It is, perhaps, ironic that the man responsible for opening VPI to women was also at the helm when their numbers were divided through a merger between Radford College, a nearby teacher-training school founded for women in 1910, and the Blacksburg school. Virginia’s Governor Darden, possibly reacting to the efforts of nearly two decades to restrict and reduce the number of state-supported colleges and universities, proposed the merger between the two schools and placing both colleges under the VPI Board of Visitors.
In 1943 the governor contacted Burruss about serving on a commission to study the consolidation. Burruss, according to Kinnear, reacted "with surprising apathy, if not complete indifference" and told the governor that he was too busy to attend "any meeting at a distance in the month of July." The governor then asked him to notify the Board of Visitors that the study would take place. "Certainly we must not let prejudice direct our actions, and whatever is done must be for the welfare of the Commonwealth of Virginia," Burruss told the board in making the announcement. The board took no action.
Unlike Burruss, David Wilbur Peters, the president of Radford College, supported the consolidation. Peters believed the merger would provide his students with access to education in additional professional and technical fields.
Apparently the commission named by the governor moved forward with its charge, but plans for the consolidation became messy. According to Kinnear, "[I]t was announced that John B. Spiers of Radford, able representative of Montgomery County and Radford in the House of Delegates, had been asked to prepare the bill for legislative action needed in order to consolidate the two schools. Considerable excitement developed on the Blacksburg campus when it was alleged that Spiers had promised to draft his bill in such a way as to help Radford College. When it appeared from the actual bill that one method of achieving this objective was to deny permission for all undergraduate women to reside on the Blacksburg campus, this excitement became intensified. The corps of cadets met and passed a resolution urging the retention of coeds at Blacksburg and even raised money to help defray expenses of a coed committee to go to Richmond to speak against this feature of the merger. Faculty members urging student moderation were immediately branded as ‘anti-coed.’ A mimeographed statement purporting to show the effect of the passage of the bill upon women’s education was prepared and distributed over the state. The Radford News Journal added further fuel to the fire when in discussing the bill it said, ‘As written now it would appear that Radford State Teachers College is amply protected.’ Women’s clubs and women’s organizations over the state denounced features of the bill which they thought discriminated against women."
A compromise was reached, allowing women under certain conditions to study on the Blacksburg campus, and the bill was signed by the governor on March 16, 1944. The merger changed the names of both colleges, with Virginia Agricultural and Mechanical College and Polytechnic Institute becoming simply Virginia Polytechnic Institute and Radford’s name expanded to Radford College, Women’s Division of the Virginia Polytechnic Institute. The president of VPI, Burruss, became the chancellor of Radford College, although Radford still retained its own president, Peters, who had been at the helm of the school since 1938. Both schools were allowed to maintain separate identities and governing boards.
Women on the Blacksburg campus were required to study agriculture, engineering, applied science, or business administration. Those wanting to pursue teacher education studied at Radford. Home economics majors were split between the two campuses, with the first two years at Radford and the last two years at VPI. Transfers between the two campuses could be accomplished without loss of credits. Women who wanted to continue with an advanced degree program studied on the Blacksburg campus. One of those women was Betty Delores Stough, a parasitology major, who became in 1953 the first woman to receive a Ph.D. from the school, followed eight years later by Irene Monahan, a statistics major. By 1972, when Virginia Tech celebrated its centennial, however, less than 2 percent of the Ph.D. degrees awarded by the institution had gone to women.
According to the December 1995 edition of RU Magazine, a publication of Radford University, "By the fall of 1944, 10 females from Radford were taking the bus to attend aeronautical engineering class at Tech, and eight student nurses were taking courses in sociology, psychology, and chemistry. . . . Radford women could now be educated for roles such as engineers, scientists, or researchers."
Nonetheless, Burruss’s attitude toward the merger seemingly remained unchanged. "Following the consolidation of the schools," Kinnear writes, "Dr. Burruss continued his attitude of apparent indifference about the entire matter despite numerous overtures from some of his staff and from Dr. Peters of Radford to explore avenues of cooperation in areas other than home economics.
Even though their numbers had been divided, the coeds on the Blacksburg campus chipped away one barrier after another. A special drive by Mildred T. Tate, dean of women and head of the home economics department, brought an increasing number of female students to campus. With many male upperclassmen in the armed services and away from campus in World War II, the coeds kept the student activities operating. It was not unusual for the women to serve as officers of clubs or to head campus campaigns. By 1945 or 1946, one, Freda Polansky, had become the first coed editor-in-chief of The Virginia Tech. It was, perhaps, this high visibility and their increasing numbers that prompted a number of alumni to propose in the late 1940s that coeducation be eliminated.
During the presidency of Walter S. Newman (1947-62), they generally became an accepted part of the campus life, although they still were not eligible for membership in the corps of cadets. Doris Tomcyak served a term--1949-50--as editor of The Virginia Tech Engineer, a publication begun in 1923 and issued four or five times a year for engineering students until 1963, and Thora Elrath was business manager of the 1950 Bugle and managing editor of the 1951 Bugle, although 10 years passed before another woman headed the yearbook staff.
But perhaps the "first woman to" that gained the most public notice was Patricia Ann Miller of Richmond, who, during commissioning exercises in June 1959, was awarded her ROTC commission in the Army Women’s Medical Specialist Corps as a dietitian. According to Miller’s advisor, Laura Jane Harper, who served as head of the Department of Home Economics, then as dean of the coordinated School of Home Economics on the Blacksburg and Radford campuses, and later as the first dean of the College of Home Economics, Miller "wanted more than anything else to be a member of the Cadet Corps. . . . For nearly all of the 12 quarters Pat was a student here she pre-registered for the required military subjects, but each quarter she was told the Corps was not open to women. During the winter quarter of her senior year, she told me she had applied for a commission in the Medical Specialists Corps and planned to be commissioned at graduation along with the graduating cadets. I was frantic when I considered what the alumni, student body, and especially the cadets would say and do. Tradition was very strong in that period of our history."
Harper, who told the story about her advisee in a 1980 Founders’ Day address, said every student in Hillcrest stayed over to see Miller commissioned in Miles Stadium. She described the ceremony: "Out into the field marched the cadets: those who would be commissioned into the U.S. Army, the Air Force, the Navy, the Marine Corps, and the Coast Guard. Pat came onto the field alone and last." Miller was also the last one commissioned.
Meanwhile, the Women’s Division of VPI was growing and becoming more diverse. According to RU Magazine, "By 1962-63, the freshman class was larger than the entire school had been a few short years before. . . . The boom in enrollment was accompanied by a building boom." Enrollment of women on the Blacksburg campus was also taking off. In 1958-59 it passed the 200 mark--218--and in 1962-63 it reached 305. In 1963 the Board of Visitors applied to the governor to dissolve the merger, noting that growing programs at both schools had outstripped the abilities of a single administration and governing board to perform adequately. The requested split was approved and became effective on July 1, 1964. "The split," says RU Magazine, "caused no great stir since Radford had always maintained its own identity and some even joked that the Radford/Virginia Tech union was a marriage that had never been consummated."
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