In 1961, newly-elected Governor Terry Sanford created a Commission on Education Beyond the High School, which was headed by Winston-Salem lawyer Irving Carlyle. This commission became known as the Carlyle Commission. The Commission’s report, published in 1962, predicted a near doubling of college enrollment in North Carolina by 1975 and called for a major overhaul of the state’s higher education system. This report led the 1963 state legislature to create a community college system and elevate existing state-supported two-year colleges in Charlotte, Asheville, and Wilmington to four-year institution. These campuses joined the existing Consolidated University schools (Chapel Hill, N.C. State, and Woman’s College, now UNCG) to form the UNC System.
Directly impacting Woman’s College was the provision that all of the schools in the UNC system were to be made coeducational. On July 1, 1963, the name of the Woman’s College was officially changed to The University of North Carolina at Greensboro. The first male undergraduates were admitted to UNCG in Fall 1964.