The WSU Controller’s Office (now also known as Accounts Payable) has existed since the founding of the university in 1892. The Controller’s Office is responsible for the financial, accounting, and treasury operations.
The collection contains correspondence, reports, financial records, and class census material from 1892 until the 1920s, with a few items from the 1940s and 1950s.
The collection in arranged in two series as follows:
Series 1: Board of Regents Administrative and Business Correspondence (1890s) Series One consists of correspondence between various members of the Board of Regents during the first years of the university, the early 1890s. The series is split between administrative correspondence, containing information about the organization or the physical buildings on campus, and business correspondence. The business correspondence contains information and letters from local and regional distributors and businesses for university supplies, such as building materials and food. Within each individual set within this series, items are retained in their original order.
Series 2: Reports (1910s-1920s) This series contains reports from the major universities from around the state during the late 1910s and through the mid-1920s. There are multiple annual reports from the state normal schools at Ellensburg (now Central Washington University), Bellingham (now Western Washington University), and Cheney (now Eastern Washington University). There are two additional reports: on the University of Washington, and one on the plans and specifications for the city of Pullman. The series also contains State College of Washington (now Washington State University) reports. The Series Two reports were compiled for the Joint Board of Higher Curricula and contain information pertaining, but not limited to, census data, enrollments, building and room charts, expenditures, catalogues and costs. Within each individual set within this series, items are retained in their original order. The final box is oversized materials within this series.
This collection is open and available for research use.
Copyright restrictions apply.
[Item Description] Controller’s Office Records, 1892-1920s
Manuscripts, Archives, and Special Collections, Washington State University Libraries, Pullman, WA.
On January 19, 1981 the Controller's Office transferred microfilmed record copies to the Washington State University Libraries’ Manuscripts, Archives, and Special Collections (MASC), where they were retained as UA1981-01. On April 13, 1981, one linear foot of non-microfilm (print) materials was separated out from these records and retained as UA1981-13. These papers contain correspondence, reports, financial records, and class census materials, among other things.
Megan Ockerman processed this collection in February of 2017.
This accession was removed from UA 81-01 (Office of the Controller). UA 81-01 consisted of four boxes of microfilm of financial transactions (1918-1970s) which was processed as Archives 64 in 1981.
The MASC holds numerous other processed and unprocessed sets of records from the Controller’s Office. Please see MASC’s list of University Archives collections and their list of University Archives accessions for further information on those.
This collection is indexed under the following headings in the online catalog. Researchers desiring materials about related topics, persons, or places should search the catalog using these headings.