the Woman's College (now the University of North Carolina at Greensboro), and NC State. This conglomeration became the University of North Carolina in 1931. In 1937, Blake R. Van Leer joined as Dean and started the graduate program for engineering, among numerous other programs. In 1942, Van Leer successfully encouraged NC State's first women to pursue an engineering degree, 4-5 women would enroll and the first women graduated in 1941. One of his students Katharine Stinson became the Federal Aviation Administration's first female engineer. Following World War II, the university grew and developed. The G.I. Bill enabled thousands of veterans to attend college, and enrollment shot past the 5,000 mark in 1947.
State College created new academic programs, including the School of Architecture and Landscape Design in 1947 (renamed as the School of Design in 1948), the School of Education in 1948, and the School of Forestry in 1950. In the summer of 1956, following the US Supreme Court ruling in Brown v. Board of Education …
