Washington State University was founded as the Washington Agricultural College and School of Science in 1890, and became the State College of Washington (colloquially Washington State College) in 1905. It enrolled its first students and began instruction in January of 1892. During its early years the school offered both college courses and non-college courses, the most common non-college program was the Preparatory School, later the Elementary School or Elementary Science program, which was the equivalent of today's high school education.
The Office of the Registrar is responsible for handling student records; the role of the registrar dates to the earliest days of the campus, though the first registrar also served a secretarial role. Today it's responsible for virtually all non-medical student data.
The collection contains school registers, or student registers, from the first (1892) enrollees at what would become Washington State University up through 1919. In 1905, the volumes began including summer school enrollment information. They include the school's college students and non-college students both. The content of the registers varies over time, but consists of student information that can include attendance, grades, limited demographic information, and notes on why they finally left the school. The collection is retained in its original bindings and order.
The collection is broken into two series of registers. The first series is defined as college registers, but the first several volumes, at least, clearly contain non-college enrollees. It is unclear if later volumes also do. The second, smaller series is identified as Preparatory School students.
The first three volumes of series one and all four volumes of series two list students, loosely, by when they enrolled, and then records multiple years' work under their name. These volumes include a student index at the front. The other volumes list all students enrolled in a given year and then their work for that year. These volumes are generally mostly alphabetical, though there may be multiple series within a given volume: in some cases each semester is separate, and in some cases students are separated by program. As a result of the differing systems for recording data, there may be some overlap between the two types of volumes, and those interested in students in those years will need to check multiple volumes.
This collection is open and available for research use.
Included in this collection are student records including grades and attendance; legal protection for this information under the FERPA act ended with the death of the student.
[Item Description] Office of the Registrar School Registers, 1892-1919 (Archives 354)
Manuscripts, Archives, and Special Collections, Washington State University Libraries, Pullman, WA.
The materials in this collection, along with a variety of statistical reports and some Regents Minutes, were given to MASC by Dave Guzman of the Washington State University Registrar's Office on June 17, 1996, and retained as accession UA1996-12.
After other materials had been separated out, the remaining school registers were processed in August of 2015 by University Archivist Mark O'English.
The Office of the Registrar materials separated from these registers can be found in Archives 353 (Office of the Registrar Reports, 1917-1974) and in Archives 257 (Board of Regents Minutes, 1891-1998). MASC holds similar records from 1920 to 1940 as accession UA1995-06, but due to FERPA regulations those materials remain sealed against use until the deaths of those students.
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.