Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology
Institution of higher learning a cornerstone in community
By Stephanie Salter

Unlike many wealthy folk, Chauncey Rose did not want a school named after him. A practical but visionary Connecticut Yankee who chose Terre Haute in which to make his fortune, Rose endowed an institution of higher learning in 1874 for one reason:

He needed more skilled workers for his Terre Haute and Richmond Railroad than the area was producing on its own.

A year later, when Rose's hand-picked, nine-man board of managers decided to change the name of the school to honor its benefactor, Rose protested but lost the argument.

The cornerstone of the Rose Polytechnic Institute was installed 130 years ago this past Sunday at Locust and Thirteenth streets. Twenty-five men made up the first class (and student body). Today more than 1,800 young men and women pursue bachelor's and master's degrees in engineering, mathematics and science.

In 1922, 11 years after the modest tycoon was laid to rest in Highland Lawn Cemetery, his namesake institute followed him east on U.S. 40 and began to spread out on 123 acres of farmland that had been donated by the Hulman family in 1917.

It would be another half century before the board of managers - by now, like the student body, considerably larger - would again vote to change the name of the college. In 1971, after Anton and Mary Hulman bestowed upon Rose Poly the assets of their family foundation (more than $11 million) Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology was born.

Rose-Hulman's physical plant now covers 295 acres. The school's core athletic teams no longer compete against Purdue and Indiana as they did in Chauncey's day, but there are 21 varsity sports available in NCAA Division III play and the Southern Collegiate Athletic Conference.

About the only thing at Rose-Hulman that has not grown bigger over the decades is the student-to-faculty ratio. In 1924 it was 17 to 1 Today it is a cozy 12 to 1. A whopping 99 percent of full-time faculty have doctorate degrees.

No wonder Rose-Hulman has seven straight times been chosen the No. 1 U.S. college for engineering students pursuing bachelor or master degrees. No wonder it is often mentioned in the same company as the mighty Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The comparison has a long tradition.

In the summer of 1883, board of managers Secretary Samuel S. Early personally went after promising students, including those who already had gotten away.

In a letter to an Iowa family, Early told the parents that he regretted "to notice that your son already is entered at M.I.T. of Boston, for we believe that our School will offer as great, if not greater, facilities for the acquisition of a sound practical training in Technology as the M.I.T or any other institution in the country."

In the Rose Poly/Rose-Hulman pantheon of presidents, three names probably rise above all the others: Carl Leo Mees (1895-1919), John A. Logan (1962-1976) and Samuel F. Hulbert (1976-2004). The men - respectively, a medical doctor, a civil and environmental engineer, and a bio-engineer - not only served long and loyally, each in his individual style managed to guide the school through myriad changes in technology and society.

Last year, the brief, contentious tenure of Hulbert's successor, John J. Midgley, disturbed what insiders and outsiders think of as the relative quiet of Rose-Hulman. Amid protest rallies and no-confidence votes - which ended in Midgley's resignation - many predicted irreparable damage to the school.

But it was not so long ago that another issue was supposed to spell doom and, in the words of one board member, ensure that "Rose-Hulman will never be the same."

Nonetheless, after more than 15 years of exploratory committees, position papers, heated debates, dire warnings and razor-thin votes, the first women students were admitted in 1995.

So far, so good.

Stephanie Salter can be reached at (812) 231-4229 or stephanie.salter@tribstar.com.