In 1865, Indiana State University began classes as many other future regional state universities would: as a "normal school," a school that specialized in training teachers, usually in one- or two-year programs. By 1933, Indiana State had won the name Teachers College and had begun offering graduate-level education. In A History of Indiana State University, Dan Clark explores the history of Indiana State's institutional transformation against the backdrop of the amazing expansion of public education and the scope of higher education in the United States during this period.

Starting with the origins of the normal school and the need for professional teachers to help construct the educational infrastructure of Indiana, Clark examines how the faculty and students pushed the school to conform to increasingly popular traditional collegiate ideals, broadening their curriculum and student extracurricular life (athletics and Greek life), until by the 1920s Indiana State had transformed itself into a teachers college.

A History of Indiana State University offers an invaluable guide to the history of this beloved Indiana institution, and details the underappreciated impact that normal schools had in providing an educational opportunity to less privileged aspiring students.