By Fred Pace
During the Great Depression era, the condition of the West Virginia economy and its mountainous terrain with inadequate roads made attending college an overwhelming burden for southern West Virginia high school graduates.
During that time, fewer than 10 percent of high school graduates in the area were attending college. The Beckley community had a great desire to offer a quality and affordable education to its youth at the height of the Great Depression. The answer was Beckley College.
The private, nonprofit institution began as a junior college and opened with 97 students and classrooms rented from a local church.
During the first half-century, the college experienced slow growth, but had steady increases in enrollment, staff, facilities and programs.
“They didn’t have the ability at that time to grow like we have over the past several years,” Mountain State University President Charles Polk said. “Considering the time period, they did extremely well with the college.”
In 1990, five presidents and 57 years later, Polk took on the challenges of leading the college into a new and exciting era.
“With some new leadership and a board that gave me the latitude to do what I thought best, the institution began to grow each year,” he said. “We have seen the depth of the institution expanded in every aspect. That is where we are at today, riding a good, long trend of success.”
The 1990s also brought an era of tremendous change, including the transition from a two-year to a four-year college, known as The College of West Virginia, and then to a master’s level institution. New buildings were erected and continue to be built, and degree programs were expanded to include high-demand professional and technical fields, as well as the humanities, arts and sciences.
“Beckley College maneuvered its way through this maze of uncertainty,” Polk said. “We had to take a global view, which resulted in the need for a name change; thus, Mountain State University was born in August 2001.”
Polk says while the university keeps its eye on the future, this is also a good time to look at its past.
“This is kind of like at graduation, when we pause to reflect upon who we are and the traditions we stand for, the 75th is time to reflect on how far we have come and who we are today,” Polk said. “We can look back and say thanks to the community and staff’s help we made it. The 75th anniversary is really the foundation for what we are going to do in the future.”
Polk said when you look at MSU you consider its geography.
“You look at where it is in Beckley on South Kanawha Street, so what we do here to make this continue to grow and develop is a big business and a serious issue,” he said. “It merits lots of attention. The growth of this campus in Beckley is the one that we really need community involvement and community ownership because I believe in the past few years we have really become significant to who Beckley is and who Beckley can become in the future.”
In addition to its main campus in Beckley, MSU has four branch campuses in Martinsburg, Center Township, Pa., Orlando, Fla., and its newest location at the Hickory (N.C.) Metro Higher Education Center.
“We must think about facility growth and development there as well,” he said. “The Eastern Panhandle is going to be a very large marketplace for institutions in the future and we want to take that very seriously.”
Polk said online education and distance learning is growing dramatically.
“Distance learning is so important to this institution that we couldn’t live without it,” he said.
Polk predicts distance and online learning and independent study will make up half of the institution’s income in the next five years.
“We are talking about the regionalization, nationalization or globalization of MSU,” he said. “This type of learning knows no boundaries and has no definition, but it is everywhere.”
The school has a total annual enrollment of more than 8,000 students from all 50 states and a host of other countries.
“Once we pause and reflect on the 75 years of success, it will be time to focus on our new beginning,” Polk said. “We are proud of where we have come from, proud of who we are today and excited about our future. I know we have a very viable future here at MSU.”
— Email:
fpace@register-herald.com
