6 A New Beginning AUgUst 27, 1979. On a balmy late summer afternoon, that date took its place alongside a handful of others that in the past have signaled new beginnings for Harding as an institution. On that day, President Clifton L. Ganus Jr. declared Harding to be a university, and with that pronouncement, the school crossed a threshold into a future with prospects of continued growth. What are some of these other times that have come to be noted as new beginnings for the people that make up Harding as an institution? Chartered in 1919, it was not until 1922 that the school opened its doors in Morrilton as Arkansas Christian College. Next, it merged with Kansas' Harper College in 1924 to become Harding College and a four-year school with J. N. Armstrong as president . Ten years later, Harding pulled up its stakes and moved to Searcy and the facilities of bankrupt Galloway College. The school was perennially short of funds in its early days, but in 1939, three years after Dr. George S. Benson assumed its presidency, the school paid off the $76,000 mortgage on the Searcy campus and proceeded to burn the document, appropriately, on Thanksgivjng Day. On firmer financial footing, the college improved its curriculum, faculty and facilities and, after 30 years of existence, received accreditation from the North Central Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools in March of 1954. Dr. Ganus' August proclamation was the culmination of a decision laid down by the Board of Trustees , November 3, 1978 to change the school's name and academic organization, with the date for the actual changeover set in a later meeting on May 11, 1979. The school was reorganized into the College of Arts and Sciences LEFT: SIGNING their names to papers that are now inside a time capsule, Dr. Joseph Pryor and Searcian Jim Wilson attest to their presence at the August 27, 1979 ceremony at which Harding became a university. The time capsule, filled with memorabilia, is buried between the Olen Hendrix Building and the Beaumont Memorial Library . and the Schools of Business, Education and Nursing . In addition, the University's framework included graduate studies and Christian " Communication programs in Searcy and a School of Religion in Memphis. For students, the change to university status lent some prestige to their degrees. After all, university had a more elegant ring than co llege. The reorganization facilitated the accreditation procedures either completed or under way in the Schools of Business, Education and Nursing with their respective professional accrediting bodies, however, and that was what made a UniverSity degree a bit better than a previous one from the College. The change also meant the coming opportunity of a "Year in Europe" program to study at a proposed branch of the University in Horence, Italy , complete with dormitory facilities , supplementary Englishlanguage classes at the University of Horence and time enough to see Europe in an academic atmosphere. Nevertheless, most of us felt that the changeover to being a university was not truly complete until the George S. Benson Auditorium - dubbed Mount Benson by fun-poking students because of its elevated front - was completed and occupied. Its planning and construction happened simultaneously with the adoption of university status, but the $2.6 million, 3429-seat auditorium ran over four months behind its scheduled completion date. While January 10, 1980 marked the first time since 1965 that the student body assembled together - all in one place at one time - the building had made its impression on the lives of Harding's students long before . Beginning with the fall semester, the time for daily chapel services was changed to 9:00 a .m. from a split lunchtime system that had met at 11:00 and 11:45 a .m. The new time was fine to allow for morning laboratories and to alleviate lunch line crowding, but with it came the overhaul and shifting of class schedules, to the chagrin of a few upperclassmen who, in order to complete individual requirements for graduation, had only 25 minutes for lunch in the single midday break of a continuous class schedule. Because of construction delays, we were relegated to attending three separate chapels at the 9:00 a.m. time slot during the fall semester, a procedure that rapidly ran ragged students, ~~-----------------------~
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