East Carolina University grew from a small teacher school into a research giant
East Carolina University began in 1907 as a modest school for training teachers on 43 acres in Greenville, North Carolina. It now spreads across nearly 1,600 acres, ranks as the state's fourth largest university, and is the only one in North Carolina to house medicine, dentistry and engineering together.
State lawmakers chartered East Carolina Teachers Training School on March 8, 1907, under an act meant to boost high school teaching. Former governor Thomas Jordan Jarvis, remembered as the father of ECU, chaired the first board and helped break ground in July 1908, and classes began on October 5, 1909. The school was meant for young white men and women, yet no man graduated until 1932.
Its identity changed step by step. In 1920 it became a four-year teachers college, awarding education degrees the next year, and it launched a master's programme in 1929. Renamed East Carolina College in 1951 as liberal arts took root, it became a regional university in 1967 despite opposition from Governor Dan K. Moore, who did not want a system separate from the existing state university. Independence was brief: in 1972 it joined the University of North Carolina System.
Jarvis, who had served as an ambassador to Brazil, wanted Spanish Mission architecture in eastern North Carolina, and many buildings on the 530-acre main campus reflect that taste. About two miles west, the health sciences campus trains nurses, dentists and doctors beside an 861-bed trauma centre, and many graduates stay to serve the underserved region. The dental school runs eight community centres in rural towns such as Ahoskie and Sylva, where fourth-year students spend a year treating local patients.
Today some 22,463 undergraduates and 5,558 graduate students attend, and the university holds the top research classification. Its coastal field station in New Holland sits next to the huge Mattamuskeet Wildlife Refuge, and a separate research campus occupies a former Voice of America site.
Source: East Carolina University
