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Encyclopedia Of Arkansas Minute: Baby Of Arts

A surge in non-traditional students following World War II led to a unique degree program at the Arkansas State Teachers College, now the University of Central Arkansas.

Veterans using the G.I. Bill to pay for college helped swell the student body at the Conway school to fourteen hundred after the war, and many lived with their spouses in mobile homes on the campus. As the couples began having children, college president Nolen Irby devised a program to recognize the youngsters who were growing up on campus – when the parents graduated, so would the children.

Irby said, “it created a definite feeling of fellowship between unmarried students and those with wives and families, and it creates positive publicity because of its uniqueness.”

Around fifty children, adorned in cap and gown, received a Baby of Arts degree in each graduation ceremony between 1948 and when the program came to an end in the late fifties.

Learn more about the Baby of Arts degree at the Encyclopedia of Arkansas.

Mark Christ produces and hosts Encyclopedia of Arkansas Minute on KUAR. He is head of adult programming for the Central Arkansas Library System. He previously served as community outreach director for the Arkansas Historic Preservation Program, which he joined in 1990 after eight years as a journalist.
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