by Jack El-Hai

Students have received vocational education for nearly all of Minnesota’s history. As far back as the 1850s, the subject had gained a foothold in the state’s high schools, and in 1862 the Morrill Act mandated that the University of Minnesota and other land-grant institutions must “teach such branches of learning as are related to agriculture and the mechanic arts…in order to promote the liberal and practical education of the industrial classes in the several pursuits and professions of life.”

The University was lucky to have an early and outspoken advocate of vocational education in the Rev. David Kiehle, the first member of the college’s precursor, the Department of Pedagogy. In his previous job as state superintendent of schools, Kiehle had made a statewide tour of agricultural and manual training institutions, and he provided the plan for the careful balance of scientific and practical instruction that would come to life in the University’s school of agriculture.

Around the turn of the 20th century, the Manual and Industrial Education movement gained momentum, contributing to the founding of the College of Engineering and Mechanic Arts at the University. In 1909 the state legislature passed the Putnam Act, which supported the teaching of agriculture, manual training, and domestic economy classes in primary and secondary schools throughout Minnesota. Some of the teachers of those courses, the act directed, had to be college graduates. Educating these teachers was a role the College of Education could fill, and it did. One of the first vocational course offerings was Principles and Practice of Industrial Training, taught by Albert Rankin.

University President Cyrus Northrop understood the opportunities ahead. The University, he wrote in 1910, “is prepared to recognize the importance of training for life and therefore of laying a proper foundation at least for vocational training.” From there, the growth of vocational education at the University proceeded slowly, but when the Minnesota Vocational Association was created in the mid-1920s, three of the organization’s founding officers were or would later be members of the faculty of the College of Education.

In the 1930s and ’40s, during the deanship of Wesley Peik, the college gained more ground in vocational training. At that time, according to the college’s historian, Regents Professor Robert H. Beck, “the history and philosophy of industrial arts came alive at Minnesota.” The college attracted a slew of teachers talented in vocational training, and the specialty began a meteoritic rise on campus.

Work and Human Resource Education’s atrium on the St. Paul campus.

As part of reorganization in the late 1960s, the college established a Department of Vocational and Technical Education, which expanded to include business education a few years later. Then followed rapid growth in the department, which produced a mind-boggling number of name changes for the department.

“These name changes were attempts to stay abreast of what was happening in the field,” explains Charles Hopkins, a retired faculty member and former department chair and interim dean. “We were preparing people at the undergraduate level for going out to teach in high schools and technical colleges, and we were preparing teachers of teachers through graduate programs, who would work in colleges and universities around the country. And as the field evolved from vocational education to career and technical education, the change in nomenclature meant that we were adding a variety of training and development programs, and some of them were for adults in the business place.”

Now called Work and Human Resource Education, the department is top-ranked nationally, with 15 tenure-track faculty and 350 graduate students from 69 countries. David Kiehle, if he could look into the future, would be mighty pleased.