Truman State University
university in Missouri, United States
Truman State University (TSU or Truman) is a public liberal arts university in Kirksville, Missouri, United States. It had 3,664 enrolled students in the fall of 2024 pursuing degrees in 55 undergraduate and twelve graduate programs.
The university is named for U.S. President Harry Truman, who was a Missouri native. From 1972 until 1996, the school was known as Northeast Missouri State University.
History
Truman State University was founded in 1867 by Joseph Baldwin as the "North Missouri Normal School and Commercial College." Baldwin was a pioneer in education, and his school quickly gained official recognition in 1870 by the Missouri General Assembly, which designated it as the "First District Normal School," the first public teachers' college in Missouri.
The school served a district comprising 26 counties: including Adair, Audrain, Boone, Callaway, Chariton, Clark, Howard, Knox, Lewis, Lincoln, Linn, Marion, Macon, Monroe, Montgomery, Pike, Putnam, Ralls, Randolph, St. Charles, Schuyler, Scotland, Shelby, Sullivan, and Warren.
Purple and white were adopted as the school's official colors after Basil Brewer wrote a school song entitled "The Purple and the White." They have remained as the school colors since.
In 1919, the school was renamed "Northeast Missouri State Teachers College." For the next four decades, it was commonly called "Kirksville State."
In 1924, a fire destroyed Baldwin Hall and the college's library. In an attempt to extinguish the fire, the lake (which can be seen in photographs of the campus from before 1924) that was then in the middle of the campus was pumped dry.
“Truman State University” enters the record as university in Missouri, United States. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Truman, State and University can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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“Truman State University” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Truman, State and University provides the most credible route into that argument.
The record creator and administrative purpose are central evidence, because official documentation reflects both action and institutional priorities. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 9, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7847734. VIAF identifies the subject as 130493437. The Library of Congress control number is no97016968. Authority coordinates are 40.189, -92.582. 3 of 5 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2024, 1972, 1996 and 1867.
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This entry incorporates text from “Truman State University” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.