Module 1: The Engaged Scholar: MSU's Land-Grant Mission - Page 2

Community Engagement at MSU

Michigan State University has a long tradition of community engagement, of using the research and knowledge developed at MSU to create practical solutions that make a difference for individuals and communities across Michigan. As a land-grant institution, MSU has a mandate to develop, apply, and share knowledge to serve the public good.

Land-grant colleges and universities are institutions designated by their state legislatures or Congress to receive the benefits of the Morrill Acts of 1862, 1890, and 1994. The first Morrill Act reflected an attempt by the government to address a growing demand for agricultural and technical education in the United States. Until its passage, American higher education had been dominated by a traditional classical curriculum (typically Greek, Latin, mathematics, and moral philosophy)¹, which was only slowly changing to meet the needs of agricultural and industrial workers. The Morrill Act was intended to provide a much broader segment of the American population with a practical education of direct relevance to their daily lives, enabling members of the working classes to obtain a liberal, practical education. In doing so, the land-grant colleges and universities advanced understanding in the growing scientific and professional fields of study and access to the benefits of this new knowledge by students and the greater society.²

Founded in 1855, the institution now known as Michigan State University was a forerunner and the model for the kind of institution envisioned and promoted by the Morrill Act of 1862. While the land-grant identity has informed MSU's rich history of serving the public good, it is also important to acknowledge that the land allocated through the Morrill Act to enable the Land Grant system occupies the ancestral, traditional, and contemporary Lands of the Anishinaabeg – Three Fires Confederacy of Ojibwe, Odawa, and Potawatomi peoples. The University resides on Land ceded in the 1819 Treaty of Saginaw.³

Sources

1. Vesey, L. R. (1965). The emergence of the American university. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 21-56.Back to article
2. Adapted from Association of Public and Land-grant Universities. (n.d.). "What is a land-grant university?" Retrieved January 7, 2019, from http://www.aplu.org/about-us/history-of-aplu/what-is-a-land-grant-university/Back to article
3. See Michigan State University. (2018, October). "American Indian and Indigenous Studies Program land acknowledgement." Retrieved January 10, 2019, from http://aisp.msu.edu/about/land/Back to article