Lehigh University history

Henry Coppee worked as a railroad engineer in Georgia, served as a captain in the Army during the Mexican War, and taught at West Point and the University of Pennsylvania before becoming Lehigh's first president in 1866.

William Bacon Stevens, Episcopal bishop of the Diocese of Pennsylvania and the first president of the university’s board of trustees, in 1869 described the origin of the university as follows:

Henry Drinker was a lawyer and a mechanical engineer by trade, and also an 1871 Lehigh graduate and the first alumnus to become president.

Just over a decade later, on May 17, 1879, Packer passed away.

Located less than 20 miles apart, the schools began their rivalry in 1884 and have since played more times than any set of rivals in the nation.

Despite the Panic of 1893, which decimated Lehigh's stock holdings in the Lehigh Valley Railroad, Lehigh managed to grow in enrollment and academics.

A writer in the Syracuse Post in 1895 spoke truthfully when he said, ‘From the first, Lehigh’s characteristic has been her earnestness.

But in the fall of 1918, women were admitted to graduate programs for the first time.

In 1924, Catherine Drinker Bowen, daughter of President Henry Drinker and later a famous biographer, published a brief history of Lehigh University, in which she commented:

Harvey Neville joined Lehigh in 1927 as an assistant professor of chemistry and was the only faculty member ever elected president.

William Hittinger graduated from Lehigh in 1944 with a degree in metallurgical engineering and was a former chairman of the university's board of trustees.

Packer Hall was renovated and enlarged, and became the University Center in 1958.

In 1971, the university opened its undergraduate program to them as well.

Rita M. Plotnicki, Looking Back: A Lehigh Scrapbook (Bethlehem: Lehigh University), 1991.

W. Ross Yates, Lehigh University: A History of Education in Engineering, Business, and the Human Condition (Bethlehem: PA: Lehigh University Press), 1992.

Lehigh's first official mascot, the “Mountain Hawk,” debuted in 1995.

After his year in office, Clayton returned to his role as Vice Chair of the Board of Trustees and, later, would assume the role of Chairman in the fall of 2017.