Northwestern Oklahoma State University history

By the fall of 1899, the first building, The Castle on the Hill, had been completed and the school was transferred to its present site.

In 1902 biology department head, Professor G.W. Stevens, established The Museum of Natural History at the school.

From its normal school beginning, Northwestern in 1919 was expanded into a four-year teachers college and was designated at that time as Northwestern State Teachers College.

The school expanded in 1939 to include degrees in liberal arts as well as education, and its name changed again, to Northwestern State College.

In 1941, a constitutional amendment established the present Oklahoma State System of Higher Education and provided for the Oklahoma State Regents for Higher Education.

In 1948, a contest was organized to adopt a new school fight song and a new alma mater.

The winning submissions were announced in March 1949.

In 1951, the Oklahoma State Regents for Higher Education authorized Northwestern to offer courses, transferable to the University of Oklahoma or Oklahoma State University, applying toward a master’s degree in education.

Beginning with the summer term of 1954, Northwestern was authorized to institute a fifth-year program in education leading to a Master of Education degree.

In 1957, a contest was launched to select a motto for the university.

The annual enrollment hovers around two thousand, with the largest enrollment occurring in 1968 with 2,641 students.

In the fall of 1978 Northwestern implemented a program leading to a master of behavioral science degree.

A nursing degree program was established in the fall of 1981 to respond to the nursing shortage in northwest Oklahoma.

These campuses offered their first classes during the 1996-97 academic year.

Northwestern became one of the first institutions to establish a bachelor of e-commerce degree in the fall of 2000.