The Michigan College of Mines and the Great War

When World War I broke out, colleges rose to the challenge, although perhaps less out of patriotic zeal than they may have advertised: They realized that if the full draft came in to force in 1918, zero college age men would be left to enroll that fall. They therefore offered their services to the war effort. The military set up the Student Army Training Corps (SATC)—a bit different than ROTC, though it facilitated that after the war in 1920—and colleges across the country like the Michigan College of Mines (MCM) retooled their curriculum and campuses to oblige. This talk will tell this story with recently discovered materials from the National Archives, local newspapers, and some biographies of men at MCM who served in the War.