Nearly two-hundred state colleges and regional universities throughout the country began as "normal" schools, but the institutions themselves have buried their history, and scholars have largely overlooked them. Christine A. Ogren focuses on the lives of the first wave of "nontraditional" students in higher education. In her engaging and accessible narrative, Ogren presents a groundbreaking comprehensive history and much-needed reexamination of the state normal school for all courses on the history of education, foundations, and women's higher education.