Virginia Slabaugh Huffman graduated from Manchester College in 1938. In the 1938 yearbook, Virginia was pictured in the "Sophomore Normal" photograph. The Normal program granted an elementary school teaching license after 6 terms, or two years, of specialized College training. This was the last year the program was offered to new students due to changes in the Indiana State Board of Education. Excerpts from the "Aurora" follow:
"The Last of the Mohicans" has enrolled for two-year elementary license; within a year the Normal students at M.C. will be a vanished race (not to imply that only the very brilliant shall remain)....
The general trend of education has found its way into the Indiana Sate Board of Education and has taken effect in the new ruling that all to-be elementary teachers must hereafter have a four-year license....
The "Aurora" mentions that "Sixty-five two-year students enrolled at M.C. this fall (1938) as ninety were elevated to the sophomore ranks.......by concentrated effort, they are able to do a term of practice teaching at the end of their second year and then climax their achievements by receiving diplomas."
The last of the "Two Year Normal" students graduated in 1939. The 1939 "Aurora" states (pg. 51):
"The year 1939 marks the passing of one of the oldest institutions on the Manchester campus -- the two-year normal course. The two-year graduates.......are the last students ever to be granted a certificate licensing them to teach in elementary schools with just two years of college training."
"It is almost with a feeling of regret that we watch the blue gowns and tassels march for the last time. The normal students, because of their unique position, have nearly become a school within themselves, with their own course of study, professors, and projects."
Virginia Slaybaugh's class was the next to last class graduating from the Two year Normal program. | 
