A Red Wing Start (1854 – 1869)
Hamline University is Minnesota’s oldest university and was named in honor of Leonidas Lent Hamline, a bishop of the Methodist Church whose interest in the frontier led him to donate funds toward the building of an institution of higher learning in what was then the Territory of Minnesota.
Hamline University’s first home was in Red Wing, Minnesota. The school’s charter stipulated that Hamline should be located “at some point on the Mississippi between St. Paul and Lake Pepin.” The city of Red Wing was enthusiastic and pledged about $10,000 to enable construction of a building and the beginning of an endowment, as well as donating a tract of land on a hillside overlooking the Mississippi.

The first classes were held in rooms housed on the second floor of the village general store, while the construction of the classroom building was in progress. Classes were in the second term when student moved into the Red Wing building in January 1856. The original building contained a chapel, recitation rooms, a school room, a library, laboratory, reading rooms, and dormitory quarters.
Seventy-three students enrolled at Hamline in the opening year. The catalog lists them separately as “Ladies” and Gentlemen,” but most of them were children or adolescents. All were enrolled in either the primary or the preparatory department. There was no collegiate division – the frontier had not yet produced students ready for college. Tuition ranged from $4.00 to $6.66 per term. The collegiate program was introduced in 1857, and in 1859 Hamline graduated its first class. The class consisted of two women, Elizabeth A. Sorin and Emily R. Sorin, who were not only Hamline’s first graduates, but also the first graduates of any college or university in Minnesota.

Three courses of study were open to candidates for a degree: the classical program, leading to the B.A. degree, centered around Greek, Latin, English language and literature and mathematics; the “Scientific Course,” leading to the B.S. degree, included the studies of the classical program but substituted German for Greek and Latin; and a separate course for women, omitting Greek and abridging Latin and mathematics while introducing French and German and the fine arts, led to the quaint degree of Lady Baccalaureate of Arts.

The 1857-58 and 1858-59 course catalogs contain Minnesota's first legal studies curriculum. Legal materials studied included: Blackstone's Commentaries, Stephens on Pleading, Greenleaf's Evidence, Adams on Equity, Walker's Introduction to American Law, Chitty's Pleading, Starkie on Evidence, Story's Equity Jurisprudence, Parsons on Contracts, Whaiton's American Criminal Law, Kent's Commentaries, and the Statutes of Minnesota. The catalog also promises an abundant opportunity to attend courts, as well as a mock trial.

In 1861 came the Civil War. Hamline students reacted with patriotic fervor and the campus soon emptied of able-bodied males. Enrollment in the college division dropped from sixty to sixteen in one year. There was no graduating class in 1862. Records indicate that 119 Hamline men served in the Union armies during the war.

On July 6, 1869, the Red Wing location was closed. It is believed that the building was torn down in about 1872. The city of Red Wing has turned the site into a park. A plaque was dedicated on June 14, 1939 and placed on the Methodist Church, which stands across the street from the park. During the summers of 1996 and 1997, the Hamline University anthropology department conducted an excavation of the site. Many artifacts were found on the site, but a few areas were covered by present structures and not excavated.

A Move to Saint Paul
The Early Modern Period (1880-1914)
It had been expected that Hamline would reopen on a new site within two years after the closing at Red Wing; however, indecision in the selection of a new site caused a delay. In the end, the seventy-seven-acre Saint Paul prairie plot midway between the two largest cities in the state was selected. Building operations began in 1873, but by then the depression had overtaken the planners, and there were repeated postponements and delays. The new University Hall, begun in 1873, was constructed in installments, as money came in, and was not completed until the summer of 1880.

The doors finally opened on September 22, 1880, and Hamline’s history in Saint Paul began. The catalog for that year lists 113 students, with all but five of them preparatory students. Tuition in the college division was $30 per year. Two degrees were offered at the time, the B.A. and the B.S. In 1883 the bachelor of philosophy degree replaced the B.S. and remained in use until 1914, when the faculty dropped the PhB. Degree and restored the B.S. degree.

Tragedy shocked the campus on February 7, 1883 when the new University Hall, barely two and one-half years old, burned to the ground. With frontier fortitude, the plans for a new University Hall were prepared and eleven months later the new structure, the present Old Main, was dedicated in the presence of a throng whose carriages were parked all over the campus. Emergency space for classrooms was provided by Ladies’ Hall (later Goheen Hall), which had opened in 1882.
Other new construction included Science Hall, which was completed in 1887, the Carnegie Library in 1907, and the new gymnasium, which was completed in1909. These five buildings alone served the campus until 1921.

Two curricular changes were made in 1912. The first substituted the two-semester plan for the three-term plan, and the second provided for a method of earning credit in the summer that is indistinguishable in principle from the credit by examination procedure adopted by the faculty forty-seven years later in 1959.

Two divisions of the institution, the preparatory and the medical, were discontinued in this period. Tax-supported high schools of good quality were meeting the needs for secondary education and the preparatory department was closed in 1911. The medical department had been established in 1895 when Hamline took over the Minneapolis College of Physicians and Surgeons. The medical school itself was located in Minneapolis. It had its own separately organized faculty that controlled the curriculum and recommended candidates to the Hamline board of trustees for medical degrees. The school remained a constituent part of Hamline until 1908, when it was merged with the medical school of the University of Minnesota. During the thirteen years from 1895 to 1908, Hamline conferred the M.D. degree upon almost three hundred medical students.

World War I and Postwar Years (1915-1929)
Thus far in Hamline’s history, the faculty had felt that the knowledge of classical and modern languages and their literatures was essential to a liberal education and should be required of candidates for the B.A. degree. The catalog of 1914 listed the following requirements, or their equivalents, for the B.A. degree:
- Three years of Greek
- Three years of Latin
-Two years of either German or a Romance language
- One year of English
- One semester of intermediate English or English literature
- One year of science
- One year of mathematics

In the early 1900s, as students passively resisted these requirements by switching to the B.S. or other degrees, the requirements lightened. Though registrations and majors in Greek and Latin continued into the 1940s, the heart and substance of the traditional classical program were gone, and the symbolic end may be said to have come in 1925 when, for the last time, graduating seniors received diplomas inscribed in Latin.
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When World War I came in April of 1917, the students responded to the call to duty in a variety of ways, seeming to grasp the issues at stake and the parts that would be required of them in the war. Voluntary military drill for men continued and by May seventy-five women were meeting four times a week to learn the principles of first aid. Track and baseball schedules for spring were cancelled when enlistments and applications of officers’ training depleted the teams. Hamline was designated one of thirty-eight colleges in the country to supply men for ambulance work in France. Thirty-six men were selected for the unit and served in France with the 28th Division of the French army. The women made a silk banner for the unit, which read, “Made by the Girls for the Boys of ’17.” The banner now has a home in the Hamline archives.

In the fall of 1918, a unit of the Students’ Army Training Corps was established at Hamline and almost every male student became an enlisted member. The Science Hall was used for military purposes with the basement becoming the mess hall, and the museum and several classrooms being marked for squad rooms and sleeping quarters. The campus became an army post; the bugle replaced the class bell. This all came to end with the signing of the armistice on November 11, 1918. On that joyous morning the bell in the tower of Old Main pealed out once more, classes were dismissed and the entire campus participated in a parade that toured the Hamline community.
In 1919, the board of trustees considered locating a new site for Hamline University. This time the proposal was prompted by growing concern that the Hamline area might some day be adversely affected by industrial encroachment. Sites considered included land near Lake Johanna, along the Mississippi Boulevard in Saint Paul, at the south end of Snelling Avenue, and in the Lake Minnetonka area. Both Anoka and Rochester offered land, but the decision was to remain on the present site and proceed with the erection of a women’s dormitory.

Manor House was built for the women in 1922 and Goheen Hall was turned over to the men a year later. Across the street from Manor House stood the attractive Hamline Methodist Church. It had been built in 1900 and had long been the scene of Hamline commencements and lectures. It was destroyed by fire in 1925, but was replaced in 1928 by an imposing Gothic structure that became in spirit and use an integral part of the Hamline campus.

The Great Depression and World War II (1930-1945)
A period that began with the greatest of American depressions and ended with World War II could be expected to generate challenges for Hamline University, as it did for most colleges. The most difficult were the years in the early 1930s, in which the repercussions of the depression were intensified by conflicts over matters of internal reorganization.

The problems of the depression centered on reduced income. Increased enrollments reflected the belief that it was better for students to be in college than sitting at home in idleness and despair. The college tried to help through jobs and financial aid, and lowered charges for tuition and room and board. However, many students who managed to enroll were forced to manage on slim rations, inadequate diets, second-hand clothing, and debts. Jobs of any kind were at a premium, the most prized being board jobs in the Manor House and at the Quality Tea Room on Snelling Avenue. Also in top demand were board and room jobs for women in private homes. In the meantime, the portion of the college endowment invested in farmlands turned unproductive and tuition income fell following reductions in tuition fees. All of this led to annual deficits and substantial cuts in faculty salaries. It was not until 1935 that the recuperative powers of the institution, and of the country, had begun to move Hamline University forward.

During the war years, Hamline’s enrollment held above six hundred, except in 1943-44. Although males registrations dropped as men entered the armed services, the women's enrollment increased as nursing students arrived.

The Hamline University Choir was founded in 1929 by Alec Simson, its first director, and was quickly acclaimed by the general public and music critics for its excellence. In succeeding decades, the choir, under the direction of John M. Kuypers and of Robert D. Holliday, would achieve greatness and a national reputation.

Lynn Beyer '32 and Carlyle Beyer '37, sons of Professor Beyer, were awarded Hamline University's third and fourth Rhodes Scholarships. Prizes and awards that recognized and rewarded creative achievement in art, essays, music, oratory, playwriting, poetry, as well as the natural and social sciences, stimulated the creative life of the campus. From 1927 to 1932, Hamline organizations and faculty members participated in programs on WCCO radio and helped establish radio as a medium for artistic expression and the communication of ideas.

A new venture was launched in 1940 when Hamline University and Asbury Methodist Hospital of Minneapolis established the Hamline-Asbury School of Nursing, offering a five-year program (later a four-year) leading to the degree of bachelor of science in nursing. In taking this step, Hamline was moving with a growing trend in the country to provide academic training for women preparing for careers in nursing. A three-year program leading to a diploma in nursing was also offered. In 1949 the Mounds-Midway School of Nursing joined the school, the enlarged institution taking the name of the Hamline University School of Nursing.

From 1942 until 1947, Ernst Krenek, internationally known composer and music scholar, brought distinction to the campus when he joined the faculty as head of the department of music. Under his direction, and with the interested support of Dimitri Mitropoulos, director and conductor of the Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra, Hamline became a music center for the metropolitan community. Bridgman Hall in Old Main, with its nearly perfect acoustics, was the scene of public concerts that drew capacity audiences to hear artists and chamber music ensembles of local and national fame. Talented music students enrolled at Hamline to study composition and musicology under Krenek and take courses from other members of the music faculty. Seventeen of these students earned the master of arts degree in music under Krenek’s direction.

Post World War II (1946 – 1966)

A flood of veterans entered or returned to college after World War II under the G.I. Bill of Rights. The first reached the campus in the fall of 1946, when registrations passed one thousand for the first time. Enrollment reached the maximum of the period in 1949-50 when 1452 students, including 289 in the School of Nursing, were registered for classes.

The School of Nursing, which had been an integral part of Hamline University since 1940 and had won wide recognition for the excellence of its program, was discontinued in 1962 following the decision to concentrate resources and staff on the liberal arts program. The last class in the three-year program graduated in 1960 and the last class in the degree program in 1962. A total of 447 women completed the degree program and received the bachelor of science in nursing degree, and 758 women finished the three-year program and received diplomas in nursing.

With the close of World War II, Hamline began an ambitious building plan. Two new residence halls were built, Drew Residence for men and Sorin Hall for women. A new Fine Arts Center was completed in 1950, and the new Drew Hall of Science was dedicated in 1952. The old science building was taken over by the social science and other departments and renamed Social Science Hall. In 1963, the A.G. Bush Student Center was completed and at the time its exceptional facilities made it at once the social, recreational, and cultural center of the campus.

Throughout this period, buildings were enlarged or remodeled to keep pace with new needs and standards. Wings were added to the Manor House and Drew Residence; the seating capacity of the library was increased to one hundred with the completion on the ground floor of a new periodical room; and the old student union was remodeled and turned into a language laboratory with classrooms and office for the language departments. In the summer of 1966 extensive alterations and improvements were made in Norton Field House and in the theatre in the Fine Arts Center.
Progress extended beyond building activity. The faculty in 1965-66 were eighty-nine strong and between 1953 and 1966, grants totaling more than $600,000 were received by faculty members for special education and research programs. The students of this generation faced stronger selection procedures than in previous years, including achievement and aptitude tests. Students paid $1,140 for tuition plus $735 for room and board in 1966.

During this time there were also changes in curriculum and methods of instruction, including opportunities for independent study. Special programs included the Drew University Semester on the United Nations, the Critical Language Program of Princeton University, and a faculty and student exchange from with Xavier University in New Orleans. In 1963, the college shifted from the two-semester plan to the three-term plan.

The Hamline Choir, under the direction of Robert Holliday '30, grew to become one of the great choirs of the country during the 1960s. It appeared with the Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra and the Saint Paul Chamber Music Orchestra, and performed at the National Cathedral in Washington and the Naval Academy in Annapolis. In 1966, it was selected by the Office of Cultural Presentations of the U.S. Department of State to tour Central and South America.

In basketball, teams coached by Joe Hutton continued to win championships, including N.A.A. national championships in 1949 and 1951; and they participated in games and tournaments from coast to coast during the holiday breaks. The 1949-50 team traveled all the way to Honolulu for a series of games with the University of Hawaii.

After a long absence, the football team moved dramatically back into the spotlight in the fall of 1966. Richard R. Mulkern and his team defeated Gustavus Adolphus 28 to 7 in the 1966 title game, played before a standing-room crowd of 6,000. The win brought the M.I.A.C. football championship to Hamline for the first time since 1921.

A stunning individual achievement was that of Judson D. Sheridan ’61, who used Hamline’s individualized study program to its fullest by graduating summa cum laude in three years. He was then awarded a scholarship by Harvard University and topped it off by winning a Rhodes scholarship in 1962, becoming Hamline Univeristy’s fifth Rhodes scholar and the first to earn a D. Phil. at Oxford University.

A year-long study was conducted in the 1966 to determine if Hamline should remain in its’ Saint Paul location or move to the suburbs. The board of trustees voted unanimously to remain in Saint Paul and provide for future expansion by acquiring adjacent properties.

Students became a more integrated part of the university’s operations during this period. The faculty accepted appointments by the student congress, of student committees paralleling standing faculty committees.

1966–1987: Times a-Changin'

If Hamline University ever embodied the quiet pursuit of higher learning in ivied towers of lore, the two decades beginning in the mid-1960s changed all that. As Bob Dylan noted (ominously, in the view of many), “The times they are a-changin'.”

Even as the Board of Trustees decided in January 1966 that Hamline would remain where it has been since 1880, other major issues arose. In the summer of 1968, for example, President Paul Henry Giddens retired after leading Hamline for fifteen years. His successor was Richard P. Bailey, who came from Northland College in Ashland, Wisconsin.

Bailey became president at a time marked by unrest and change at colleges and universities throughout the country. One source of that change was the civil rights movement. During the 1960s, Hamline began to address such matter as the racial diversity of its students and faculty, institutional racism, and the education of culturally disadvantaged students. Hamline felt the impact of deepening racial turmoil during this decade. In 1968, black students on campus founded PRIDE—Promoting Racial Identity, Dignity, and Equality. The acronym clearly reflected the sense of black pride promoted by a growing number of black leaders in the United States. While Black History Month was the most conspicuous of the group's efforts, PRIDE focused on helping minority students deal with problems at a predominately white institution.

Among other issues clamoring for attention was the need to replace aging, inadequate buildings. One was Goheen Hall, built in 1882 as Ladies' Hall during the administration of President David Clarke John. Hamline then launched a building program of new dormitories, a library, a learning center, and other major physical facilities. Ground was broken for three housing units in January 1969. Schilling Hall (named in honor of trustee Paul Schilling) opened in September, followed in January 1970 by Osborn and Peterson halls (honoring Trustees Edward B. Osborn and George Peterson).

Hamline broke ground in May 1970 for the $2.6 million Bush Memorial Library, named to honor long-time Hamline trustee and benefactor A. G. Bush. The library opened in the fall of 1971, a three-story, 83,210-square-foot building housing some 240,000 volumes.

The Paul Giddens/Alumni Learning Center, linked to the Carnegie Library and named for the former university president, opened in October 1972. The social science and humanities divisions and the department of education are housed within the center, which also contains classrooms, study areas, and laboratories.

The new buildings on campus were part of an ambitious ten-year, $26.5 million development plan, but in a time of mounting budget deficits Hamline fell far short. With the same needs as before, the university contemplated another, smaller capital campaign. President Jerry E. Hudson, who followed President Bailey after his resignation in 1975, cautioned that Hamline could not afford to fail again. The trustees voted in January 1978 to undertake a campaign to raise $10.5 million for construction and debt retirement.

The largest amount, nearly $4 million, went toward building the School of Law building. The university broke ground (on the former site of Goheen Hall) in January 1979 for the law school, which was dedicated in October 1980 with U.S. Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun delivering the dedication address. The school had received full accreditation from the American Bar Association two months earlier.

Hamline had offered some classes in law for a short time during the Red Wing years, but the roots of the modern law school lay in the Midwestern School of Law, an upstart, unaccredited school that came searching for classroom space in February 1974. Trustees approved the plan a few months later, and Midwestern reopened at Hamline that fall. The American Bar Association gave its provisional accreditation in 1975, and Midwestern was reborn as the Hamline University School of Law.

The law school began publishing the Hamline Law Review in 1978 and a second student-edited journal in the spring of 1980, the Journal of Minnesota Public Law (since 1986 the Hamline Journal of Public Law and Policy ). In 1982, in collaboration with the Council on Religion and Law at Harvard University Divinity and Law Schools, the Hamline School of Law launched a faculty-edited journal, the Journal of Law and Religion as a forum for the two disciplines to consider a civilization of true peace and justice.

That same year, 1980, President Hudson resigned, and the Board of Trustees named Edgar M. Carlson as acting president during the search for his successor. During Carlson's interim presidency, the search committee selected Charles J. Graham, a political scientist and president of St. Cloud State University for ten years.

Hamline's campus and leadership were not the only things changing during the 1970s; so was its academic life. After nearly sixty years of lobbying, the university was finally awarded a Phi Beta Kappa chapter in 1973. Hamline initiated a Jewish Studies program in 1974, and summer sessions in June 1977 (with an enrollment of 375). In 1980 the university added computer literacy as a prerequisite for graduation.

After the Charles M. Drew Fine Arts Building opened in 1950, Hamline University began gradually to acquire a permanent art collection, especially after Paul R. Smith, M.F.A., became chair of the department of fine art in 1965. His successor, Frederick Leach, Ph.D., emphasized the relationship of human values to the collection. By 2003, the permanent collection included more than 600 original works of art.

By the 1960s, Hamline's outstanding A Cappella Choir had achieved a national reputation under the direction of Robert Holliday (Class of 1930), who succeeded his mentor and the choir's founder, John Kuypers, in 1942. The choir's fame spread beyond the United States with its State Department-sponsored tour of the Soviet Union in the summer of 1963 and its ten-week, fifteen-nation tour of Latin America in 1967.

Trustees established Hamline's graduate degree program in late 1979. The first degree offered was the Master of Arts in Liberal Studies (MALS). Sixteen students began coursework for the interdisciplinary degree the following summer. Within a few months, Hamline began to consider a second graduate degree program, and in May 1981 trustees authorized the Master of Arts in Public Administration (MAPA). Hamline established the Division of Graduate and Continuing Education in 1985 (which became the Graduate School in 1989) and followed the first two master's programs with two more in 1989, the Master of Arts in Education (MAEd) and the Master of Arts in Music Education (the MAMEd program moved from Hamline in 1990).

Coach Mary Jane Olson established the women's gymnastics program in 1975, which by 1993 had produced fifty-nine All-American gymnasts and more All-Americans than any other team in Division III schools.

The women's gymnastics and volleyball programs added to the glory of Hamline's achievements in sports. In 1987, legendary basketball coach Joe Hutton was named to the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA) Hall of Fame. He was already the first college coach selected for the Helms Foundation Hall of Basketball Immortals in Los Angeles.

From his arrival at Hamline in 1931 until his retirement in 1965, Hutton coached Hamline's basketball players to 588 wins against only 186 losses. His teams won three NAIA championships, in 1944, 1949, and 1951. In 1949, Hutton was offered the opportunity to coach the Minneapolis Lakers of the National Basketball Association (NBA), but he turned it down so he could coach his sons, Joe Jr. (Class of 1950) and Tom (Class of 1962). A Phi Beta Kappa 1924 graduate of Carleton College, Hutton died June 13, 1988.

Joe Hutton Jr., a member of Hamline's NAIA national championship team in 1949, was drafted after graduation by the Lakers. A few years later, his former Hamline teammate, Vern Mikkelsen (Class of 1949), who also played for Coach Hutton, was elected to the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield, Massachusetts.

1988–2004: Vision of a "New American University"

Larry G. Osnes became the 19th president of Hamline University in 1988. At his inauguration, Osnes unveiled an architectural model at his inaugural celebration for what was to become the Orem Robbins Science Center. Named for Hamline life trustee Orem Robbins, the center was dedicated on May 9, 1991, as the home of the biology, chemistry, and physics departments. The $5.5 million building was completed with major gifts from trustee Robert Jepson and challenge grants from the Bush and Kresge foundations.

Meanwhile, after several years of delay, the $1.3 million Sundin Music Hall opened in October 1989. The building, which adjoins Drew Residence to the east, was constructed with major gifts from Lloyd (Class of 1922) and Mildred (Class of 1924) Sundin. As a further memorial to her husband of sixty-five years, who died in 1983, three months after the groundbreaking for Sundin Music Hall, Mildred Sundin gave the rose garden in front of the hall. Designed by Hamline's Director of Horticulture Ken Dehkes and Denis Jordan, the garden was dedicated on September 27, 1995. The following autumn, the Thorndyke Garden just outside the Bush Student Center was dedicated on September 12, 1996, a gift from Lloyd M. (Class of 1950) and Jo Ann Thompson (Class of 1951) Thorndyke.

Nor was Old Main (as University Hall was now called) neglected. The symbolic landmark on campus, listed in the National Register of Historic Places, Old Main was renovated during the summer of 1978 and again after a fire on September 2, 1985, caused $10,000 in damage. In October 1990, workers began a $290,000 renovation. They removed and rebuilt a twenty-four-foot-high section of the tower, covered the 106-year-old building with new concrete shingles and installed a four-sided clock in the tower. In 1993, an electric carillon was added to the tower that can ring a bell and play selected music.

Other campus changes followed. The bronze statue of Bishop Leonidas Hamline, which stands across Hewitt Avenue from Old Main, was dedicated on October 13, 1995. It was sculpted by Professor Michael Price (who joined the art department in 1970), with design help by Deb Bartels of Close Grant Landscape Architects and casting help from Hamline art students. The statue, commissioned by Annette Strand Scherer Robbins (Class of 1936), was dedicated to Bishop Hamline's vision of “all who have provided the means and facilities of education.”

Price's colleague Leo (Leonardo) Lasansky, an intaglio printmaker, also achieved fame for his work. Already the winner of a number of awards when he joined the art department in 1972, Lasansky over the next few years won more than thirty national and international awards and in 1994 was elected to the National Academy of Design, one of the most prestigious art organizations in the world.

As part of the “New American University” plan favored by President Osnes, emphasizing community connections, Hamline broke ground on September 27, 1996, for the $5.6 million, 44,000-square-foot Law and Graduate Center/Conference Center, which was dedicated on October 10, 1997.

The Graduate School was split into three units in October 1997, beginning with the founding of Graduate Liberal Studies Program. The Graduate School of Education was founded two months later, and the Graduate School of Public Administration and Management followed in the spring of 1998.

Today, Hamline offers eleven graduate degrees, including two doctoral degrees. Two are in liberal studies, the MALS and (since 1994) the Master of Fine Arts in Writing (MFA), Minnesota's first advanced writing degree. In addition to the MAEd degree, the Graduate School of Education offers three other master's degrees—in Teaching (MAT), English as a Second Language (MAESL), and the MAEd in Natural Science and Environmental Education. The school also offers the Doctorate in Education (Ed.D.). The Graduate School of Public Administration and Management offers two advanced degrees in public administration, the MAPA and the Doctorate in Public Administration (DPA); one in management, the Master of Arts in Management (MAM); and one in nonprofit management, the Master of Arts in Nonprofit Management (MANM). Hamline granted its first Ed.D., MAT, and MATESL degrees on May 24, 2003.

The Graduate School of Education established the Center for Literacy and Learning (CLL), the Center for Global Environmental Education (CGEE), and the Center for Second Language Teaching and Learning (SLTL) in the early 1990s. Dedicated to the professional development of teachers in classroom-based literacy acquisition and development, the CLL offers workshops, courses, study groups, and conferences that help develop practical theory for teaching language in classrooms where students are supported and challenged to become complex and critical thinkers. The CGEE offers professional development for educators, creates distance-learning projects for K-12 students, and facilitates public awareness and community-service activities of teachers and learners to address global and local issues. The SLTL provides extensive coursework, professional development opportunities, and custom-designed courses, workshops, and services for educators who work with immigrant, refugee, and international students and their families.

With a 1996 grant from the St. Paul Companies, the school established the Center for Excellence in Urban Teaching (CEUT) in 1998 to emphasize effective principles of urban education and prepare teachers in their first three years of practice to be more effective with diverse learners. The center offers specialized seminars, support, and urban teaching certificates. The Graduate School of Education is also affiliated with the Comprehensive Regional Assistance Center and the Midwest Migrant Education Resource Center, both federally funded centers.

Working closely with the city and the neighborhood planning council, Hamline broke ground for a $7.7 million student apartment building at 1470 Englewood for 142 graduate and law students on September 29, 1998. Construction of the building was completed in 2000 in time for students to move in for the fall term.

After four years of planning, ground was broken October 18, 1996, for the Lloyd W. D. Walker Fieldhouse, though construction did not begin until the following spring. The completed field house, at Snelling and Taylor, opened on September 10, 1998. The $8.5 million sports, recreation, and health complex was a gift of Gordon Walker (Class of 1951), son of the Hamline graduate (Class of 1929) for whom it is named.

The Walker Fieldhouse began a four-phase project to improve and expand the university's sports, health, and recreation facilities. During this phase, the Old Gym (originally the Gymnasium, later the Ladies' Gym) was demolished on July 27, 1998. Designed by prominent architect Clarence Johnston and built in 1909, the Old Gym featured a raised running track and a handball court—above a dirt-floored excavation for a future swimming pool that was never built.

Phase 2 was Pat Paterson Fields, named for a longtime Hamline professor of physical education. Dedicated in October 9, 1998, Pat Paterson Fields included dedicated facilities for soccer, softball, and baseball. Phase 3 involved the renovation and remodeling of Joe Hutton Arena.

Phase 4 envisioned a renovation of Norton Stadium to improve facilities for athletes and to complete the exterior brickwork specified in the original 1921 design, but trustees decided in 2003 to replace the aging stadium with the Klas Center, a modern, $7.1 million multiuse facility. Demolition of Norton Stadium began on October 8, 2003.

Construction of the new facility, scheduled to open in time for Hamline's 150th anniversary celebration in 2004, began as soon as the site was cleared. The Klas Center honors life trustees Bob (Class of 1952) and Sandy Klas, who gave $7 million, the largest single gift ever made to Hamline.

Even as the modern campus was being transformed by construction projects, attention turned to Hamline's roots in the summer of 1996. An archaeological dig headed by John McCarthy of the Institute of Minnesota Archaeology and Anthropology Professor Skip Messenger of Hamline began digging that season at the site of Hamline's original building in Red Wing (now part of the community's Central Park). The three-story brick building, constructed in 1855 and open in time for classes to begin in January 1856, closed in 1869 and was demolished in 1871. Since few Hamline records exist from that time, the exact location and dimensions of the original building were unknown—until the archaeological dig. One finding was that the foundation was insufficient for the size of the building, leading to speculation that structural problems might have contributed to the building's closing and eventual demolition. Among the findings: broken dinner plates and other tableware, fragments of industrial materials, bits of window glass, square nails, a copper ring, and part of a bone toothbrush.

The size of the student body also grew during this period. First-year students in September 1998 totaled more than 380, the biggest class in Hamline's history and an increase of nearly 25 percent over the previous year. The next year, 1999, the class was even larger—421. In 2000 the number of first-year students leveled off at 425, took a slight dip in 2002, then started up again in 2003 with 460 incoming students. Hamline instituted a student academic honor code in September 2002 to deal with cheating, plagiarizing, and other forms of academic dishonesty.

A fire on the night of September 14, 2000, in Bush Memorial Library closed the building for almost a year. Caused by an electrical problem, the fire itself was confined to the TV production control room in the basement, but smoke and water caused extensive damage throughout the library. Repairs and renovation cost $3.8 million; the library finally reopened officially on April 27, 2001. Nor was this the only damaging fire on campus that year. Another fire on January 5, 2001, in a Drew Residence Hall lounge caused $500,000 in damages.

As part of the New American University initiative, Hamline launched an endowment campaign that passed $100 million by the fall of 2001 and $125 million by the spring of 2003. President Osnes expressed the hope that the campaign would raise $150 million or more by the 150th anniversary of Hamline's founding.

As Hamline began to look ahead to 2004, the 150th anniversary of its founding, President Osnes announced on March 28, 2003, that he would retire on May 31, 2005, at the end of the year-long anniversary celebration.

“It seems altogether fitting,” President Osnes said in a statement announcing his retirement, “that Minnesota's first university is ranked as Minnesota's top comprehensive university . . . [and] is entering this anniversary period with a strong reputation that should make us all feel proud.”