Texas State University

In 1893 the Twenty-third Legislature took the first step toward the establishment of a teachers college at San Marcos by passing a law that the state superintendent of public instruction prescribe a course of study which teachers must complete at North Texas Normal at Denton or at Coronal Institute at San Marcos before they could be eligible to teach in the public schools of Texas. The Coronal Institute board of control did not choose to change the curriculum to conform to the new law. The Twenty-sixth Legislature, therefore, in 1899 passed an act authorizing the establishment and maintenance of a normal school at San Marcos, to be known as the Southwest Texas Normal School. The citizens of San Marcos donated eleven acres of land on an elevation known as Chautauqua Hill as the site of the college, and in 1901 the Twenty-seventh Legislature appropriated $25,000 for the erection of a building. W. D. Wood, Ed. J. L. Green, and S. V. Daniel were appointed as a local board of trustees. The school opened on September 9, 1903, with Thomas G. Harris as principal, a faculty of seventeen, and an enrollment of 303. In 1911 Harris was succeeded by Cecil E. Evans.

In 1918 the school became a full-fledged senior college, at which time the name was changed to Southwest Texas State Normal College. In 1923 the name was again changed, this time to Southwest Texas State Teachers College. In the same year the school was admitted into the American Association of Teachers Colleges. The name had been changed, but the objective of preparing teachers remained the same. In 1912 the college entered into an agreement with the San Marcos school board to use two teachers of the local school as demonstration teachers. This arrangement was discontinued in 1914, at which time the college opened its own practice school. In 1917, by local agreement, all of the East Ward School transferred to the Education Building on the campus for demonstration purposes. This arrangement lasted only one year. In 1923 negotiations for a cooperative agreement with the city schools were reopened and continued until 1933 when the arrangements were completed. By this contract the city school became the laboratory school of the college. This unusual plan, one of the few of its kind in American colleges, continued in 1950.