Humboldt State University
Located in the Arcata in Humboldt County, California, is the northernmost campus of the California State University system: Humboldt State University, or HSU. Back in 1913, it was known as the Humboldt State Normal School and was established as a teacher’s college by then-Governor Hiram Johnson. Two cities, Arcata and Eureka, tried to host the new campus, and in April 6, 1914, the former Arcata Grammar School building housed the 78 students and 5 faculties when the school finally opened to the public.
It was put under the jurisdiction of the California Department of Education, where it moved to its present location and was renamed as the Humboldt State Teacher’s College and Junior College. In 1935, the school was once again renamed; this time as Humboldt State college.
During the Second World War, the Founder’s Hall, which is visible from the Pacific Ocean, had to be painted camouflage so that Japanese submarines could not use it as a point of reference. The school was also posted with an air observation post to watch for Japanese airplanes. It was removed in 1953. Two years after that, graduate programs were introduced and the first state college radio station, the KHSC, was established.
In 1972, the school was christened as California State University, and in 1974, it was renamed again to what it is known as today; Humboldt State University. Today it remains to be one of the smallest universities in the CSU system.
Humboldt State University is divided into three colleges; the College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences, the College of Natural Resources and Sciences, and the College of Professional Studies. There are also 49 undergraduate majors and 85 minors, with Biology and Art being the largest majors and having more than 20 teachers and extensive facilities on and off campus.
In its effort to provide its students and potential enrollees with advanced technology, Humboldt State University’s Computer Science department has the Internet Teaching Laboratory (ITL), which was established in 1998 with a grant of 4 Internet Backbone Routers from CAIDA.
The lab has grown rapidly since then, and includes more sophisticated communications equipment. The ITL, aside from supporting coursework in computer and network security, also acts as a storage facility for the department’s Lego Mindstorm robots and their own LynxMotion programmable robotic arms.
