In the fall of 1927, the Kentucky College for Women officially merged with Centre College, becoming the Women’s Department of Centre College. However, during this time the women were kept on the old KCW campus located about a mile away on Lexington Avenue. By many, the women were not seen as full-fledged Centre students, but rather an “appendage” of the main college. This was due primarily in part due to the distance of the two institutions, which gave just enough separation for the students to feel less unified.

Centre College’s Women’s Department began with a class of 44 female students. 43 of the women were from Kentucky with only one out of state student, from North Carolina. Danville was the town with the highest representation, with 18 students listing Danville as their place of residency. In the first year, only Freshman and transfer Sophomores were accepted into the Women’s Department. Sophomores transferred from various other universities, specifically Kentucky State, Transylvania, Georgetown College, and Alabama State Agricultural School.

The first few years of the Women’s Department at Centre saw tremendous growth, with the women student enrollment more than doubling by the fall of 1929. It was not until 1943 that women outnumbered men; however, it was due to a high rate of men withdrawing from school to fight in World War II. Once the war ended, men returned from school and almost immediately outnumbered the women students. While during this time women enrollment experienced a large growth, the Great Depression had already impacted the future of the two campuses. Dr. Robert L. McLeod, President of Centre College from 1938-1942, felt that when he came to Centre it was “down in the dumps” due to the financial burden of maintaining two separate campuses. In these years, McLeod talks about the difficulty of having to hold church services twice every Sunday: one for the men’s campus and one for the women’s.  Not only did he have to pay for both services, he also had to physically attend them on both the Centre College campus and the Lexington Avenue campus. There was also the financial burden of paying for two Deans salaries and two libraries. All in all, it made logical sense from an economic standpoint to merge the two campuses into one, but McLeod opposed the idea and quickly left with the other men to join the war before any initiative could be taken.

Post World War II, the campuses remained separate, but began interacting with one another in more often, mostly in the academic sense. Prior to the 1950s, women and men only met for social activities, like tea parties and dances due to the physical separation of campuses. However, around the 1950s Centre started offering bus services to the students allowing them to take classes on both campuses.

There was some tendency for the Centre students to come over to the Women's College, particularly for the arts, because, again, the building for the Arts, the Weisiger building, where all the music and artwork was, was built on the women's campus."
- Mary Ashby Cheek

This gave women access to more scientific classes as well as the men access to other “feminine” classes, such as theater and home economics.  This situation was not ideal for a unified school, and with the arrival of President Spragens in 1957, things started looking up for a physical merger of the campuses.

President Spragens began his presidency on Centre’s Campus with the intention that the women would be brought to campus during his time there. In an interview in 1983 President Spragens said to keep separate campuses would have “made it much more difficult to achieve the level of academic competence that exists by virtue of a wholly unified campus”. This platform for improved educational experiences for both men and women students was the main selling point for unifying the two disparate campuses, not to mention easing the economic burdens of maintaining two campuses.

In 1962 the Women’s Department officially closed. The women moved to the New Quad dorms on Main Street, expanding Centre’s campus. At this point, women were Centre College students just as much as the men were.