James Madison University: From Women's Normal School to Shenandoah Giant

Harrisonburg sits at the center of Virginia's Shenandoah Valley, sheltered between the Blue Ridge to the east and Massanutten Mountain to the west. It is a mid-sized city known for its farmers market, its poultry industry, and the sprawling campus that climbs the hillside at the south end of Main Street. James Madison University now enrolls more than twenty-two thousand students and sends graduates into every field imaginable, but when it opened in September of nineteen o nine, it was a far humbler institution with a narrower purpose.

The Virginia General Assembly created the school in nineteen o eight as the State Normal and Industrial School for Women at Harrisonburg. A normal school, in the language of that era, was a teacher-training institution, and this one existed for a single practical reason: Virginia desperately needed trained teachers for its public schools, and women were expected to fill those classrooms. State Senator George Keezell of Rockingham County pushed the bill through. The school opened with two hundred nine students and fifteen faculty members.

Over the following decades the institution grew and shed its original limitations. Men were first admitted as regular day students in nineteen forty-six, and the school became a fully coeducational institution by action of the Virginia General Assembly in nineteen sixty-six. The school was renamed Madison College in nineteen thirty-eight, honoring the fourth president and Virginia native James Madison, then elevated to university status and given its current name in nineteen seventy-seven.

The football program offers the most vivid evidence of the university's trajectory. JMU plays in what was formerly the lower division of college football, but its program has become a dynasty, winning multiple national championships. The school produced Pro Football Hall of Famer Charles Haley, and wide receiver Gary Clark spent eight seasons as a Washington starter. Broadcast journalist Jim Acosta graduated here in nineteen ninety-three.

The campus itself commands a fine view across the Valley. On a clear morning you can see the line of the Blue Ridge from the upper quad, the same mountains that shielded and shaped this community long before anyone thought to build a school beside them.