Six Students Who Shaped a University: The First Honors College Students and the Idea of College

On 3 January 1957, two months after the naming of this nation’s first Honors College, the announcement was made of the formation of a branch campus, Michigan State University-Oakland, to be built on the Wilson estate in Oakland County, Michigan. The donation of their Oakland estate by Alfred G. and Matilda R. Wilson bore the characteristic vision of the Wilsons. However, this decidedly personal philanthropic story would mostly be interesting but academically inconsequential if not for the fortuitous naming of the nation’s first Honors College in November 1956, and what that declared and what that provided with the Wilson ethos behind it. As it happened, therefore, MSU-O was announced within those two short months of the creation of the MSU Honors College. Further historical fate defined what came next and why it is significant in the development of Honors Colleges uniquely here in the United States. As fate and history would have it, MSU-O (later named Oakland University) would thus become the first university in the nation informed by the thoughts and ideals of Honors College students.