Photography provided by UM–St. Louis Archives
Former University of Missouri–St. Louis chancellor Blanche Touhill has been helping the university grow almost as long as there’s been a university, since she came on board as a professor in the history department in 1965. She’s written a new book, A Photographic History of the University of Missouri–St. Louis: The First Fifty Years, to celebrate the golden anniversary of the urban university, which began educating students in 1963.
I bet a lot of people don’t know the land that UM–St. Louis occupies was once a country club. Yes, and there were a number of country clubs right in this neighborhood—Bellerive, Norwood, Glen Echo, and the Normandy Golf Club. In 1956 or so, the membership of Bellerive Country Club decided they wanted to move west and sell their 128 acres. It took several years to build buildings that could replace the country club. A lot of people who are still around have swum and played tennis and golf there.
Are there any structures left from the original country club? What’s left is Bugg Lake, the 18th hole water hazard, and the circle drive as you enter the main campus—that was the old circle drive for the country club. And the bricks for that brick wall there are taken from that old country club building that once stood there.
In the beginning, a lack of space led to some improvisation. When we first opened in ’63, we had only one building, the country-club building. We were getting ready to open Benton Hall, and some of the rooms weren’t ready when we opened. Some of the students had to take classes in a laundromat on Natural Bridge Road and also at two churches in the neighborhood. Approximately 1,000 students left campus every hour to take classes at the Laundromat and the churches. But the building opened three weeks later, and everyone came back. And then we built more buildings. It took about 10 years to put up the basic buildings.
A student survey from the ’60s revealed that more than half of UM–St. Louis students were also working while they attended school. Is that still true, and do people appreciate the difficulty of that? Yes, that’s still true. There are also a very high percentage of students who go to school part-time here. That was evident in the early years as well. We began to develop what is known as a nontraditional student. Now, more than 50 percent of the students on the collegiate level are nontraditional. They work part-time and are a little older. The average age on our campus has been 27 for some time. The general public thinks of college students as 18- to 22-year-olds, but for the past 50 years, a growing number of college and university students are older, and have often taken a year or two of college someplace else and decided to come back and finish their degree or get a master’s later. Sixty-two percent of our students were women when I was chancellor, and 19 percent were minorities of some kind.
What are some of the biggest challenges UM–St. Louis has faced in the last 50 years? There were several key decisions made in those early years: that we would hire quality faculty and put research first, then teaching, and then service. That’s the obligation of a quality university. We were announcing that we wanted to be on equal par with other universities in graduate and undergraduate programs and professional levels. When I first came, there were only 1,000 students and 150 to 200 full-time faculty, and we were all determined to grow and be a full university. We wanted a full array of programs, outreach to the community, a faculty doing research. In other words, we had great aspirations, and we all worked together to carry them out. We felt like we were on the frontier of building a university, and that’s very thrilling.
Why did the name of the school’s sports teams change? When the Rivermen were established, the teams were all young men. Women didn’t really get into intercollegiate sports until Title IX, in ’72. After that, if you wanted to get money for intercollegiate athletic programs, you had to have the commensurate percentage of women that you had on campus involved in sports. We had 62 percent women, so we began to introduce women’s sports in the ’70s in a big way. A lot of the female athletes didn’t care to be the “Riverwomen,” but that wasn’t really ended until [Chancellor] Tom George came up with a contest within the last 10 years, and then they all changed to the Tritons.
How many students does UM-St. Louis have now? 16,500 or 17,000 now. About 12,000 on the Normandy campus, and then we have relationships where we have programs at the St. Louis Community Colleges in Wildwood and St. Charles, and Jefferson College in Jefferson County, and so on.
What is the school most in need of now, as far as resources? At one point when I was chancellor, we had 1,000 students on a waiting list to take computer courses due to the lack of space, computers, and faculty. That was 10 years ago. They just had to wait. Right now, the campus is getting ready to renovate the science complex, Stadler and Benton halls, and the Research Building. The biology and chemistry departments need more labs—it’s the biotech sector, creating demand. We’re also putting up a wellness center, a better facility with more exercise machines, and a running track. The Mercantile Library needs more space. Universities are like living instruments, because they have to relate to the public and serve the public’s needs. So as something like biotech becomes more important in St. Louis and to society, our obligation is to provide an education for people who want to go into that endeavor. We have 1,000 nursing students now. We need space. The question is, should the public university be creating more nurses? My response is, the public university needs to respond to the needs of the populace.
Describe the importance of St. Louis Public Radio to the school. If you’re a University of Missouri campus, you’re part of the land-grant mission, which means you have an obligation to reach out to the community and be a bridge. In Columbia, where the University of Missouri was started, that meant reaching out was to farmers, to help them with their agricultural needs, and to reach out to the farmers’ wives in the case of home economics, to husband the resources of the farm. When we go into a city like St. Louis or Kansas City, our obligation is to reach out to the community and solve problems. KWMU is that land-grant mission carried out in the form of a radio station. That happens by way of NPR, music, programs of interest to the community, lectures, and so on. It has gotten better and better every year. And now we’re in Grand Center, and we’re building another radio station on campus in the Performing Arts Center.
When did you first get involved with the school? I came on in ’65 as a member of the history department. I was hired to teach Methods of Teaching Social Studies, Western Civ, and British Empire courses, and Irish history.
Is it nice having the Blanche M. Touhill Performing Arts Center named after you? It’s wonderful. I always tell people there are good and bad things in life, and that was one of the good things in my life.
And what’s it like having a bust of yourself, like the one on display at the center? That was a surprise. That was the gift of the Alumni Association when the building was opened. I didn’t know it was being made. The alums asked me to come over one day, and they unveiled it. I enjoy nice things that happen to me.
Do they call you Chancellor Emeritus Touhill? They call me Blanche.
