Service as Mandate: How American Land-Grant Universities Shaped the Modern World, 1920–2015
edited by Alan I Marcus contributions by Stephanie Statz, Hamilton Cravens, Melissa Walker, Robert C. McMath, R. Douglas Hurt, Alan I Marcus, Amy Sue Bix, Gwen Kay, Valerie Grim, Anne B. Effland, David L. Harmon, Donald Alexander Downs and Erinn McComb
University of Alabama Press, 2015 Cloth: 978-0-8173-1888-8 | eISBN: 978-0-8173-8897-3 Library of Congress Classification LB2329.5.S44 2016 Dewey Decimal Classification 378.0530973
ABOUT THIS BOOK | AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY | REVIEWS | TOC
ABOUT THIS BOOK
Established by the Morrill Land-Grant College Act of 1862, America’s land-grant universities have had far-reaching influences on the United States and the world. Service as Mandate, Alan I Marcus’s second edited collection of insightful essays about land-grant universities, explores how these universities have adapted to meet the challenges of the past sixty-five years and how, having done so, they have helped to create the modern world.
From their founding, land-grant schools have provided educational opportunities to millions, producing many of the nation’s scientific, technical, and agricultural leaders and spawning countless technological and agricultural innovations. Nevertheless, their history has not always been smooth or without controversy or setbacks. These vital centers of learning and research have in fact been redefined and reconceptualized many times and today bear only a cursory resemblance to their original incarnations.
The thirteen essays in this collection explore such themes as the emphasis on food science and home economics, the country life movement, the evolution of a public research system, the rise of aerospace engineering, the effects of the GI Bill, the teaching of military science, the sustainable agriculture movement, and the development of golf-turf science. Woven together, these expertly curated scenes, vignettes, and episodes powerfully illustrate these institutions’ ability to flex and adapt to serve the educational needs of an ever-changing American citizenry.
By dint of their mission to remedy social, economic, and technical problems; to improve standards of living; and to enhance the quality of life, land-grant universities are destined and intended to be agents of change—a role that finds them at times both celebrated and hotly contested, even vilified. A readable and fascinating exploration of land-grant universities, Service as Mandate offers a vital exploration of these dynamic institutions to educators, policy makers, students, and the wider communities that land-grant universities serve.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
Alan I Marcus is the editor of Science as Service: Establishing and Reformulating American Land-Grant Universities, 1865–1930 and the author or coauthor of several publications, including The Future Is Now: Science and Technology Policy in the United States Since 1950; Cancer from Beef: The DES Controversy, Federal Food Regulation, and Consumer Confidence in Modern America; and Technology in America: A Brief History.
REVIEWS
"The editor's introduction and conclusion provide provocative bookends for this fine collection. Recommended."
—CHOICE
“This collection of essays presents the major recent scholarship on an important aspect of education from 1920 to the present day, the changing role of America’s land-grant universities. Following a brilliant and perceptive introduction by Alan Marcus, every essay selected for this volume shows both the drama and the inevitable contention of opening educational opportunities to a significant segment of the American public. This collection examines how land-grant schools embrace the American urge for solving problems, how they elicit a sense of engagement and a passion for service. The essays grapple with philosophical questions and explore powerful themes as to whether education is a means for the public and political good or for individual betterment. This is a thoughtful, rewarding, and essential contribution to US history and to the history of education.”
—Orville Vernon Burton, author of The Age of Lincoln
— -
“This collection of essays by leading scholars in their respective fields demonstrates the centrality of land-grant institutions for the United States during the last hundred years. Although the essays included in this volume are a must for historians of twentieth-century US higher education, the range of issues documented and analyzed will also make the volume extremely valuable to historians in a variety of other fields: military history, gender studies, the history of disciplines, and agricultural history, to name only some. Marcus has done a fine job of editing this diverse collection.”
—Marc Rothenberg, editor of The Papers of Joseph Henry and The History of Science in the United States: An Encyclopedia
— -
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction / Alan I Marcus
Part One: Whose University?
1. Men in the Food Lab, Women in the Engine Shop: Gendered Stereotype Breaking in Land-Grant Technical Programs / Amy Sue Bix
2. What’s in a Name?: Students and Alumni and the Meaning of Home Economics / Gwen Kay
3. The 1890 Land-Grant Colleges: From the New Deal to the Black Farmers’ Class-Action Lawsuit, 1930s–2010s / Valerie Grim
Part Two: From National to Local
4. The Evolution of a Public Research System: The Economic Research Service and the Land-Grant Universities / Anne B. Effland
5. The New Students: The GI Bill and Housing at Iowa State / David L. Harmon
6. The Purposes of Higher Education: The Morrill Act and Military Science / Donald A. Downs
7. Taking Off: National Security, Identity, and Aerospace Engineering at Land-Grant Universities, 1957–1972 / Erinn McComb
Part Three: Modern Food, Modern Society
8. Fruit Cocktail, Rations, and By-Products: The University of California-Berkeley and Modern Food / Stephanie Statz
9. “Waist Deep in the Big Muddy”: Land-Grant Social Scientists and Modernity from the Country Life Movement to the Cold War / Hamilton Cravens
Part Four: The New Agriculture
10. “Havens for Golf-Turf Science”: New Agrarians and the Land-Grant Legacy / Melissa Walker
11. The Sustainable Agriculture Movement and Land-Grant Universities: A Contentious History / Robert C. McMath
12. Teaching Agricultural History at Land-Grant Institutions / R. Douglas Hurt
Service as Mandate: How American Land-Grant Universities Shaped the Modern World, 1920–2015
edited by Alan I Marcus contributions by Stephanie Statz, Hamilton Cravens, Melissa Walker, Robert C. McMath, R. Douglas Hurt, Alan I Marcus, Amy Sue Bix, Gwen Kay, Valerie Grim, Anne B. Effland, David L. Harmon, Donald Alexander Downs and Erinn McComb
University of Alabama Press, 2015 Cloth: 978-0-8173-1888-8 eISBN: 978-0-8173-8897-3
Established by the Morrill Land-Grant College Act of 1862, America’s land-grant universities have had far-reaching influences on the United States and the world. Service as Mandate, Alan I Marcus’s second edited collection of insightful essays about land-grant universities, explores how these universities have adapted to meet the challenges of the past sixty-five years and how, having done so, they have helped to create the modern world.
From their founding, land-grant schools have provided educational opportunities to millions, producing many of the nation’s scientific, technical, and agricultural leaders and spawning countless technological and agricultural innovations. Nevertheless, their history has not always been smooth or without controversy or setbacks. These vital centers of learning and research have in fact been redefined and reconceptualized many times and today bear only a cursory resemblance to their original incarnations.
The thirteen essays in this collection explore such themes as the emphasis on food science and home economics, the country life movement, the evolution of a public research system, the rise of aerospace engineering, the effects of the GI Bill, the teaching of military science, the sustainable agriculture movement, and the development of golf-turf science. Woven together, these expertly curated scenes, vignettes, and episodes powerfully illustrate these institutions’ ability to flex and adapt to serve the educational needs of an ever-changing American citizenry.
By dint of their mission to remedy social, economic, and technical problems; to improve standards of living; and to enhance the quality of life, land-grant universities are destined and intended to be agents of change—a role that finds them at times both celebrated and hotly contested, even vilified. A readable and fascinating exploration of land-grant universities, Service as Mandate offers a vital exploration of these dynamic institutions to educators, policy makers, students, and the wider communities that land-grant universities serve.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
Alan I Marcus is the editor of Science as Service: Establishing and Reformulating American Land-Grant Universities, 1865–1930 and the author or coauthor of several publications, including The Future Is Now: Science and Technology Policy in the United States Since 1950; Cancer from Beef: The DES Controversy, Federal Food Regulation, and Consumer Confidence in Modern America; and Technology in America: A Brief History.
REVIEWS
"The editor's introduction and conclusion provide provocative bookends for this fine collection. Recommended."
—CHOICE
“This collection of essays presents the major recent scholarship on an important aspect of education from 1920 to the present day, the changing role of America’s land-grant universities. Following a brilliant and perceptive introduction by Alan Marcus, every essay selected for this volume shows both the drama and the inevitable contention of opening educational opportunities to a significant segment of the American public. This collection examines how land-grant schools embrace the American urge for solving problems, how they elicit a sense of engagement and a passion for service. The essays grapple with philosophical questions and explore powerful themes as to whether education is a means for the public and political good or for individual betterment. This is a thoughtful, rewarding, and essential contribution to US history and to the history of education.”
—Orville Vernon Burton, author of The Age of Lincoln
— -
“This collection of essays by leading scholars in their respective fields demonstrates the centrality of land-grant institutions for the United States during the last hundred years. Although the essays included in this volume are a must for historians of twentieth-century US higher education, the range of issues documented and analyzed will also make the volume extremely valuable to historians in a variety of other fields: military history, gender studies, the history of disciplines, and agricultural history, to name only some. Marcus has done a fine job of editing this diverse collection.”
—Marc Rothenberg, editor of The Papers of Joseph Henry and The History of Science in the United States: An Encyclopedia
— -
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction / Alan I Marcus
Part One: Whose University?
1. Men in the Food Lab, Women in the Engine Shop: Gendered Stereotype Breaking in Land-Grant Technical Programs / Amy Sue Bix
2. What’s in a Name?: Students and Alumni and the Meaning of Home Economics / Gwen Kay
3. The 1890 Land-Grant Colleges: From the New Deal to the Black Farmers’ Class-Action Lawsuit, 1930s–2010s / Valerie Grim
Part Two: From National to Local
4. The Evolution of a Public Research System: The Economic Research Service and the Land-Grant Universities / Anne B. Effland
5. The New Students: The GI Bill and Housing at Iowa State / David L. Harmon
6. The Purposes of Higher Education: The Morrill Act and Military Science / Donald A. Downs
7. Taking Off: National Security, Identity, and Aerospace Engineering at Land-Grant Universities, 1957–1972 / Erinn McComb
Part Three: Modern Food, Modern Society
8. Fruit Cocktail, Rations, and By-Products: The University of California-Berkeley and Modern Food / Stephanie Statz
9. “Waist Deep in the Big Muddy”: Land-Grant Social Scientists and Modernity from the Country Life Movement to the Cold War / Hamilton Cravens
Part Four: The New Agriculture
10. “Havens for Golf-Turf Science”: New Agrarians and the Land-Grant Legacy / Melissa Walker
11. The Sustainable Agriculture Movement and Land-Grant Universities: A Contentious History / Robert C. McMath
12. Teaching Agricultural History at Land-Grant Institutions / R. Douglas Hurt
Conclusion / Alan I Marcus
Bibliography
Contributors
Index
ABOUT THIS BOOK | AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY | REVIEWS | TOC