Records of the Armed Forces Science Division

The Armed Forces Science Division was created because the 1862 Morrill Act provided funding for institutions that provided military tactics as a prominent course of instruction. In 1881, a group of students organized into a drill team, and a formal company of 36 cadets organized at Colorado State University. The 1920s were a prominent decade for the Armed Forces Science Division; enrollment in ROTC increased drastically and in 1927, the first Ca-Dettes were introduced. In 1946, an Air Force ROTC unit was activated at Colorado State University. Military training was required of all freshman male college students until 1962, when the mandatory status of ROTC was dropped. The collection contains primarily armed services related publications and souvenir postcards. Some of the postcards were collected by Dan Schultz, a member of CSU's Battery A, which served in Europe during World War I.