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State Senator Dennis Collins had been a strong proponent of creating a full-fledged university in DeKalb, and he was not satisfied with the mere removal of the word “teachers” from Northern’s college name. Since the legislature only met every other year in those days, Collins and other supporters had to wait until 1957 to reintroduce bills to change the name to “university.”
This time, Collins used the intervening period to line up support, and when his new bills were filed, they included 16 fellow senators from Chicago, Rockford, Champaign, Evanston, and Downers Grove as co-sponsors. Furthermore, Gov. William Stratton had modified his views on the matter and told Collins that if the bills passed the General Assembly without the separate board provision, he would sign.
The Teachers College Board once again expressed its disapproval of the change (which by this time was also being sought by Eastern and Western), but the anti-university board contingent did not prevail. In order to ensure passage, Collins and the co-sponsors agreed to language that would prohibit Northern and the other schools from offering any professional courses leading to degrees in law, medicine, dentistry, pharmacy, engineering or agriculture.
This time, the bills sailed through the legislature. President Leslie Holmes once again assured his faculty and alumni that Northern would not lose interest in the training of teachers.
In fact, after passage of the university bill, growth in the number of students entering the teaching profession continued to expand, and Holmes pursued actions that would allow Northern to train college professors as well as elementary and secondary teachers.
On May 23, 1957, Gov. Stratton signed the bill, and Northern Illinois University was born.
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