The institution now known as Radford University was founded by the Virginia General Assembly in the spring of 1910. The State Normal and Industrial School for Women at Radford grew out of a late nineteenth-century effort to expand Virginia's public school system and prepare a sufficient number of teachers. The school was to be located on 33 acres in east Radford known as the "Heth Grove." On October 3, 1911, Dr. John Preston McConnell was appointed president of the institution