Editor’s Note: This is the inaugural post in a new series called UConn Firsts, celebrating noteworthy students, faculty, milestones, and moments from across the history of the University of Connecticut. 

The UConn of today – with its 14 schools and colleges, more than 30,000 students, and degrees in more than 125 majors – was probably hard to imagine on that distant September morning when 11 students, all male, began the first day of classes at what was then known as Storrs Agricultural School. Within short order, women began attending class, the curriculum expanded, and the little school in Mansfield was well on its way to becoming one of the great public universities in the country, thereby answering the question posed in an editorial that September by the Hartford Courant: “What is the Storrs Farm School to be? Lots of people are curious to know. In general terms it will be what the genius of the people of Connecticut pleases to make it.”