In the 1960s, the school underwent two name changes. First, in 1961, the Iowa State Teachers College
became the State College of Iowa, and then, in 1967, The University of Northern Iowa. The institution saw an unprecedented enrollment increase due to the state’s new four-year degree requirement for teaching going into effect. The enrollment nearly tripled during the 60s from three thousand six hundred and sixteen in 1960 to nine thousand four hundred and fourty four in 1969. Tuition also increased from $110 per semester to $186 by the end of the decade.

Despite the overall student population growing, the number of Black students at the university totaled three in 1964 and there were no Black faculty members; by the end of the decade they numbered around thirty. The Civil Rights Movement ushered in an uncomfortable awareness of the Black student’s plight at predominantly white institutions. “Negroes at SCI are considered as showpiece novelties,” wrote the College Eye. “Everyone is their friend but nobody actually gets to know them.” President Maucker was a supporter of civil rights and believed that the university needed to focus on improving relationships between white and Black individuals on the campus, in the Waterloo-Cedar Falls community, and in the schools of Iowa, and other institutions of higher education. “Our basic attitudes are much more racist in nature and our basic institutions are much more deliberately designed to keep black people in a subordinate position than we have commonly assumed,” he told the faculty. Students showed their support for the Civil Rights Movement by participating in demonstrations and marches. On Monday, May 11, 1964, classes were canceled as “1,000 persons are expected to participate in the march to mail letters to the U.S. Senators Bourke Hickenlooper and Jack Miller giving support to the Civil Rights Bill as it stands.” In late fall of1968, several months after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, students at UNI formed the Afro-American Society, composed of twenty-five Black students and led by speech major Dwight Bachman. Their first motion of business included submitting six proposals to the University Committee on Minority Group Education. One of these proposals was a Culture House for Black students on campus with a study room, lounge, and possibly a theater for social functions.

UNI students also expressed their disdain for the Vietnam War. The first large-scale demonstration occurred on November 5, 1968, when two hundred students and a few faculty gathered in Seerley Park to object to the national government’s invasive policies in the country. They protested the war again on November 15, 1969 with some four hundred students participating in the coordinated Moratorium to End the War in Vietnam demonstration and teach-in across the country.

The building boom that occurred on campus during this era, owing to the increased enrollment, was
unparalleled. The Student Health Center and Russell Hall (1960),housing the school of music, were the first to go up, followed by Rod Library, which wase air-conditioned and held 275,000 volumes. Over the years the college had focused on developing facilities for women, as they far outnumbered men students, but increasing enrollment made construction of a new men’s dormitory necessary. In December 1961, male students moved into Rider Hall. Other new residences (for both men and women) included the South Courts (1963), Shull Hall (1964), Hagemann Hall (1965), Noehren Hall (1966), Bender Hall (1967), and Dancer Hall (1967). A new administration building, to be called Gilchrist, was completed in April 1965; its progress was hampered by labor strikes. In 1967, Maucker Union, an improved and updated version of the Commons, was completed. Students enjoyed a meditation room, game room, multi-purpose room, information center, snack bar, and the Royal Oak Dining Room. Central Hall, the first building on UNI’s campus, tragically burned down in 1965 due to faulty wiring.