The history of East Texas State University (ETSU) comprises the history of the university now known as East Texas A&M University from its renaming as East Texas State University in 1965 (after the establishment of its first doctoral program) to its admission into the Texas A&M University System and renaming as Texas A&M University–Commerce in 1996. During this era, ETSU was led by five different presidents: James Gilliam Gee, D. Whitney Halladay, F. H. "Bub" McDowell, Charles J. Austin, and Jerry Morris. The ETSU period witnessed substantial swings in student enrollment, which grew from 8,890 in 1968 to 9,981 in 1975 before falling to 6,867 in 1985 and partially recovering to 8,000 in 1992. The university's physical plant expanded steadily throughout the period, from 87 buildings on valued at $19 million in 1965 to a campus spanning worth approximately $150 million by the 1990s.
Major structural changes to the university during the ETSU era included the creation of a separate ETSU board of regents in 1969 and the approval to open a branch campus in Texarkana in April 1971. While at times accused of cronyism and wasteful spending, the university administration pursued innovative programs that provided counseling and tutoring to disabled and minority students, supported disadvantaged local minority high school students, and joined consortia such as the Federation of North Texas Area Universities. The administration first lowered ETSU's academic standards for admission before raising them in successive efforts to end its enrollment crisis. The most serious threat to face ETSU stemmed from the economic downturn in Texas in the mid-1980s, which led to proposals to close the school entirely before a bus trip with 450 supporters trekked to the State Capitol in a show of support that ultimately secured the school's continued existence.
As the student body shrank in size in the late 1970s and early 1980s, however, it became increasingly diverse as older non-traditional students, minority students, and international students all grew in numbers. Through the African-American Student Society at East Texas (ASSET), the university's African American students advocated their demands for equal treatment in housing, course offerings in African American history and literature, and the employment of African American faculty members. Their efforts ultimately resulted in the first African American faculty member and administrator being hired in 1968 and 1972, respectively. Similarly, the proportion of female faculty members grew from 20% in 1975 to almost 26% in 1990, and the first woman to hold a high-level academic office was promoted in 1987.
ETSU's Five Star Series brought many prestigious artists and creative minds to campus, including author Alex Haley as well as actors Larry Linville and Vincent Price. Its Sam Rayburn Symposium likewise featured prominent politicians and scholars, including Lady Bird Johnson, former Speaker of the United States House of Representatives John William McCormack, Congressman Ray Roberts, and Speaker of the House Jim Wright. The football team won the NAIA national championship in 1972, while Lion football players such as Autry Beamon, Harvey Martin, Dwight White, and Wade Wilson went on to star in the National Football League (NFL). The men's tennis team won the 1972 and 1978 NAIA national championships, while future Olympian John Carlos competed for the men's track team in 1966–67. After the passage of Title IX in 1972, ETSU fielded women's teams in basketball, tennis, track, and volleyball, with the volleyball team achieving the most success during the period.
Continued growth
East Texas State College (ETSC) was renamed East Texas State University (ETSU) with authorization from the Texas Legislature in 1965, after it began its first doctoral program in 1962. ETSU was also reorganized into three schools at this point, one each for the arts and sciences, education, and its graduate program. In 1965, the main ETSU campus included 87 buildings on , while its college farm spanned and consisted of 25 buildings. That year the total value of the physical plant was $19 million, compared to $2.328 million in 1947 and $175,000 in 1917. The university's budget for 1965 totaled $6 million, which funded 25 academic departments offering 69 undergraduate majors and 30 specializations for master's degrees.
After President James G. Gee retired in 1966, he was replaced by D. Whitney Halladay, a native Californian who was educated at Claremont College and Columbia University. He served in the United States Army during World War II and the Korean War and worked for the University of Arkansas as its dean of students starting in 1955. Enrollment growth continued during the first years of the ETSU era, albeit at a slower rate: it slowly tailed off from 28% in 1965 to 6.74% in 1968, when total enrollment reached 8,890. Despite this trend of slowing growth and national factors such as the declining overall birthrate, the newly established Texas College Coordinating Board predicted that ETSU's fall 1971 enrollment would reach 12,200, a prognostication that Halladay "fully accepted".
The projected growth encouraged expansion and reorganization of the university's administration in the late 1960s, most notably the creation of the College of Business in 1968, which joined the two extant academic colleges: Arts and Sciences, and Education. The next year, the Texas Legislature established a separate ETSU board of regents when it passed House Bill 242, which historian Donald E. Reynolds termed the "most important administrative change" because it allowed the university to "pursue goals tailor-made for [its] best interests". In 1969, the Department of Social Sciences was split into two new departments: the Department of Political Science and the Department of Sociology/Anthropology. 1971 witnessed the creation of the Department of Computer Science, a discipline previously taught in the Department of Mathematics. ETSU's bachelor's degree in the field was the first offered anywhere in Texas.
The ETSU Foundation and the Office of Alumni Affairs, which addressed the pressing priorities of fundraising and connecting with graduates, were founded early during Halladay's administration and then transferred from the jurisdiction of the president's administrative assistant to the Division of Student and University Advancement by 1970.
By 1972, Halladay's building campaign, which followed on the heels of Gee's highly successful expansion of the physical plant, had invested $16 million in construction and resulted in numerous new buildings. Among these were the Administration/Business Administration Building (later named for President F. H. McDowell), three major dormitories (Hubbell, Smith, and Whitley Halls), the Journalism/Graphic Arts Building, a new president's house (a new, larger residence south of campus on Texas State Highway 50 opened in 1968), the Student Affairs Building (later named for Halladay), and a variety of farm and maintenance buildings. Halladay's building campaign also resulted in significant additions to the Field House, Gee Library, the Science Building, and the Student Center. The library's 1969 addition expanded it by and increased its capacity to 750,000 volumes; over 30,000 books, microforms, and other cataloged items were added to its holdings during 1969 alone. In 1971, a comprehensive campus plan was developed by an outside engineering firm for ETSU, and while it was not entirely implemented due to an unexpected decline in students that occurred during the 1970s, it did result in the closing of Bryan Street and College Drive and their replacement with pedestrian malls.
After the creation of East Texas State's doctoral program in 1962, the Coordinating Board announced its intention to phase it out in 1966. This was part of an effort by Governor John Connally to reduce "wasteful duplication of programs" that resulted in the creation of a list of approved doctorate-granting state universities, on which ETSU was not included. However, due largely to the influence of State Senator A. M. Aikin Jr. of Paris, State Representative Ralph Hall of Rockwall, and university comptroller F. H. "Bub" McDowell, the Coordinating Board reversed course in 1967 and reinstated ETSU's doctoral program with minor changes, most notably the replacement of the Ph.D. degree with the Ed.D. The revived program accepted new students from 1968–69. The Coordinating Board also granted ETSU approval to open a branch campus in Texarkana in April 1971, which without a physical campus of its own shared facilities with Texarkana College, a junior college. ETSU Texarkana developed "almost as a separate entity", according to Reynolds, sharing a system of governance with the main campus in Commerce but enjoying significant independence in regard to budget, curriculum, and faculty.
The size of the faculty at ETSU continued to grow: during his final year as president in 1965–66, Gee had hired an "unprecedented" 50 new professors, a feat equaled by Halladay the very next year. Full-time faculty members grew from 208 in 1965 to 331 in 1968–69, although the percentage of them who held doctorates slumped during this span from 58% (in 1965) to 49% (in 1968–69). Compensation and benefits for faculty also increased noticeably during this period: the average salary more than doubled between 1958 and 1968 (from $4,710 to $10,938), the standard teaching load was reduced from 15 hours to 12 in 1966, a tenure policy was approved in 1968, and a Faculty Senate was established in 1970. According to Reynolds, however, the Faculty Senate was more an effort by the administration to meet Southern Association of Colleges and Schools guidelines than it was "any real commitment to the principle of shared governance".
Halladay's relative lack of charm and the "mutual distrust" that existed between him and the faculty led to many of them feeling indifferent towards him, in contrast with Gee's more personal yet also more polarizing style. A former dean recalled his belief that Halladay "did not like confrontation", and that his often ambiguous style resulted in misunderstandings in communication. Halladay, who had a background in student services, generally related better to the students and he described himself as "essentially student-oriented". He attended numerous student events, ate frequently in the university cafeteria, and enjoyed interacting with students in informal settings.
Declining enrollment and increasing diversity Despite projections for continuing growth made by the Coordinating Board in 1968, student enrollment started to slow significantly in the early 1970s. Its 1971 enrollment was 8,805, slightly less than in 1968. It rebounded to 9,981 in 1975, although this was significantly lower than the Coordinating Board's projection of 13,500 for that year. By spring 1986 it had fallen to its low point: 6,342, a 36% loss over the past 11 years. The number of on-campus students similarly dropped rapidly during this period. In fall 1980, enrollment figures likewise revealed that off-campus enrollment had slumped by 26%. The cause of the decline was multifaceted: declining birthrates, the Coordinating Board's "crack down on the off-campus offering of universities", and an emphasis by ETSU on graduate programs at the expense of their undergraduate counterparts all contributed to the trend.