University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Dept. of Naval Science.

The Dept. of Naval Science was established in 1940 as the Dept. of Naval Science and Tactics. It operated in conjunction with a unit of the Naval Reserve Officers' Training Corps and was a direct result of the University's decision to aid the war effort by offering military training. Its name was changed to Dept. of Naval science in 1945, and after the war it became a permanent part of the curriculum. Since 1972 the Department's course offerings have been coordinated through the Curriculum in Peace, War and Defense.

Efforts to locate a Naval Reserve Officers' Training Corps unit at the University of North Carolina began in June 1940, when the Board of Trustees expressed its desire to establish military training on the university campus. The Committee on Military Training, chaired by then Governor Clyde R. Hoey, was formed to consider at once the desirability of installing military training at Chapel Hill and to what extent, if any, military training should be required of students at Chapel Hill. The committee's resolution calling for the establishment of military training at the university was presented to and passed by the Board of Trustees in August 1940.

Application for the establishment of a unit of the Naval Reserve Officers' Training Corps was immediately made to the Navy Department. On 12 September 1940, it was officially announced that the federal government had authorized the NROTC unit at Chapel Hill, appointing Captain Robert S. Haggart as Commanding Officer and Professor of Naval Science and Tactics. (The Department of Naval Science and Tactics became the Department of Naval Science in 1945).

In 1941 the threat of World War II nearly tripled the NROTC enrollment. In September, 188 naval midshipmen began intensive military training. They drilled on Emerson Field dressed in all-white imitation cracker jack uniforms. Cadets were equipped with new Springfield rifles and officers with sabers and .45-caliber service revolvers. NROTC classes were held in Woollen Gym and included courses in astronomical mathematics, navigation, boatcraft, signaling, and regulations.

During 1942 the University of North Carolina expanded its military training program with the addition of a Navy Aviation Eastern Pre-flight Training School as part of the Navy Department's efforts to turn out 30,000 pilots a year. The final expansion was the establishment of the Navy College Training Program (V-12 Program) in July 1943. In order to provide classrooms, housing, and dining facilities for 1,875 pre-flight midshipmen and up to 1,330 V-12 trainees, university officials undertook a major building and renovation program. They built the Navy Armory, Miller Hall, Nash Hall, Navy Hospital (which later served as the student infirmary), and Kessing Pool. In addition, the university renovated ten dormitories, built additions to Lenoir Hall and Woollen Gym, built the Navy Field, and began clearing land for Finley Golf Course.

The pre-flight program was dissolved in 1945 and the V-12 program in 1946; those enrolled in them continued their training under the NROTC program. The decade of the forties saw the evolution of the NROTC from a temporary, wartime program to a permanent institution at the university.

The decade of the sixties, however, threatened the future of NROTC. The Vietnam War and growing peace movement were accompanied by student protests and faculty skepticism about the desirability of ROTC on college campuses. A committee was appointed, chaired by Professor George V. Taylor, to investigate ROTC involvement on the campus. The final report of the Taylor Committee (December 1969) recommended that a separate curriculum on war and defense be established and that the ROTC departments and offerings be continued at the university in affiliation with the curriculum on war and defense.

The Faculty Council adopted the recommendations put forth in the Taylor report in April 1970, solidifying ROTC's place on campus and establishing the Curriculum in Peace, War and Defense, which began instruction in the fall of 1972.