This collection forms part of the records of the Vice President for Academic Affairs.

Studycades, a Continuing Education program which operated from 1953 to 1977, were non-credit study tours for students, teachers, and general community members living in Northwest Georgia who were interested in learning through travel.

Studycades were nicknamed “Campus on Wheels” during a 1955 trip to the United Nations. Adult Education Director J. Carson Pritchard and his assistant, Collus O. Johnson, designed and planned the trips. After Pritchard’s unexpected death in 1964, Johnson took over as director of the Studycades.

The first studycade was a short day trip to Bradley Telescope at Agnes Scott College in 1953. The attendees were from the Smithfield community in the northwest corner of Carroll County what had studied astronomy. This visit was a College in the Country event as part of the Continuing Education initiative.

The first extended studycade was to Tupelo, Mississippi in the fall of 1953. This was the first trip that left Georgia and lasted more than one day. President Irvine S. Ingram invited George McLean, editor of the Tupelo Mississippi Journal, to the college to give a speech about the Tupelo community development program. After his speech, McLean invited his listeners to visit Tupelo and see for themselves. The three-day trip to Tupelo included tour stops at the Tennessee Valley Authority and other rural areas around Tupelo. Among the attendees were rural leaders, college professors, librarians, farmers, ministers, and businessmen.

The first international studycade trip was to Mexico on August 4th-24th, 1956. The group studied Mexican history, education, social customs, religion, family life, music, art, and geography. The studycaders traveled to Mexico City by bus going through Texas and making several stops along the way in Mississippi, Texas, and Mexico. They hired an interpreter for the trip, Rey Carranza, a young Mexican from Taxco who had been educated in the United States. Twenty-nine studycaders went on the trip to Mexico, including several teachers who were able to use the trip to renew their teaching certification.

In 1958 a studycade trip crossed the ocean. Seventeen people attended the 17-day long trip to Europe, among whom were the manager of a dress shop, a dance teacher, a housewife and her two children, an insurance person, a farmer and country store operator, an industrialist, a teacher, an executive in the Extension Service, a florist, a teacher, President Irvine S. Ingram and his daughter Anne Ingram, and J. Carson Pritchard. They visited six countries including England, France, Scotland, Switzerland, Germany, and Belgium.

Studycades continued through the 1970s. The last studycade trip was to New York and the New England region in 1977.