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V-12 and Naval Reserve Officers' Training Corps, University of Louisville

In February 1943, the University of Louisville won a United States Navy officer training unit. After the end of World War II, the wartime V-12 Navy Training Unit at the University of Louisville was converted into a Naval Reserve Officers Training Corps Unit (NROTC). The first students entered the program in the fall of 1946, making U of L one of the fifty-two universities in the United States to develop future officers of the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps as a part of Public Law 729. The Naval Science Building (renamed Russell E. Dougherty Hall in 1981) was dedicated in June 1947. The first officers through the program were commissioned in June 1950. From 1950 through 1979, over five hundred officers were commissioned through the NROTC at U of L.