Bonnie E. Cone oral history interview 10, 1988 February 4

In this fifth of a series of interviews conducted by Dr. Ed Perzel (former Chair of the Department of History and Associate Dean for the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at UNC Charlotte), Bonnie Cone discusses the transition from Charlotte Center-UNC to Charlotte College in 1949. She describes the first National Meeting of the American Association of Junior Colleges in California in February 1949 and the impact this had on her career. Ms. Cone also reflects on the difficulties of keeping the Charlotte Center open after the first two years of its existence, tension between the college and state bureaucracy, faculty and staff remuneration, the support of the local press, relations with the engineering department at North Carolina State University, recruitment of students from local high schools, advantages of becoming an independent college in 1949, service to veterans, the establishment of Carver College at Second Ward High School as a parallel college for African American students, and the financial challenges that Charlotte College faced.