Upon its founding, the school was primarily focused on rural and small town women seeking vocational training. Since many areas of the state lacked comprehensive high schools, the first two years of CIA's curriculum were preparatory; students enrolling with a high school degree were automatically admitted to the college as juniors. With its home extension program and summer school, the school was the first in Texas to offer instruction in home economics, supplying an overwhelming majority of the state's high school teachers in home economics in the early twentieth century.