From VPI to State University:
President T. Marshall Hahn Jr. and the Transformation of Virginia Tech, 1962–1974
Warren H. Strother and Peter Wellenstein
The story of Hahn and the transformation of public higher education in the South
T. Marshall Hahn, Jr., became president of Virginia Polytechnic Institute in 1962.
By the time he left twelve years later, the school had become a university. No longer a small military school that emphasized agriculture and engineering for white male undergraduates, Virginia Technical Institute and State University had become a multiracial, coeducational research university with a thriving college of arts and sciences as well as burgeoning graduate programs.
Bringing together the biography of a man and the history of an institution through a dozen years of transformation, Strother and Wellenstein discuss the school’s tremendous growth in sheer numbers of faculty and students, the increased enrollment of female and non-white students, and the increased emphasis on intercollegiate athletics.
From VPI to State University is the story of the transformation of public higher education in the United States--especially in the South--in the 1960s. Much of the book relies on the recollections of the people who--as faculty, administrators, or other leaders --experienced, even brought about, the changes chronicled in these pages.
Warren H. Strother worked with Marshall Hahn for ten years while Hahn transformed VPI into a university. A South Carolina native, Strother grew up in Virginia and earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in Journalism from Northwest University. After twelve years as a journalist he worked at Virginia Tech from 1964 to 1990.
Peter Wallenstein teaches at the school that Marshall Hahn built—he has taught history at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University since 1983. He grew up in New Hampshire, attended Columbia, earned his doctorate at John Hopkins, and, before moving to Blacksburg, taught in New York, Canada, Japan, Korea, and Guam. His previous books include a study of nineteenth-century Georgia and a book for the 125th anniversary of Virginia Tech.
Titles of related interest
The Academic President as Moral Leader: James T. Laney at Emory University, 1977–1993
Joe Frank Harris: Personal Reflections on a Public Life
Carl Sanders: Spokesman of the New South
