The college awarded its first baccalaureate degree in 1898. In 1921 the first female students were admitted as residents on the campus. In 1928 the college became a full four-year degree-granting institution and ended the high school and normal school programs. Normal schools had been created in the 19th century in many state systems in the United States, after the German model, to educate teachers for elementary school students. With the expansion of towns across the US, and continuing issues in trying to educate four million freedmen and their descendants, there was an urgent need to establish many new schools and to quickly train teachers in the North and the South. States used normal schools for training teachers for primary school grades and sometimes secondary school as well. Normal schools or colleges tended to have two or three-year programs. Gradually the normal schools were converted to full colleges with four-year curricula, or were left behind.
