Pennsylvania’s 1862 Land-Grant Institution: Penn State University
https://psu.edu @Penn_State
Founded in 1855 as The Farmer’s High School of Pennsylvania. In 1862, the school’s name was changed to the Agricultural College of Pennsylvania, and with the passage of the Morrill Land-Grant Act, Pennsylvania selected the school in 1863 to be the state’s sole land-grant college. The school’s name changed to the Pennsylvania State College in 1874. In 1953, President Milton S. Eisenhower, brother of then-U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower, won permission to elevate the school to university status as The Pennsylvania State University. In 1967, the Penn State Milton S. Hershey Medical Center, a college of medicine and hospital, was established in Hershey with a $50 million gift from the Hershey Trust Company.
President: Eric Barron became president of the Pennsylvania State University in 2014 following his presidency at Florida State University. Dr. Barron’s land-grant credentials include his having been both a faculty member and the Dean of the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences at Penn State from 1986 to 2006.
