1959 - 1973 Roger E. Guiles

Despite being appointed its President almost 90 years after the Oshkosh campus opened, Roger E. Guiles was the school's first leader to hail from Wisconsin.  Guiles was raised in tiny La Valle in Sauk County.  Graduating from the Platteville State Teachers College in 1930, he began his career as a teacher and administrator in public schools.  He advanced to run the Richland County Normal School and, after receiving his master's degree, was hired as Director of Teacher Education at Platteville State Teachers Collge.  Despite having a firm foundation in teacher education, Guiles was a strong advocate for the evolution of the teachers colleges into something much larger and more relevant.   

Pursuing his PhD at the University of Wisconsin, Guiles accepted a challenge in 1948 from the Board of Regents to his ideas. In A Study of Practices, Conditions and Trends in Relation to The Function of the Wisconsin State Teachers Colleges , Guiles made the case that quality education in so-called non-professional fields could and should be provided in the teachers colleges. 

Through The Guiles Report, the Regents were able convince the legislature and Governor Rennebohm to permit that expansion in mission in 1949. By 1951, the colleges were ready to offer degrees in liberal arts and be renamed Wisconsin State Colleges.   And while ten years separated Guiles’ PhD. and his appointment to the Presidency in Oshkosh, his vision continued. 

To further develop the expansion of the school, Guiles made important breaks with his long serving predecessor, Forrest Polk.  He greatly expanded the size of the administration to help guide the increasingly complex school.  He empowered department chairs,helped bring faculty governance to campus and encouraged research among his faculty by reducing course loads.

Off campus, Guiles' knew that the critically needed expansion of the school's physical plant, necessary to house both the many new programs under development and expansion as well as the record number of baby boomers reaching college age, required the cooperation of community leaders.  He began to engage business and political leaders in Oshkosh with a community advising committee. Guiles also established the Unviersity's foundation and alumni offices to engage others in the new initiatives of the, as of 1963, Wisconsin State University.   

During his presidency, many progressive and modern approaches to University administration we adopted, but he was also ill-equipped to deal with a changing student body and a new generation of assertive, young faculty.  Guiles and his administration failed to predict, for example, that African-American students recruited to come to Oshkosh from predominantly black communities of Milwaukee, Beloit and Racine would find it difficult to adjust to the fully white, Oshkosh culture.  Feeling unsupported, these students took their grievances to the University, famously confronting Guiles in his office.  After occupying the office and committing acts of vandalism, the students were arrested and 94 of them were summarily expelled by Guiles.  While the university would later invite back the participants of the "Black Thursday" protest, Guiles' record as President would be forever be stained by his lack of urgency in addressing these students' needs.   

Similarly, Roger Guiles was not prepared for white counter-culture among the students either and bristled at student demands for an expanded role in University governance.  Like many of his generation, Guiles was unable to connect to a student body in full rebellion from early generations.