SATC
Once America declared war on Germany in April 1917 it faced an immense challenge – mobilizing and training millions of men for war. America’s colleges and universities were part of the solution and their facilities, faculty, and curriculum were turned towards training men for war.
To mobilize American higher education for war the War Department created the Students’ Army Training Corps (SATC) in the summer of 1918. The SATC used colleges to train college-aged draftees who were not already enrolled in college for military service. Draftees who were deemed eligible were placed into SATC units at colleges to receive abbreviated education and training before entering military service. College administrators and faculty remained in place to administer and teach at their institutions. However, the curriculum and training given to students was determined by the War Department rather than faculty.
VPI was one of over 600 schools the War Department mobilized, and VPI was mandated to create an SATC unit on campus in fall 1918. Accordingly, VPI was required to make significant curricular changes to align with wartime needs. These changes included altering existing courses and introducing new ones to provide SATC student-soldiers training for the Army’s Engineer Corps, Signal Corps, Chemical Warfare Service, Quartermaster Service, Ordinance Service, Medical Corps, Infantry, Artillery and Machine Gunnery, Transport and Tank Service, and Air Service. The SATC unit at VPI consisted of 452 student-soldiers total who trained alongside VPI’s 477 regularly enrolled students, doubling the campus population.
The Students’ Army Training Corps at VPI existed for only a short time. The program began in September 1918. After Germany agreed to an armistice on November 11, 1918, the War Department saw little reason to continue the program and ordered all SATC units to demobilize by January 1, 1919.
Though the program was short lived, its effects on VPI were long-lasting. During the five months of the SATC program VPI was effectively turned into a military training camp. Wartime measures shifted campus authority from VPI’s civilian administrators and faculty to military officers within the Corps of Cadets, ROTC, and SATC. Faculty were also forced to relinquish control over curriculum to the War Department. Existing curriculum was altered and new courses were introduced to provide education which related to new war technologies.
VPI’s president, Joseph Eggleston, expressed his frustration with the SATC to a parent in October 1918, complaining that VPI was being “compelled to subordinate everything to the wishes of Washington officials” and that it would take VPI “years to recover.” On January 24, 1919 Eggleston submitted his resignation as VPI’s president, largely resigning due to his frustrations with the SATC. In Eggleston’s words, he believed the SATC was nothing more than a “dismal failure.”
The negative experiences of VPI’s civilian faculty and administrators during the five months of the SATC program would eventually lead them to question VPI’s curriculum and military education in the years after the war.
