Vincennes University

Overview

Vincennes University is a public university in Vincennes, Indiana, and the state’s oldest college (Indiana Libraries). Its heritage begins in 1801, when Jefferson Academy — the direct forerunner of the university — was founded in Vincennes (Indiana Libraries). The founder was William Henry Harrison, then governor of the Indiana Territory, who also served as the first chair of the college’s Board of Trustees (Indiana Libraries). Harrison became governor of the Indiana Territory in 1801 and, decades later, the ninth president of the United States in 1841 (White House). A campus historical marker records the same lineage: founded in 1801 as Jefferson Academy by Harrison and chartered by the Indiana Territorial Legislature in 1806 (HMDB).

The institution’s unusual shape — a two-year public university with a small set of bachelor’s degrees — and a colorful curricular history make it a frequent subject of directory-style listings. What those listings often get wrong is the present tense.

A territorial charter

The legal scaffolding for the university came from Congress and the territorial legislature rather than from the academy alone. In response to a territorial petition, Congress passed an act on March 26, 1804 providing that one township in each of three Indiana Territory land districts be set aside for a seminary of learning (Indiana Magazine of History). In October 1806, Treasury Secretary Albert Gallatin, acting on the suggestion of Vincennes land-office register John Badollet, selected the township for the Vincennes district — land approximately where Princeton, Indiana now stands (Indiana Magazine of History).

On November 29, 1806, the territorial legislature, meeting at Vincennes, passed an act incorporating “an University in Indiana Territory to be known as the Vincennes University,” granting it the township Gallatin had set aside (Indiana Magazine of History). The charter created a board of twenty-three trustees with complete control of the university’s affairs, made them a body politic and corporate, and directed them to establish the university within the borough of Vincennes with a president and up to four professors teaching Latin, Greek, French, English, mathematics, natural philosophy, logic, history, rhetoric, and the law of nature and nations (Indiana Magazine of History). The charter even authorized a lottery to raise funds for a library and scientific apparatus, and contemplated a grammar school and a “school for females” (Indiana Magazine of History).

The board’s first session was held December 6, 1806, at the office of John Gibson; Harrison was elected president of the board, James Johnson treasurer, and General Washington Johnston clerk — and it is from December 6, 1806 that the university dates its organized origin (Indiana Magazine of History). The first actual school conducted under the board’s authority did not open until May 11, 1811, when the Rev. Samuel T. Scott’s grammar school was taken under the trustees’ control (Indiana Magazine of History).

The bowling degree that no longer exists

Vincennes’ most famous curricular distinction — its Bowling Management and Technology program — is routinely described in online profiles as a current, one-of-a-kind offering. Indiana Public Media reported in June 2020 that the university had discontinued the degree (Indiana Public Media). The program began in the 1970s as a technical degree teaching students to operate pinsetters, then grew to include management, customer service, marketing, and budgeting under longtime director and coach Gary Sparks (Indiana Public Media). There had only ever been two such programs in the country; the other, in Buffalo, New York, had ended about eight years earlier (Indiana Public Media). Enrollment had struggled to reach double digits before the program was cut (Indiana Public Media).

What survived is the varsity bowling team, which Indiana Public Media described as highly decorated with 19 National Junior College Athletic Association national championships, three of them in the preceding five years (Indiana Public Media). Any profile still listing the Bowling Management degree as an active program is at least six years out of date.

The university’s modern academic shape is that of a two-year campus with a limited four-year footprint: bachelor’s degrees became available at Vincennes in 2005 and have grown popular as a lower-cost alternative to residential public universities (The Washington Times). The Indiana Libraries journal likewise describes VU as “one of the first two-year colleges in America,” with several baccalaureates presently offered (Indiana Libraries).

What this profile does not claim

This profile does not repeat the claim that Vincennes is “the only college in the nation founded by a future U.S. president,” which appears in lower-tier listings but was not independently verified; it states only Harrison’s documented roles as territorial governor, founder, and first board chair. It does not give a current enrollment figure, since recent numbers were found only in the university’s own materials and aggregator directories. It does not describe the Jasper campus, the Aviation Technology Center, or other satellite sites, which are documented primarily in first-party sources. The 1938 Eli Lilly campus-land funding rests on a single marker inscription and is presented as such. Finally, the profile does not assert a precise “founded” date beyond the documented sequence — Jefferson Academy in 1801, incorporation on November 29, 1806, first board organization on December 6, 1806 — since the institution’s own origin narrative and the historian Burnett’s “dates its origin from December 6, 1806” frame the question differently (Indiana Magazine of History).