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The 1960s
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In 1960, Chubby Checker had everybody doing “The Twist,” Anthony Perkins made “Psycho” viewers uncomfortable in the shower, and the introduction of the oral polio vaccine saved thousands of lives. That was also the year NYIT received a provisional charter from the Board of Regents to operate as a four-year college with the ability to grant bachelor’s degrees. (The permanent charter was granted in 1962.)
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In the early 1960s, enrollment was already pushing 1,500 students, and it was time to look for a bigger campus. A temporary site in Syosset, N.Y., was opened while school officials searched for a permanent home. Many prospective sites were examined before the officials decided on one of Long Island’s most famous properties – a 280-acre tract of the Cornelius Vanderbilt Whitney estate in Old Westbury. Later, the college would acquire a number of neighboring properties in Brookville and Old Brookville, joining together more than 700 acres of the fabled stretch of Gold Coast estates that thrived on Long Island’s North Shore during the Roaring ’20s.
After renovating estate buildings, such as the Whitney stables, into classroom space, the Old Westbury campus was ready for students in 1965. So while Julie Andrews was singing, “The hills are alive with the sound of music,” on the big screen, the new campus was coming to life with its first class of students.
“I was in the very first class on Long Island,” says Harry P. Thal (B.F.A. ’68). “We started out in rented space in Syosset in a newly constructed medical building adjacent to a hospital. NYIT was on the second floor. A few miles away, a motel served as a dorm for out-of-town students. During my sophomore year, we moved to Education Hall. To us, it was ‘Nay Hall’ as this converted stable still had hay bales stored in the unfinished second floor, and no one told the horseflies that the building was now a school.”
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Through five decades, one of NYIT’s strengths has been its faculty members, who serve as working professionals in their respective fields. This ensures that students are kept in touch with the demands of the modern workplace. NYIT’s real-world approach to education continues to prove its worth; in 2005, more than 80 percent of the college’s students graduated with jobs in hand.
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Thirty-five hundred students attended NYIT in fall 1965, a gain of 1,000 over the previous year. More importantly, the college’s enrollment figures now included students from other states and countries.
The young college quickly became a leader in using educational technology. With the help of a grant from the Carnegie Corporation of New York, the school set out to develop an automated, self-instructional engineer training system. “When the system [is] completed,” the foundation said in its 1964 annual report, “it may serve as a model for other engineering technician programs throughout the country, offering one … solution to the severe manpower and teacher shortage in the field.”
Students in the School of Engineering and Technology enhance their NYIT education through hands-on assignments that use the latest technology. |
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NYIT was also building a reputation for research in other areas. In 1965, an applied-research laboratory was established to bring the full resources of the faculty and its facilities to bear on the solution of important technology problems for government and industry.
Long before personal computers were invented, NYIT was involved in efforts to use mainframes as a teaching tool. The institute received its first computer, donated by the CIT Financial Corporation, in 1965. Three years later, the college received two grants totaling approximately $3 million from the |
federal government – one to develop a system of individualized learning through the use of computers; the other to develop a computer-based course in general physics for midshipmen at the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md.
Bruce Laskin, former vice president for research and development, recalls President Schure’s dedication to broadening NYIT’s expertise across several fields. In those early years, Schure would meet with NYIT’s researchers and scientists to brainstorm ideas. Laskin recalls the many times they met to discuss the creation of new technology, after which Schure would reply, “OK, let’s do it.”
“He was a futurist, willing to go places where people had not gone before,” Laskin says. “What we created is basic now, but then it was amazing.”
Student organizations also increased during the 1960s: NYIT’s Old Westbury student newspaper, the Campus Slate, put out its first issue in September 1966; the first Old Westbury student drama production, “Tea and Sympathy,” was performed in November 1966; and the Old Westbury Student Activity Center opened in December 1969.
Manhattan students were equally busy, introducing their own student newspaper, the Scope, and producing plays like “You Can’t Take It With You” in 1964. In 1965, WNYT, the college’s first radio station, began broadcasting in the basement cafeteria. |
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Students from the Class of 1965 were witness to a number of significant milestones in NYIT’s history, such as the opening of the college’s Old Westbury campus, the first broadcast of WNYT, and the creation of two student newspapers.
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