Southern Utah University history

Cedar City residents came together and on January 5, 1898, a group of residents trudged into the Cedar Mountains through shoulder deep snow.

Bennion, who acted as principal, taught history, geography, and physiology classes during his three-year tenure before he left in 1900 to teach at the University of Utah.

Under the leadership of Nathan T. Porter, the Science Building was constructed in 1901—now known as the Braithwaite Building — which doubled as classroom space.

Porter remained BNS principal until 1904, when George W. Decker took the position.

Howard R. Driggs acted as the first English professor at BNS until 1905.

Driggs oversaw the building of the Football Field Stadium in 1947 and the reconstruction of Old Main after it caught fire.

In 1969, Braithwaite oversaw the school's name change to Southern Utah State College.

Royden C. Braithwaite, 1976

Orville D. Carnahan took over in 1978; during his three-year tenure he led the institution in an expansion of academic offerings.

After a re-imaging campaign in 1989 the student population grew 22 percent to 3,612 students.

Of the 28 structures on campus at the time of his death in 1991, very few had not been built or renovated under his direction.

Disclaimer: Information on this site was converted from a hard cover book published by University of Utah Press in 1994.

He also coined the school's motto “Learning Lives Forever” and student enrollment grew from 360 to 2000.

In its first season it attracted 3,276 visitors and in 2012 it reached 130,000.

President Benson concluded his tenure at SUU and Scott L. Wyatt succeeded him in November 2013.

Since then, Wyatt finalized an unprecedented funding campaign, ending in the groundbreaking of the Beverly Taylor Sorensen Center for the Arts in March 2014.

Doctor Shobha Hamal Gurung signs copies of her book at the SUU Bookstore ​on ​December 1, 2015.