As the fall semester begins and students return to campus for classes, the celebration of IU Southeast’s 70th anniversary will be commencing.

Before IU Southeast covered 180 acres in New Albany and more than 7,000 students were enrolled, IU Southeast was a small, commuter campus located in downtown Jeffersonville.

The original campus was created in 1941, with 291 students enrolled, four of those with full-time status.

Originally, IU Southeast offered 16 courses to a majority of non-traditional, commuter students. Today, IU Southeast has an enrollment of predominately full-time students and offers more than 1,500 courses with a campus budget of $68 million.

Thomas Wolf, professor emeritus of political science, had been a faculty member of IU Southeast since 1970 and began his career after teaching at the University of New Mexico in the 1960s.

Wolf said he encountered a drastic difference between the two universities when he went from teaching a classroom of more than 40 students to teaching a small political science class of five students.

“It was quite a different physical setting from any university I had seen,” Wolf said. “I was showing my 5-year-old son, Lance, the campus when I was first hired, and he kept saying, ‘No Dad, this isn’t a university. It is too small.’ My son had seen larger campuses like Stanford University and Wichita State University, and he was confused by the store-front look of the small IU Southeast campus.”

The original campus conducted classes in local high schools and middle schools. With tuition at $6 a credit hour and a budget of just under $5,900, some classes had to be taught elsewhere because of the lack of space.

IU Southeast moved into its own building in 1945 and became the Indiana University Jeffersonville Extension Center.

In 1968, the extension center was named IU Southeast and began awarding degrees.

IU Southeast left Jeffersonville and created a campus in New Albany. Construction for the new campus began in 1971.

Bernardo Carducci, professor of psychology, began teaching at IU Southeast in 1979.

“We have gotten bigger in size, but for the most part I don’t think our heart has changed,”  he said.

Student enrollment continued to grow, however, the new campus had acquired the nickname “Grant Line High” because of its location in a small town.

Chancellor Sandra Patteron-Randles began her career at IU Southeast almost a decade ago.

“I wanted to get rid of the stupid stigma of Grant Line High,” Patterson-Randles said.

In the last decade, the campus has been able to construct a new library, renovate original buildings, obtain modern technology and build lodges.

“I think the construction of the residence halls has reflected the progress of IU Southeast in a big way,” Patterson-Randles said.

By COURTNEY MCKINLEY

Features Editor

comckinl@imail.iu.edu