After an unsuccessful 1923 bid to be selected as the home of Texas Technological College, the citizens of San Angelo decided they would create their own college, even if they had to pay for it themselves. Funded by local contributions and a self-imposed city tax rate, San Angelo Junior College opened its doors in 1928 on North Oakes street near downtown San Angelo.
When classes began, 112 students enrolled with city students paying $75 tuition and out-of-town students $115. In May of 1929 six students walked across the stage in the institution’s first commencement exercise. Today ASU has more than 27,000 alumni around the globe.
Barely had the college opened its doors than the Stock Market collapsed in 1929 and plunged the country into the Great Depression throughout the 1930s. But the college held its own, even dropping “Junior” from its name to become San Angelo College, or SAC, as it would be known until it became Angelo State in 1965.
SAC survived the downturn of the Depression and the World War II years with an eye toward the future. Having outgrown the downtown campus, the college looked to move to its current location, though tax monies were inadequate to make the change to a new campus. The citizens of San Angelo stepped in and raised $300,000 to help make the transition. In 1947 ground was broken for the Administration Building.
By the 1950s SAC was growing on its new campus on West Avenue N, thanks to the G.I. Bill and a growing emphasis on education. In 1957 the institution won the first of its three team national championships, taking the national title in basketball from the National Junior College Athletic Association.
During the 1950s SAC was a pioneer in racial relations, admitting its first black students a year before Brown vs. Board of Education and in 1955 graduating its first black student, Mary Frances Simpson, the outstanding graduate that year. SAC also broke the color barrier in Texas intercollegiate football in 1953 when Ben Kelly, who later that academic year would be named class favorite, started for the Rams. Two years later he would be drafted by the San Francisco Forty-Niners.
The 1960s were a time of change as San Angelo College evolved into a four-year, state-supported university, fulfilling the dreams of local residents all the way back to the 1920s. Gov. John Connally in 1963 signed legislation making SAC a state institution and a part of what became the Texas State University System. With state support, the campus expanded, taking on much of its current look and character with a huge building boom.
During the 1970s ASU campus flourished as the Baby Boomers arrived in full force. Intercollegiate athletics for women began in 1975. In 1978 the Rams earned the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics National Championship in football.
Upon his death in 1978, long-time ASU supporter Robert G. Carr established a foundation funded by his mineral and royalty interests from oil-producing properties in 16 West Texas counties. His wife, Nona Carr, would add her interest in those properties to the foundation upon her death nine years later. The Robert G. and Nona K. Carr Foundation, established to provide scholarships for “needy and worthy” students, would have a profound impact on Angelo State. The first scholarships were awarded in 1981. By 2007 the fund was valued at more than $65 million and provided scholarships for one in every six ASU students annually.
By 1991 ASU was receiving national attention, being recognized by U.S. News and World Report as one of the nation’s up-and-coming universities. In the decade between 1996 and 2006, ASU enjoyed its second biggest building boom, leaving the university with one of the most modern campuses in the state. In 2004 the ASU softball team captured the school’s third national title, winning the NCAA Division II Championship.
In 2007 the university’s history came full circle as local citizens, excited about similar West Texas outlooks and possible synergies, petitioned legislators to move Angelo State University from the Texas State University System to the Texas Tech University System. With legislative approval and the governor’s signature, that move became effective Sept. 1, 2007, three months to the day after Dr. Joseph C. Rallo assumed his duties as the fourth president of ASU and the institution’s ninth since its founding in 1928.