needed soldiers that had fundamental understandings of the conflict and political science and history classes were considered important foundations along with language classes (primarily German). The demand for these courses helped to push OSC authorities into expanding and improving upon their liberal arts offerings.
Published in October 1940, the 1939-1940 Biennial Report book from The Oregon State Board of Higher Education contains information about colleges and universities in the area, including their budgets, departments, and changes within them. In the past, liberal arts and humanities courses at OSC were referred to as “Lower Divison” or “Service Courses” and these programs were smaller and received less funding than the sciences. According to the budget for the year of 1938-1939, OSC spent a total of $68,838.10 on Arts and Letters, Lower Division and Service Courses (English, Modern Languages, Public Speaking and Drama). Social Science, Lower Division and Service Courses (Economics, History, Philosophy, Psychology, and Sociology) received even less at a total of $36,990.58 for the year. This number is markedly lower compared what OSC gave to the School of Science (Dean of Science, Bacteriology, Botany, Chemistry, Entomology, Geology, Mathematics, Physics, Zoology and Science Survey). Their funding was a total of $202,640.52 throughout the year.3 This shows that the humanities was an underdeveloped program at the time.
Two Oregon State College Catalogs, one from 1940-1941 the other from 1943-1944, record enrollment numbers divided by major. Liberal Arts and Sciences in 1940-1941 had a total of 628 students enrolled in Lower Division courses.4 I hypothesized that enrollment numbers would be lower for 1943-1944 as enrollment rates dropped during the war. However, we can see that the number of students enrolled for Lower Division during this year was actually higher, at 713.5 This increase in students could be because of an uptick in students studying foreign language, history, or politics to aid the war effort. These classes provided foundational information to help understand and aid the conflict and build better informed citizens. Within administrative records there is record of a discussion about curriculum from March 10, 1942. During this meeting, Chancellor Frederick M. Hunter stated, “Characteristically all of the separate type have as a core curriculum basic science, and correlated and closely knit with this, broadening and liberalizing courses in language and social sciences. This, Oregon State College should have in considerably fuller provisions than it has at present.”6
More than three decades later, former OSC President August Strand observed in a 1975 interview that until 1953, OSC was still an agricultural college and was criticized during the war for not having a College of Liberal Arts.7 Unfortunately, he listed no further details about who specifically had criticized OSC or what was said. Another Biennial Report from 1941-1942 examined current liberal arts offerings and stated that OSC experiences, “the dominant interest in land-grant college education directed towards the applications of science.” The report then discusses ensuring that liberal arts education is up to standard.8
In November, 1941 Delmer Goode—a prominent figure within the OSC Publications department who advocated for changes regarding curriculum and higher standards—published a report titled “How ‘Complete’ is Oregon State College As a ‘Separate’ Land Grant Institution?.”9 In it he compared OSC to other universities and stated that the curriculum was “deficient in major opportunities in both liberal arts and professional fields.”10 In 1942, M Ellwood Smith, Dean of Lower Division, sent a letter to Goode drawing his attention to the new courses OSC had started offering that year. Smith noted a new course in Russian, and explained that new courses in English, American-European History, and other Lower Division courses provided foundational information to officers in training.11 An Oregon State Barometer article published in April 1942 and titled “New Courses Added to Meet Educational Needs of Oregon” discussed plans to “liberalize the curricula of the entire institution to meet the needs of modern citizenship training.”12 In January 1943, another Oregon State Barometer article talked about the A.S.T.P and their development of planned curriculum for their officers in training. It detailed coursework and training hours and shared that the army and a panel of specialists were working to create this curriculum and training plan.13
Despite the lack of specific classes, given what we know about the A.S.T.P and their goals for creating soldiers with foundational knowledge, at least some of this planned coursework would be Lower Division. A report from Winter Term 1944 shows that the curriculum would contain “Modern History and Contemporary World Affairs, 4 hours; Language Study, 13 hours; Police Science and Law Enforcement, 1 hour” along with several other items.14 These planned curriculum changes show us that OSC administration was listening to demands from faculty for new classes and were implementing new courses in order to meet these requests.
OSC was not the only institution going through curriculum changes during WWI; military training programs pushed other universities similarly to alter their curriculum. According to historian V.R. Cardozier, “almost 200 [small colleges] did attract college training programs sponsored by the military services.”15 Cardozier also shares that the war spurred greater interest in “social sciences, history, languages, politics, and international relations.”16 History and political science courses helped give students a better understanding of the current conflict through a more comprehensive grasp on the politics that caused it. Language courses provided valuable information to officers in training, especially with new German classes. Even without war influences on campuses, the period of 1920 to the 1950s was a time where many land-grant colleges wanted to start offering better liberal arts education. Educator Roger L. Geiger discusses this and the history of liberal arts education in his book The History of American Higher Education: Learning and Culture from the Founding to WWII. He shares that in the 1920s new standards were being created by education boards for teachers colleges. These new standards wanted to shape courses in the name of professionalism. Those in charge of higher education standards planned to remove any curriculum that was seen as not having functional value—primarily liberal arts courses. However educators and teachers disagreed with this course cutting approach. Geiger states, “By 1940 one-half of their [California state colleges’] enrollments were in liberal arts… However, other states failed to follow California’s lead until after the surge of postwar veterans under the GI Bill forced teachers’ colleges to expand enrollment and offerings.”17 This paints a picture of higher demand for a diverse education which included better developed liberal arts programs. These sources show us that OSC was not alone in experiencing pressure for diversified education.
Oregon State University has evolved much since its conception as an institution, and over time students have changed and so have their needs in regards to curriculum. We can very clearly track a shift within the WWII era encouraging colleges to offer more foundational liberal arts teaching. This shift happened not only within OSC but also within other colleges and universities across the country and it greatly improved course offerings. We can clearly see a correlation between A.S.T.P presence and the increase in class offerings within the liberal arts due to demands from military trainees and their leadership. This coursework provided students and soldiers in training with a more suitable framework for understanding the war and understanding the ways in which they could aid the war effort. Prior to this research, I would not have connected those two items but the story being told here begs to differ.
1William Robbins, The People’s School: A History of Oregon State University (Oregon State University Press,2017), 1.
2John R. Craf, “Facts About the the A.S.T.P Reserve,” The Clearing House 18, no. 7 (1944), 402. https://www.jstor.org/stable/30187137?seq=1.
3Oregon State System of Higher Education, “Biennial Report 1939-1940,” Special Collections and Archives Research Center (hereafter SCARC), RG 013-SG12 Annual and Biennial Reports, Box 6, Folder 1.
4Oregon State University, “General Catalog, 1940-1941,” Oregon Digital, 492, https://oregondigital.org/concern/documents/fx719v902
5Oregon State University, “General Catalog, 1943-1944,” Oregon Digital, 377, https://oregondigital.org/concern/documents/fx719v93w
6Administrative Council Records, SCARC, Box-folder 2.4, 55, 1941-1955.
7August Strand and Mollie Strand, “August and Mollie Strand Oral History Interview,” 1975, SCARC, http://scarc.library.oregonstate.edu/omeka/items/show/35436.
8Oregon State University, “Biennial Report of Oregon State College, 1941-1942,” Oregon Digital, 34, https://oregondigital.org/concern/documents/fx71d395d.
9Delmer Goode worked within the Publications department at OSC and was later declared the first director of Publications. He worked on an academic journal titled Improving College and University Teaching. There are many mentions of letters and reports from him about how OSC could improve its curriculum or teachings to better serve its students and faculty.
10Delmer Goode, “How Complete is Oregon State College as a “Separate” Land Grant Institution?” 1941, SCARC, Institution Memorabilia Collection, 97.11.pdf.
11Oregon State University President’s Office Records, Oregon State University, “President’s Office General Subject File, Audit Reports, Correspondence reports with State Board of Higher Education Curricula, 1940-1942,” Oregon Digital, https://oregondigital.org/concern/documents/qv33rz03k.
12Oregon State Barometer, April 29, 1942, Oregon Digital, https://oregondigital.org/concern/documents/8k71p7448.
13Oregon State Barometer, January 26, 1943, Oregon Digital, https://oregondigital.org/concern/documents/871nj33f.
14Dean M Elwood, Winter Term Curriculum, 1944, SCARC, Historic Publications Collection, RG 013-5G12, Annual and Biennial Reports, Box 9, Folder 9.
15V.R. Cardozier, Colleges and Universities in World War II (Praeger, 1993), 109–19.
16Cardozier, Colleges and Universities in World War II, 109–19.
17 R.L Geiger, The history of American higher education : learning and culture from the founding to World War II (Princeton University Press, 2015), 436-438.
