About the Exhibition

On June 22, 1944, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed the Servicemen's Readjustment Act of 1944, better known as "the GI Bill of Rights." Over the past six decades, it has provided approximately 21 million veterans and service members with $77 billion in benefits for education and training.

The NCSU Libraries prepared this exhibit to celebrate the sixtieth anniversary of the GI Bill and to honor the veterans who have attended NC State. Combining historical materials with testimonies of current NC State students, Transforming Society: The GI Bill Experience at NC State documents the local impact of one of the best-loved and most successful public policies ever adopted in the United States. The exhibit ran from October 14 through December 22, 2004, in the D. H. Hill Library's main circulation lobby and mezzanine. Its online counterpart was created in spring 2005.

Drawing mainly on the NCSU Libraries' own rich collections of photographs, campus publications, student essays, letters, and other University Archives and manuscript materials, the exhibit documents how the GI Bill contributed to the growth of NC State and shaped the lives of individual students.

In addition to selecting materials from the Special Collections Research Center, librarian Anna Dahlstein and NCSU education professor Robert Serow interviewed NC State graduates and students who served in World War II, Korea, Vietnam, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Iraq and a number of other arenas before completing their education. Their stories are featured in the exhibit and have become a part of the University Archives in the form of oral history recordings. They and other alumni loaned the Libraries artifacts, documents and photographs that help tell the story of the GI Bill - a story that is still unfolding today.

The NCSU Libraries arranged special events in conjunction with the exhibit. For more information, please see Events. If you require more information, please contact Anna Dahlstein, (919) 515-7188.