University History
The Ingersoll Era:
The rise of specialized study and college-level academics
During CAC's first term, which ran Sept. 1 to Nov. 26, 1879, the school functioned more as a college-prep school than a college because of the lack of trained students. Consequently the first course offerings were arithmetic, English, U.S. history, natural philosophy, horticulture and farm economy. Students also labored on the college farm and attended daily chapel services. The first vestiges of serious intellectual pursuit came in the form of a debate club called the Philosophian Literary Society. The second term, which began the following February, provided the first true college-level instruction. By 1881, CAC adopted a September to early July academic year and a new five-year course of study, including a year of college prep.
Elijah Edwards had wasted little time initiating the college's first outreach to the agricultural community. Between the end of the first term and the start of the second, Edwards, Professor Frank Annis and prominent Fort Collins farmer John Sheldon presented the first CAC farmers institutes in Fort Collins. Institutes in four other locations around the state followed and included topics of interest to farm wives. Women speakers joined the traveling college party in winter 1881-82.
Despite his accomplishments, Edwards resigned in spring 1882 because of conflicts with the State Board of Agriculture, with a young faculty member and with students.
The board's next appointee as president was Charles Ingersoll, a graduate and former faculty member at Michigan Agricultural College, who began his nine years of service at CAC with two full-time faculty members and 67 students, 24 of whom were women.
Agricultural research, teaching and outreach blossomed during Ingersoll's tenure, thanks to people like Ainsworth Blount. Blount, CAC's first professor of practical agriculture and manager of the College Farm, was known as a "one man experiment station." In the first seven of his 11 years with the institution, Blount had conducted tests on 343 varieties of wheat, 132 types of corn, 70 different beans and 47 oats. His most significant work involved the development of Defiance wheat, which became Colorado's dominant spring wheat by the early 1890s and added nearly $14 million to the wealth of Colorado by World War I.
The Hatch Act of 1887 eventually changed Blount's "one man station" to experiment stations at five Colorado locations - Fort Collins, Del Norte, Rocky Ford, Table Rock and Cheyenne Wells. The act provided federal funds to establish and maintain experiment stations at land-grant colleges. In 1888, CAC set up its first station on campus using land and equipment from the college farm and the horticulture department. The other four stations were in place by 1893.
James Cassidy, who arrived from Michigan Agricultural College in 1883, also contributed to CAC's agricultural instruction and research as professor of botany and horticulture until his death in 1889. The horticulturist experimented with vegetables, fruit, potatoes, grasses, noxious weeds and even tobacco. He also studied insect pests and identified and collected plants and insects native to Colorado. He taught classes in botany, horticulture, landscape gardening and entomology.
CAC made its first attempts in animal science during 1883-84, when it hired veterinary surgeon George Faville and acquired purebred stock for the livestock program. Faville conducted free weekly clinics for student instruction and treatment of local citizen's diseased or injured animals.
Faville jointly served the school and the state until the State Board of Agriculture grew intolerant of the situation and, to Ingersoll's dismay, dismissed the veterinarian in 1886. Veterinary science at the college languished for many years after Faville's departure.
Ingersoll oversaw the opening of a mechanic shop and the early signs of engineering instruction in fall 1883. Private companies donated lathes, steam engines, boilers and pumps for the shop. A separate course in mechanics and drawing, developed in 1885-86, became mechanical engineering nine years later.
Ingersoll also was instrumental in hiring a former student, Elwood Mead, in January 1883. Mead joined the faculty to teach mathematics but by 1886 began a curriculum in his favorite field of study - irrigation engineering. Mead would leave the college in 1888 and go on to become an internationally respected irrigation engineer and namesake for the reservoir created by Hoover Dam.
Michigan native Louis Carpenter replaced Mead. Carpenter conducted pure research in the tradition of Johns Hopkins University but also understood the need for practicality. He founded the American Society of Irrigation Engineers, and his research on water and seepage was a major contribution to Colorado irrigation practices.
The expansion and diversification of engineering and agricultural programs at the college served the needs of CAC's male students, but President Ingersoll believed the school neglected special programs for women. Despite the reluctance of the institution's governing board, CAC began accommodating female students and opening the door to liberal arts when Elizabeth Bell started teaching English, history and modern languages in 1885.
An illness two years later led to Bell's resignation and the hiring of her sister, Maud Bell. Maud Bell recognized the academic deficiencies of many of her students but did not refrain from teaching classical literature and German grammar and conversation. By Ingersoll's last year at CAC, the college instituted a "Ladies Course" that offered junior and senior women classes in drawing, stenography and typewriting, foreign languages, landscape gardening and psychology.
Although Ingersoll was respected by students alumni, faculty members and Fort Collins residents, his belief in liberal yet practical education conflicted with the narrower focus of the State Board of Agriculture. A final clash in April 1891 disillusioned Ingersoll to the point of resignation.
However, by the end of his tenure, Ingersoll had succeeded in bringing CAC out of the frontier. The school now had four defined courses of study, 11 full-time faculty members, several new labs and buildings and even electric lights.
He also had witnessed the commencement of CAC's first three graduates in 1884 - Libby Coy, Leonidas Loomis and George Glover, who later would return to his alma mater and make significant contributions in veterinary science.
