WIU STUDENTS RESEARCH ON MCDONOUGH COUNTY HISTORY
Editor’s Note: Students enrolled in Western Illinois University Professor Greg Hall’s Illinois history seminar during the Fall 2025 semester each wrote 700-word summaries of their research papers about McDonough County history, and Dr. Hall generously provided these summaries to The Community News Brief. We will be publishing these over the next few months as part of McDonough County’s Bicentennial celebration coverage. We greatly appreciate Dr. Hall and his students for contributing to our historical retrospectives.
Understanding not only the story of Western Illinois University, but the history of it, and in more specific terms, the evolution of the College of Education on campus, is something that I believe will give more insight into the reality in which the university faces, because the College of Education is what Western Illinois University has been known for. This is the history and evolution of the College of Education at Western Illinois University.
McDonough County and the surrounding area was originally thought of as just farm land and land in which a few industrial plants could be created, but as time went on and people sought after a more well-educated public, it was time for the state of Illinois to make this dream of a more educated public a reality as there were already post-secondary schools in all cardinal directions of that state besides in the west. There was a big debate and bidding war as to which surrounding town was going to be the home of Western Illinois State Normal School. The rural area of Macomb ended up being the frontrunner for this institution, and this is what led to the construction of one of the most prestigious colleges of education in the Midwest.
The rural area of Western Illinois was in dire need of higher education. In 1902, construction began on what was then Western Illinois State Normal School. As time went on and years past the school began to gain traction due to its ability to produce highly skilled and qualified educators. In the early 1920s, there were only roughly 500 students enrolled in what was then called Western Illinois State Teacher College. This enrollment stayed rather stagnant as the college continued to grow. By the mid 1940s, the college’s enrollment continued to stay at around 550 students. As the 50s, 60s, and 70s rolled around, enrollment increased dramatically to nearly two thousand students who were majoring in education and becoming teachers in the sixties. With this larger number of enrollments came the drastic evolution in the College of Education. As more people were attending the College of Education, it was time for the University to advance its curriculum in order to stay up to par and push to new heights. The students at this time were required to take a heavy course load of content-specific material as well as educational strategies and methods, to ensure that they were able to meet the requirements to become a qualified teacher.
In the 1980s, we started to see that students in the College of Education at Western Illinois University were taught more inclusive strategies when it came to classroom instruction for those who have learning disabilities. This theme of being more inclusive in the classroom continued into the 90s as technology was starting to become more heavily sought after and popular on campus across the United States. Student teaching requirements at the time were that the student teacher completed a minimum of twelve weeks in the classroom, but could be required to student teach for as long as sixteen weeks if the field experience was split into two different schools or grade levels.
As far as the 2010s and current times go, the curriculum was, and is largely centered around teachers, or future educators, being able to meet the needs of students with special needs in the classroom, as well as the future educator being proficient in their field of study. Times have changed, and that means that there are more students who are choosing to do remote online learning or take online classes to fulfill their requirements in order to become educators. I believe that this leads to a lack of camaraderie in the College of Education. Though the online classes do a sufficient job of teaching the material to the student, I believe that the more a teacher can be involved in the process of learning or actually teaching, the better the teacher will be by the time they are ready to become a professional educator in today’s world. Unfortunately for Western Illinois University and the College of Education, enrollment has dropped significantly in the past ten years or so, but the College of Education at Western Illinois University has remained resilient in the time of struggle by continuing to put its best foot forward and educate those who want to educate others. Thankfully, the standard for the College of Education at Western Illinois has not dropped, and the legacy that has been alive for more than a hundred years still burns bright.
