March IN May The original U of L Board of Governors
Dr. Dennis Connolly as a new faculty member in 1967
BY NATASHA NATASHAEVDOKIMOFF EVDOKIMOFF BY (BA ‘95, BMGT ‘97) Spring came late to southern Alberta in 1967. It was early May, and the county of Lethbridge was still in the grip of a series of intense storms that had dumped a total of almost six feet of snow over the region. Lethbridge was immobilized, but after several weeks of hard work the streets had been cleared, food and supplies had been brought in, and things were slowly returning to normal.
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Dennis Connolly, a master’s graduate fresh out of the University of Western Ontario, was passing through Lethbridge at the time. As fate would have it, while in town Connolly picked up a copy of the Lethbridge Herald and read about a university that would open in the city that very fall. Wouldn’t it be great, he thought, to spend a year or two working here? He liked the feel of the city and ventured over to the fledgling university to inquire about a job.
While Connolly spoke to the head of the math department that afternoon, behind the scenes a whirlwind of planning and preparation was underway. The Lethbridge Junior College had been offering first- and second-year university courses for a number of years, and faculty members, in co-operation with the City of Lethbridge, had leveraged the filledto-capacity classes to commission a full-fledged university. The newly appointed U of L Board of Governors dove headlong into
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what the University’s first president, Dr. Sam Smith (LLD ’90), called a period of “constructive chaos.” It was spring, and they had to be up and running by fall. Faculty needed to be hired, facilities needed to be secured, a curriculum had to be created – the to-do list was mind boggling, but excitement and optimism were high. Dr. Owen Holmes (DASc ’05) had been teaching in the university section at the Junior College since 1965, and was on the Board of Governors in the thick of the