Eveleth Junior College Hockey

Eveleth Junior College Hockey and a brief History of Mesabi Range College

Mesabi Range Community and Technical College, housed on a campus in Virginia, Minnesota, and a

campus in Eveleth, Minnesota, five miles south, has an accreditation history as such beginning in 1923. Despite name changes, merger, and dissolutions in response to legislative mandates and Board action, this co-located institution has educated four generations of northeastern Minnesota students.

Brief Chronological History of the Junior College/Community College

Mesabi Range College is the successor to over nine

decades of post-secondary public educational

institutions that have served the central Mesabi Range

area. Minnesota was one of the first states to establish

junior college education, and St. Louis County alone

established four junior colleges in a seven-year span

around World War I. One of those four junior colleges

was Virginia Junior College, created in 1921.

According to the Virginia High School Yearbook

published in 1923, "People claimed that such a college

in Virginia could not exist as nearly all the students

would go away to college". Those opinions changed,

however, as attendance doubled the second year of

the college and continued to grow.

Virginia Junior College was housed in the public

school but had its own classrooms and study room.

The College was administered as part of the community’s independent school district; however, the College, as were all junior colleges, was declared a "separate institution by the Minnesota Board of Education with its own organization, administration and faculty".

Vocational programs were not offered at Virginia Junior College until 1941-1942 when students could train for employment in the mechanical trades. Although the original intent had been to provide training for high school students, returning veterans and other adults quickly took advantage of this training opportunity.

1918 Eveleth Junior College and 1921 Virginia Junior College

Before joining the North Central Association of

Colleges and Schools, colleges were accredited

through a transfer agreement with the University of

Minnesota in Minneapolis. Eveleth Junior College was

established in 1918 through such an agreement, and

Virginia Junior College followed in 1921.

As a result of these transfer agreements, students were

guaranteed that their course of study at Eveleth Junior

College and Virginia Junior College would be

accepted at the University of Minnesota as fulfilling the

lower division requirements of the first two years of a

baccalaureate degree. Courses of study included the

sciences; literature and arts; commerce and

administration; and four pre-professional programs in dental, legal, medical, and engineering.

The junior colleges were separate wings of the public schools and were administered as part of the independent school districts of each community. The 1921-1922 Junior College Bulletin clarified that relationship by stating that the junior college was "a separate institution having its own organizations, administrations, and faculty"; however, because these junior colleges were included in the independent school districts, tuition was free. The first class of the Virginia Junior College in 1923 enrolled 49 students who were instructed by a faculty of 17. Mining taxes and corporate contributions supported state-of-the-art facilities, highly qualified faculty, sports, theatre, music, and a full student life. However, by the 1930s, what began as a series of fees became tuition.

The Creation of Mesabi State Junior College

When Eveleth Junior College and Virginia Junior College merged in 1966 to form Mesabi State Junior College under the administration of the Minnesota State Board of Community Colleges, college leaders sought a name that would be regionally specific but town neutral. The name Mesabi was selected. The word means "sleeping giant" in the Ojibwa language of the local Anishinabe and is a metaphor for the ridge that forms the continental divide running through the area. In fact, the central section of the iron deposits of northern Minnesota is called the Mesabi Range.

MORE Hockey Information/Photos COMING VERY SOON!!!

Source in Part: www.mesabi.project.mnscu.edu. Eveleth Historical Society with generous assistance from archivist Kathleen Bergan

**Eveleth Junior College Exterior