Past Presidents

Edgar L. Storment

Edgar L. Storment graduated from Southern Illinois State Normal at Carbondale in 1886, completing the equivalent of four years of secondary education and two years of collegiate studies. After teaching in an Illinois elementary school he came to Arizona to invest in a farm colony on the Gila River that failed shortly thereafter. Storment then taught school in Agua Caliente in 1887.

In 1890 Storment was hired as an assistant to Territorial Normal School principal Dayton Alonzo Reed. As the first faculty member to share instructional duties with the principal he taught languages and liberal arts classes. Upon the retirement of Dayton Alonzo Reed, Storment became the fourth principal of the Normal School in 1892. Storment hired the first two women instructors, initiated a course in journalism, established student activity programs and started athletic activities and intramural sports. He was the founder of the school's alumni association and drafted the initial plans for Old Main, the second campus building.

Storment left the Normal School to enter the University of Illinois and also worked as an instructor in the science department of Streeter Township High School. He died in Prescott, Arizona in 1898.