In 1857 the San Francisco Board of Education established Minns' Evening Normal School for current and prospective teachers in the city. Named after its principal, George W. Minns, the institution was formally established as the first California State Normal School by the State Legislature in 1862. A decade later, the Legislature voted to move the Normal School to San José, and the school relocated to its new home on Washington Square prior to the fall term of 1872. After a fire destroyed the Normal School building in 1880, the Legislature authorized $200,000 to construct a new building on the same site. Completed in 1881, the building was commonly referred to as the Second State Normal School. After several names and curriculum changes, Minns' Normal School is now San José State University, offering more than 134 bachelor's and master's degrees with 110 concentrations, and is recognized as one of the top public universities granting such degrees in the West.

The history of the San José State University Theater Arts Department is well documented by former professors Hugh Gillis and Robert Jenkins. According to Gillis and Jenkins, while some of the first main stage plays on campus can be traced to the years 1898 and 1899, it was not until 1927 that the Speech Arts Department was formally founded by Dr. Thomas MacQuarrie, the sixteenth president of the college. Initially chaired by Virginia Sanderson, the small department rapidly evolved. In 1936, the Speech Arts Department, at that time headed by Elizabeth Jenks, was divided into two separate areas of speech and drama, which resulted in growing enrollment numbers, especially after an upper division course for Radio Speaking was added to the curriculum. After World War II, the Speech and Drama Department reached new heights with professionally arranged main stage plays, which were sold to the public as an entire season. In the late 1940s a curriculum for Radio and Television was added, and the 1950s saw the addition of a Master of Arts degree in Drama. The department is now known as the San José State University TV-Radio-Film-Theatre Department, offering students a skilled learning environment that consistently arranges well-received productions, as well as providing news and entertainment via its own campus radio station (KSJS-FM).