Indiana University South Bend — the Public University in the Web

Extension classes from 1916 — Northside Hall 1959–1961 — first degrees 1967 — the seventh chancellor from July 1, 2025

The extension roots: The public side of the city’s college web began as evening classes taught in a public high school. Indiana University’s first South Bend extension class met in the spring of 1916, in the IU Archives’ account by Furlong; the university’s Bicentennial history dates the first classes at Central High School to 1922 — the banked Schools pass printed the two as a sequence, the documented 1916 class and the 1922 course at Central, and the sequence stands here as it stands there. For four decades the campus was a center without a campus, its classes in the corporation’s buildings: the collegiate web began, literally, inside the public schools’ rooms.

The campus course:Its chancellors run Lester M. Wolfson, appointed director in 1965 and named the first chancellor in 1969, leading the campus to 1987; H. Daniel Cohen; Kenneth Perrin, to 2002; Una Mae Reck, the first woman chancellor, 2002 to 2013; Terry L. Allison, the fifth chancellor, from 2013; and Susan Elrod, the sixth, installed September 10, 2019. What the banked entry could not carry, because it had not yet happened, is the succession’s continuation: Elrod retired in December 2024, Andy Williams served as interim deputy chancellor through the transition, and Brian Pappas — formerly dean of the University of North Dakota School of Law — was named chancellor effective July 1, 2025, the campus’s seventh, by Indiana University’s announcement of January 7, 2025.

The enrollment line, brought current: The banked Schools entry closed the line at 4,326 in the fall of 2022, down from 8,073 in the fall of 2013. The university’s own census releases carry it forward: 4,716 in the fall of 2025, up about two percent; and 4,852 in the fall of 2026 — 4,341 undergraduate and 511 graduate students, at the official census of August 31, 2026 — the fourth straight year of growth, with beginners and transfers at ten-year highs, in IU News’s account of September 9, 2026. The campus stands in the web as the city’s public university: open-enrollment, commuter in its roots, housed on the river bend east of downtown, and — the strand that ties it to everything else in this section — still the institution whose first classrooms were borrowed from the schools around it.

Sources:

2. Indiana University, IU News, January 7, 2025 — Brian Pappas named chancellor effective July 1, 2025, the campus’s seventh; Susan Elrod’s retirement in December 2024; Andy Williams as interim deputy chancellor.
3. Indiana University, IU News, September 9, 2026, and the fall 2025 census release — enrollment of 4,852 for fall 2026 (4,341 undergraduate, 511 graduate; census August 31, 2026), the fourth straight year of growth, and 4,716 for fall 2025.