+ Name changes Date Name change February 12, 1855 Agricultural College of the State of Michigan March 15, 1861 State Agricultural College June 2, 1909 Michigan Agricultural College May 13, 1925Kuhn, Madison. (1955). Michigan State: The First Hundred Years, 1855–1955. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press. p. 305. . Michigan State College of Agriculture and Applied Science July 1, 1955 Michigan State University of Agriculture and Applied Science January 1, 1964 Michigan State University
The history of Michigan State University dates back to 1855, when the Michigan Legislature established the Agricultural College of the State of Michigan under the encouragement of the Michigan State Agricultural Society and the Michigan Farmer, the state's leading agricultural periodical. As the first agricultural college in the United States, the school served as a model for other institutions of its kind established in the period, to give an instance, the Agricultural College of Pennsylvania.
Together with the Agricultural College of Pennsylvania (now Pennsylvania State University), the College became one of the first two land-grant institutions under the Morrill Act enacted during Abraham Lincoln's presidency. This earned the school the title of "The Nation’s Pioneer Land Grant College". The first class graduated in 1861 right after the onset of the American Civil War. That same year, the Michigan Legislature approved a plan to allow the College to adopt a four-year curriculum and grant master's degrees. In 1870, the College became co-educational and expanded its curriculum beyond agriculture into a broad array of coursework commencing with home economics for women students. The school admitted its first African American student in 1899. In 1885, the College had begun offering degrees in engineering and other applied sciences to students.
After World War II, its president John A. Hannah began the largest expansion in the university's history, aided by the G.I. Bill, and the university has grown to become one of the largest universities by enrollment in the United States with over 50,000 students as of 2014 since then. In its centennial year of 1955, the state officially made the college a university, and the current name, Michigan State University, was adopted in 1964.
Agricultural Roots
The rise of scientific agriculture in Europe in the first half of the nineteenth century and the desire for formal agricultural education at the college level by forward looking agriculturalists in Michigan gave impetus to a movement that led to the establishment of the Agricultural College of the State of Michigan in 1855. The Michigan Farmer, a leading agricultural periodical, and the Michigan State Agricultural Society led public discussions relative to the virtues and benefits of an agricultural college for the state’s farmers and economy.
The Michigan State Agricultural Society, founded in 1849 to promote the organized advancement of farming statewide, almost immediately determined the State should establish and support an agricultural college. To that end, the Society tasked its trustee, Bela Hubbard, a natural scientist and farm owner in Detroit, to draft a memorial for presentation to the Michigan State Legislature requesting the establishment of such a college, which he did in 1850. In the document, Hubbard, a Hamilton College graduate, noted the Society’s belief that a liberal education promoting a thorough knowledge of the “fundamental laws of science” was essential to intelligent farming. He therefore rejected the notion of creating a mere trade school for farmers, with his memorial noting: “Nor should the claims of literature and fine arts be wholly neglected as they tend to polish the mind and manners, refine the taste, and add greater luster to life.” Michigan History, January/February 1988, p. 37 Thus, Hubbard tasked the future college to offer what he termed an “enlightened liberal education.” Kuhn 1955, p. 5
Following the Society's request, the state constitutional convention of 1850 adopted Article 13, Section 11 which states in part: “The Legislature shall encourage the promotion of intellectual, scientific and agricultural improvement, and as soon as practicable, provide for the establishment of an Agricultural School.” Michigan Constitution, 1850 The constitution, however, specified that this school could be either an autonomous institution or be a branch of the University of Michigan. This provision set off a bitter controversy between supporters of the existing university and proponents of a new, independent institution.
John Clough Holmes, secretary of the agricultural society, worked tirelessly to convince the legislature to establish an agricultural college. Holmes was born in Massachusetts and moved to Michigan in 1835. He served as president of the Detroit Horticultural Society in 1847, and then in 1849, he co-founded the Michigan State Agricultural Society. Henry Philip Tappan, president of the university, forcefully made the case for creating a department of agriculture in the university. Holmes and advocates for the separate institution feared that agricultural studies would not receive the attention needed to survive and thrive in the university, which put great emphasis on the study of medicine and law and a literary curriculum rooted in classical languages. In addition, Tappan made no provision for the “model farm”—deemed essential by farmers.
In early 1855, Holmes convinced the legislature to pass an act establishing “a State Agricultural School” to be located on a site selected by the Michigan State Agricultural Society within ten miles of Lansing. On February 12, 1855, Michigan Governor Kinsley S. Bingham signed a bill establishing the nation's first agriculture college, the Agricultural College of the State of Michigan. The State Board of Education was designated as the institution’s governing body. The board also oversaw the Michigan State Normal School in Ypsilanti, which had opened in 1852.
Classes began in May 1857 with three buildings, five faculty members, 63 male students, and a college president. The College's first president Joseph R. Williams, a Harvard graduate, was a passionate promoter for interdisciplinary education. Under Williams, following input from the faculty, the College established a curriculum offering two-thirds science and one-third liberal arts coursework.Kuhn 1955, pp. 16, 27, 29.Kuhn 1955, p. 26
It is noteworthy that the agricultural college’s enabling legislation mandated a curriculum that went far beyond practical agriculture: “The course of instruction in said college shall include the following branches of education, viz: an English and scientific course, natural philosophy, chemistry, botany, animal and vegetable anatomy and physiology, geology, mineralogy, meteorology, entomology, veterinary art, mensuration, leveling and political economy, with bookkeeping and the mechanic arts which are directly connected with agriculture, …” From its inception, the Agricultural College of the State of Michigan offered courses of study that would characterize the land-grant philosophy of higher education after the passage of the Morrill Act in 1862. Michigan’s agricultural college educated people to be well-informed citizens, as well as good farmers.Kuhn 1955, pp. 26, 31.Kuhn 1955, pp. 26–7 The school offered a three-part curriculum that balanced liberal arts, science and practical vocational studies. Williams also excluded Latin and Greek studies from the early curriculum. The College did require three hours of daily manual labor, which helped students defray expenses and develop the campus infrastructure while students learned scientific principles through their efforts.Darling 1950, p. 121.
However, after just two years, Williams ran into conflict with the managing State Board of Education. Despite Williams' eloquent defense of an all-round education for the masses, the board saw the College as inefficient and had far deviated from the agriculture focus as the founder, John Clough Holmes, had anticipated. Indeed, some agriculturalists began protesting against the College's unpractical curriculum with some even calling for the College's abolition.Darling 1950, pp. 123–25. In 1859, Williams resigned. The Board then reduced the curriculum to a two-year, vocation-oriented farming program,Darling 1950, p. 129. a move that resulted almost overnight in a drastic reduction in enrollment.Kuhn 1955, p. 32. The school was soon in dire financial straits and threatened with dissolution. After resigning from the College, Williams was elected to Michigan's legislature, and thereafter, elevated to president pro tem of the Michigan Senate. He helped pass the Reorganization Act of 1861. Following Bela Hubbard’s foundational memorial conceptualizing an "enlightened liberal education," the Reorganization Act mandated the College offer courses in English language and literature, mathematics, moral philosophy, history, civil engineering, technology, and household economy.Kuhn 1955, p. 63 The new law also mandated that the College have a four-year curriculum and the power to grant master's degrees. Under the act, a newly created body known as the State Board of Agriculture took over from the State Board of Education in running the institution. At that time, the legislature adopted the name of State Agricultural College.
The school's first class graduated in 1861.
Financial Struggles and the Morrill Land-Grant Colleges Act
In 1862, President Abraham Lincoln signed the Morrill Land-Grant Colleges Act to support similar colleges nationally, the first instance of federal funding for education. The federal funding had rescued the Agricultural College from extinction.
In 1862 the newly created State Board of Agriculture appointed English Literature professor Theophilus Capen ("T.C.") Abbot president, much to the professor's surprise. Abbot remained president for twenty-two years and helped stabilize the College during and after the Civil War. During his presidency, the University of Michigan brought a proposal before the legislature to merge with the Agricultural College. Andrew Dickson White, who was president of newly opened Cornell University, argued, "The State of Michigan... indeed gave its Agricultural College an excellent faculty and they have achieved much success considering their means but infinitely better would it have been to combine that Agricultural College with their noble University." Nevertheless, the Legislature voted down the proposal in 1863, but it returned to the floor in 1865, 1867, and again in 1869.Kuhn 1955, pp. 76–78.
Abbot worked hard to perpetuate Williams' vision of a "whole man" educational approach. He took the College back to its original mixed liberal/practical curriculum taught by learned scholars. By the 1880s these included botany professor William J. Beal, an early experimental botanist, pre-geneticist, who invented a hardier strain of hybrid corn through cross-fertilization. Beal corresponded with Charles Darwin and championed the laboratory, or "inductive", teaching method. He conducted his classes in the first botanical laboratory building on an American campus. Another distinguished faculty member was the alumnus-turned-professor, Liberty Hyde Bailey. Often called the "Father of American Horticulture",Hugo 1997, p. 68. Bailey was the first person to raise the study of horticulture to a science equal to botany. Other noteworthy 19th Century faculty included Walter B. Barrows, a nationally-respected ornithologist whose treatise Michigan Bird Life is widely considered the most comprehensive study of the subject, while Rolla C. Carpenter (B.S. 1873) was a building construction specialist as well as a pioneering HVAC engineer.