Spanning from the early years of the university to the later half of the twentieth century, the Campus Laboratory School records range from 1886 to its closure in 1983. The materials in this collection include information on administrative records, student publications, faculty and student material, including lists of class members, and other student creations.

Series 1: Administration

This series deals largely with administrative records that pertain to the Lab School’s budget, purpose and objectives, and reports on the restructure of the school in the 1970s, and its curriculum. The series also includes meeting minutes from faculty meeting minutess, informational booklets about the school itself, and status and annual reports regarding the school’s progress.

Series 2: Publications

This series contains publications written by the students of the Lab School. These publications include the newsletters Riverview Monthly, Booster, Currents, and Challenger. The publication's content was written by students and contains reports of current events, short stories, poems, school news, information about upcoming events, and drawings.

Series 3: Students and Faculty

This series covers the largest span of dates and contains information about the faculty and students. Material here includes lists of students and when they attended the Lab School, lists of faculty and when they taught, grade books, certification of students, and some curriculum material for physical education, art, and music programs. There are are also programs from Lab School events - music, art, and theatre.

Series 4: Oversize

This series is of one oversize box. The series contains drawings drawings of the Lab School buildings on stationary, a scrapbook and letters regarding the closing of the school, and about an exhibit from the school’s final year and day. The exhibit is displayed through a panoramic photo of a wall in which photos were hung depicting faculty and students doing activities throughout the last year of the Lab School in 1983.

In 1969, St. Cloud State celebrated the centennial of it's establishment by the state of Minnesota in 1869. Many activities were planned that surrounded this anniversary. These volumes document those activities as well as the residential community that encomposed the campus, which stood almost exclusively on the Mississippi River along 1st Avenue South between 6th and 9th Street South.

L. Ruth Cadwell, a faculty member at St. Cloud State between 1924 and 1966, was responsible for the gathering and organization of information and images of these volumes. She organized them into nine separate volumes. This collection contains two sets of these volumes, though volume 8 is not included here.  According to the foreword that appears in volume 1, there are differences between the two sets, which are marked appropriately on the spine of each volume. The foreword reads, "Because of the difficulty of collecting materials it was necessary to have some variation between set one and set two. Therefore, should you desire to view the complete materials collected, you are urged to study both copies of the St. Cloud State College Centennial set."

Series 1: History

Ms. Cadwell organized the history into nine separate volumes, some that have two or more parts.

Volume 1 - Early Use of the Present Site: In three parts, volume 1 documents the early uses of the 1969 campus. Photographs of houses that stood on campus are organized by street.

Volume 2 - The Centennial Begins: This volume contains historic images and documents regarding the history of St. Cloud State.

Volume 3 - Brochures, Invitations, and Programs: This volume contains a wide variety of material related to the events and other activities related centennial and for the 1968/69 academic year.

Volume 4 - Centennial Events: This volume contains images and other related material regarding events for the centennial, including the Centennial Hall groundbreaking and Heritage Day.

Volume 5 - News Releases:This volume contains news releases for events, fundraisers, and other activities related to St. Cloud State's centennial.

Volume 6 - News reports: In three parts, this volume contains newspaper clippings about the centennial. Part 1 contains 1960 to October 1968; Part 2 contains November 1968 to March 1969; and Part 3 contains April 1969 to June 1969.

Volume 7 - Communication to Obtain Materials for History: Copies of letters written by Ms. Cadwell requesting photographs of the campus site and the responses received.

Volume 8 - The Chronicle, July 1968 to June 1969: Both copies are part of these records and bound in black with the title "The Centennial: 1869-1969, A Heritage of Excellence," as well as indicated as volume 8.

Volume 9 - The Reporter, July 1968 to June 1969: The volume contains copies of the alum newsletter, The Reporter, as well as men's basketball programs.

Series 2: Negatives and Slides

This series contains negatives of various homes, buildings, and other views of the campus area. It is not clear if the negatives were taken from the photographs, or if the photographs were created from the negatives.

This collection contains the records of the Chi Sigma Chi. Included is two books of financial records, one meeting minutes book, photographs, and membership cards.

Series 1: Architectural Drawings

This series contains architectural drawings related to current buildings and buildings that used to be on St. Cloud State’s campus. The collection features many projects from the early 20th century as well as several from the 1960s when St. Cloud State’s campus expanded significantly. Since many of these buildings are gone or have changed, these drawings are especially informative with regard to what these buildings originally looked like at the time of construction. Nearly all of the drawings show the building either as they were intended to be constructed or were constructed. There are few drawings that show changes to the building AFTER they were constructed.

Construction documents, the detailed plans and specifications used to construct a building or structure, make up the bulk of materials in these campus building projects. Some projects may include earlier drawings from the Schematic and Design Development phases, where projects go from concept to refined design before final approval, or later As Built drawings that show a building’s appearance after construction, which might differ from what Construction Documents indicate. Architectural drawings have their own unique numbering system. Older projects in this series may follow a simple numerical sequence. More recent projects follow an alphanumeric system. Drawings with sheet numbers starting with A are architectural, S are structural, M are mechanical, E are electrical, and SK are sketch. The majority of the drawings are copies or prints made from originals that would have been drawn on vellum or similar material or copies printed from an original digital format.

Series 2: Architectural Renderings

This series contains architectural renderings related to buildings on St. Cloud State’s campus. They were primarily used by the architectural designers for presentation purposes to convey a sense of what a finished project might look like. Renderings in this series include painted and hand drawn perspectives and prints of 3D computer models. Not all of the designs in the series were built.

This collection contains records from the Alumni Affairs organization (sometimes known as Alumni Services or Alumni Relations) on the St. Cloud State University campus. The items date from 1962 to 1991, with the greater number of items dating from the 1970s and 1980s. Additions to this series may be ongoing.

The majority of materials in this collection are pieces of correspondence between the Alumni Affairs office with former students. These items make up the bulk of the collection and the biographical files are arranged in alphabetical order. These files include a myriad of items, including photographs, correspondence, newspaper articles, donation histories, funeral programs, and obituaries. Some of the biographical files are very large whilst others are quite sparse.

There are a few former prominent students that the Alumni Affairs office kept extensive information on in their offices. These students include Cyril Plattes, Ralph Heimdahl, US Congressman Nick Begich, and Dr. Richard Green.

Cyril Plattes was the Benefactor of the Friedrich Scholarship Fund. This scholarship was set up in the name of a science professor at St. Cloud State that would grant money to students studying environmental issues. For many years Plattes wished that his name be kept anonymous and not linked to the memorial fund. In 1973 the first scholarship in conservation from the George Friedrich Memorial fund was presented to five students.

Ralph Heimdahl graduated from the St. Cloud State Teacher’s College in 1930. He was an art teacher at the State School for the Deaf in Faribault, MN. Later he joined the animation department at Walt Disney Studios, and in 1948 he originated the Bugs Bunny comic strip for Warner Brothers. Heimdahl won the SCSU Distinguished Alumni Award in 1966. An endowed scholarship was established by his widow after his death in 1981 to provide financial assistance to students studying art.

Nick Begich graduated from St. Cloud with the class of 1952 and went on to become a US Congressman in Alaska. On October 16, 1972, he lost his life on a plane flight in Alaska along with U.S. Majority Leader Hale Boggs. The Nick Begich Memorial Commission was established by the St. Cloud State College Alumni Association in 1973 in tribute to the life and work of the former student. The purpose of the Commission was to establish a scholarship fund at St. Cloud State College which would enable political science majors to serve internships in Washington with members of Congress and for other political science scholarships. (2)

Another prominent alumnus included in the files is Dr. Richard Green. He graduated from St. Cloud State College with an MS in Special Education in 1968 and received his doctorate in Educational Administration from Harvard. He worked as Superintendent of Minneapolis Public Schools, beginning either in 1980 or 1981. Dr. Green was the recipient of the 1981 Distinguished Alumni Award. In 1988 he was hired to be the Chancellor of the New York City Schools.

The collection also includes miscellaneous materials on events, a slideshow narration, The St. Cloud State College Magazine, and the position descriptions for the head of Alumni Affairs.

The slideshow narration, Instructional Guide for Filmstrip on St. Cloud State College, was prepared for the Alumni Affairs Office by Doreen M. Keable. The script (sans actual slides or audio cassette) is dated March 13, 1970. According to the script, there is a series of forty color slides that are accompanied by a taped narration. The length of the presentation was approximately ten minutes. Some of the objectives of the slideshow include welcoming alumni and friends of the school to homecoming and other alumni functions.