Ohio State University professor Stephen M. Gavazzi and West Virginia University president E. Gordon Gee recently co-authored “Land-Grant Universities for the Future: Higher Education for the Public Good.” The book, published in November 2018 by Johns Hopkins University Press, is based largely on interviews they had conducted with 27 presidents and chancellors of land-grant universities, some of the largest and best universities in America.
Land-grant universities were established by the Morrill Act in 1862 and part of their mission is to make the knowledge of the university accessible to their communities. This critical work is championed by Cooperative Extension divisions, who offer an array of services designed to educate and inform citizens across their respective states.
These authors sat down with colleagues from their respective universities—Roger Rennekamp at Ohio State and Steve Bonanno at West Virginia—to discuss the evolving impact of cooperative extension services on the 21st-century mission of our nation’s public land-grant universities.
Cooperative Extension Services and the 21st Century Land-Grant Mission