ASHEVILLE NORMAL SCHOOL

Dr. Thomas Lawrence was the first director of the Normal and Collegiate Institute.  Land was donated by the Pease family, and the Presbyterian Board of Home Missions provided funding.  There were 14 faculty members.  By 1918 the school had graduated 570 women.  The motto of "service" was the guiding force for most of the graduates.  Service meant that graduates integrated themselves immediately into whatever community hired them to teach.  They joined churches, aligned themselves with community service projects and, in general, attempted to 'stimulate the community to higher ideals'. The 1922 Highlander yearbook implies this commitment with the quote, "Faith is the substance of things hoped for; the evidence of things not seen." (1968,  Camp, Cordelia. A Thought at Midnight. n.p.)

The Normal and Collegiate Institute itself worked with the YWCA, the Presbyterian Board of Home Missions outreach efforts, and asked its student to make individual efforts to contribute to the communities of Asheville and others in the Western region of North Carolina. (1968,  Camp, Cordelia. A Thought at Midnight. n.p.)

The Normal and Collegiate Institute was one of many women's schools that flourished in Western North Carolina in the late nineteenth century and the early twentieth century.  Not all had the service mission of the Asheville Normal Teacher's College, most were 'finishing' schools, such as the Grove Park School on Edgemont Road in North Asheville. (1968,  Camp, Cordelia. A Thought at Midnight. n.p.)