Joseph Taylor, Taylor Hall, and the IUPUI School of Liberal Arts

Along with Cavanaugh Hall, Joseph T. Taylor Hall is one of the oldest remaining buildings of the original IUPUI campus. Named for Dr. Joseph T. Taylor, the first Dean of Liberal Arts and first African American leader of an academic unit at IUPUI, Taylor Hall was built in 1971 as University Library and has housed a variety of university services since then, including the primary university dining facility until 2008. Today, Taylor Hall is currently home to University College, the Bepko Learning Center, and a variety of other student services and classrooms. 

From 1946-50, Taylor worked as assistant to the president at Florida A & M College, a teacher, and an administrator. His career flourished and he received a professorship of Sociology and becoming the Director of the Arts and Sciences at Albany State University in Georgia from 1950-51. After leaving this position he became the chairman for the division of Social Sciences Department as a professor of Sociology at Dillard University until 1957. Throughout his career and appointments to various committees, Taylor was studying to receive his PhD from Indiana University and did so in 1952. After earning his PhD, he became the acting dean and professor of Sociology at Dillard.

As an African American, Dr. Taylor was a pioneer at every stage of his academic career. He infused that can-do spirit and ability to break new ground into the very core of what has made IUPUI successful today. Taylor served as a Professor of Sociology from 1965–1983 and as the first Dean of the School of Liberal Arts at IUPUI from 1967–1978. The entire community was saddened by his death in September 2000. He is remembered for his commitment to dialogue and diversity. He infused that perseverance and ability to break new ground into the very core of what has made IUPUI successful today. One of the great events in Dr. Taylor’s academic life as a young scholar of sociology was his participation in the landmark Carnegie-Myrdal study that resulted in the 1944 publication of The American Dilemma: The Negro Problems and Modern Democracy. The Carnegie-Myrdal study employed the leading Black and white social science scholars of the day, including the poet, teacher, and scholar Sterling Brown; Diplomat and Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Ralph Bunch; and Butler Jones, later of Cleveland State's sociology department, but whose students included Martin Luther King, Jr., when he taught at Atlanta University.

The building housing IUPUI’s University College has been named for Joseph T. Taylor in honor of the man who served as dean of the Indianapolis Regional Campus from 1967 to 1970 (pre-IUPUI) and as the first dean of the newly established IU School of Liberal Arts at IUPUI (1970-1978).