T. Marshall Hahn, Jr., became president of Virginia Polytechnic Institute in 1962. By the time he left twelve years later, the school had become auniversity. No longer a small military school that emphasized agriculture and engineering for white male undergraduates, Virginia Technical Institute and State University had become a multiracial, coeducational research university with a thriving college of arts and sciences as well as burgeoning graduate programs.Bringing together the biography of a man and the history of an institution through a dozen years of transformation, Strother and Wellenstein discuss the school's tremendous growth in sheer numbers of faculty and students, the increased enrollment of female and non-white students, and the increased emphasis on intercollegiate athletics. From VPI to State University is the story of the transformation of public higher education in the United States -- especially in the South -- in the 1960s. Much of the book relies on the recollections of the people who -- as faculty, administrators, or other leaders -- experienced, even brought about, the changes chronicled in these pages.Warren H. Strother worked with Marshall Hahn for ten years while Hahn transformed VPI into a university. A South Carolina native, Strother grew up in Virginia and earned his bachelor's and master's degrees in Journalism from Northwest University. After twelve years as a journalist he worked at Virginia Tech from 1964 to 1990.

This collection of essays examines the history of American archaeology in terms of some of the major figures and internal and external forces that shaped its development. The importance of using the vast array of unpublished materials in writing the history of archaeology is stressed, as is the need for examining more closely the important contributions of women, particularly in the period up to and immediately after World War II. Finally, the role of institutions in the development of American archaeology is also examined, both for their progressive and regressive attributes.