Jackie Wilkins, the Interim Director of Ohio State University Extension, asked colleagues across the state to create messages that communicate how they are being Land-Grant Fierce in their work. This was part of the follow-up to the 2019 Extension Conference, which adopted Land-Grant Fierce as its motto.

One video had been produced for the conference itself. That video can be seen by clicking here.

Here is a picture of the attendees taken at the end of the Land-Grant Fierce Conference.

As a follow-up, Extension professionals also are producing more localized messages about being Land-Grant Fierce. Here is one from Medina County, Ohio , and can be viewed by clicking here.

The introductory video for my new Land-Grant Course is now open for viewing!

Check it out here.

The cover design for our upcoming book “Fulfilling the 21st Century Land-Grant Mission: Essays in Honor of The Ohio State University’s Sesquicentennial Commemoration” has just been released from The Ohio State University Press.

Pre-orders will be taken soon!

A new review of the Land-Grant Universities for the Future book just came out in the Fall edition of Academe, a periodical published by the American Association of University Professors (AAUP). It can be read in its entirety here.

The reviewer made quite a few astute observations about the book, including the following statement:

“Overall, according to Gavazzi and Gee, the public is wary of the intellectual activities of land-grant institutions because they do not see a community gain. Research is a luxury to the public, which prefers good teaching, even over engagement. The public wants efficiency rather than waste, but this can lead presidents and chancellors to reduce essential services and staff or contract out various services to improve resources.”

From the Summer 2019 edition of the Harvard Education Review:

“As the title suggests, in Land-Grant Universities for the Future, authors Gavazzi and Gee explore the role of the modern land-grant university and the perception of land-grant university leaders around the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats of these institutions and also offer a vision for how these universities can better serve their communities based on the covenant established in 1862. Readers will appreciate the inclusion of several relevant constituents, such as faculty and students, and will gain a better understanding of the workings of complex land-grant universities that can provide practical insights about how to approach challenges in higher education.”

The entire review can be found here.

Reacting to huge funding cuts from state government, Alaska’s Board of Regents recently voted to declare financial exigency. In the wake of these actions, the president of the Alaska system (Jim Johnsen) has proffered three “structuring models” to governing board members that are meant to guide their decision-making as budget reductions are considered.

The first model would eliminate one or two of the Alaskan system’s three campuses, largely saving the remaining campuses from any cuts at all. The second model might best be called the “peanut butter option,” where cuts are spread evenly across the three campuses. The third model would be to completely redesign the higher education system in order to integrate programs across the campuses, create a common statewide curriculum, and reduce duplication of programs.

Each of these models have pros and cons, of course, as has been recounted in a recent Inside Higher Education article. Left unaddressed in coverage to date, however, is how decision-making processes can and should be influenced by the land-grant mission.

In our 2018 Land-Grant Universities for the Future book, West Virginia University president E. Gordon Gee and I presented readers with seven themes that were derived from interviews we conducted with 27 land-grant presidents and chancellors. We believed these themes captured the essence of the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats related to the land-grant mission of the 21^st century. In no necessary order of importance, the themes were discussed as follows:

1. Concerns about funding declines versus the need to create efficiencies
2. Research prowess versus teaching and service excellence
3. Knowledge for knowledge’s sake versus a more applied focus
4. The focus on rankings versus an emphasis on access and affordability
5. Meeting the needs of rural communities versus the needs of a more urbanized America
6. Global reach versus closer to home impact
7. The benefits of higher education versus the devaluation of a college diploma

How might some or all these themes be applied by Alaska’s governing board members and members of the Alaskan higher education community as they grapple with funding decisions? The first theme is clearly reflected in the models presented by Jim Johnsen and involves the need to balance possible cuts across the board against questions of productivity and competency. Application of the next five themes likely will demand a coherent understanding of how funding decisions would affect the relative balance of teaching, research, and community engagement (the tripartite mission of the land-grant university).

At this point in time, coverage of the situation in Alaska has provided scant information about many of these issues. Perhaps most important in terms of addressing land-grant mission specific aspects is the potential impact all of this has on Cooperative Extension Services. After all, the defining difference between a land-grant university and all other public (and private) institutions of higher learning is Cooperative Extension. How are the lawmakers and university decision-makers thinking about the main connection between the communities of Alaska and their land-grant institution?

Regrettably, the last theme discussed in the Land-Grant Universities for the Future book seems to be emblematic of the Alaskan higher education system and its present predicament. The governor and state lawmakers in Alaska clearly see greater returns on investment coming from their decisions to place funding outside of higher education. How did it come to this? Is it really just the case of the Alaskan governor no longer wanting his universities to be “all things to all people” as reported in a recent Chronicle of Higher Education article?

And did he simply wake up one day and decide this? Or instead did university leaders fail to respond to warning signs that their relationships with state lawmakers were less than ideal? And were they perhaps negligent in their duty to “talk the talk” and “walk the walk” of their land-grant mission? Perhaps more important than an exercise in finger-pointing in Alaska, however, is the need for higher education leaders in the other 49 states to take stock of their own relationships with lawmakers and their own articulation of how their universities are carrying out the land-grant mission of the 21^st century.

How Land-Grant Universities Can Enrich the Future of Communities

These institutions offer statewide resources that municipal leaders should take more advantage of.

“Your community’s future can be greatly enriched by taking advantage of the resources offered by your state’s land-grant institutions. Mr. Lincoln would be pleased to see how, more than 150 years later, his original vision for America’s growth and development continues to be led by its original public universities.”

Check out the article here.

Land-Grant Fierce has completed an alphabetical listing — by state — of all land-grant institutions in the United States. The A-Z guide provides quick access to university home pages, Twitter handles, history, and current presidents and chancellors.

Land-Grant Fierce has covered all land-grant institutions across the United States!

We began with Alabama’s three land-grant institutions (Auburn, Alabama A&M, and Tuskegee) in May of 2018.

We crossed the halfway point by covering Missouri’s two land-grant institutions (University of Missouri Columbia and Lincoln University) in August of 2018.

And now in June 2019 we finished up with Wyoming’s single land-grant institution (University of Wyoming).

In the near future, we will be archiving all of these land-grant institutions in alphabetical order. Stay tuned!

Wyoming’s 1862 Land-Grant Institution: University of Wyoming

http://www.uwyo.edu @UWyonews

Founded in 1886, four years before the territory was admitted as the 44th state. The University of Wyoming is unusual in that its location – Laramie – is written into the state’s constitution.

President: Laurie Nichols became president of the University of Wyoming in 2016. Dr. Nichols has an extensive land-grant background. She has a bachelor’s from the land-grant institution South Dakota State University, a master’s in education from the land-grant institution Colorado State University, and a doctoral degree in family and consumer sciences from the land-grant institution The Ohio State University. As well, she was a faculty member at the land-grant institution University of Idaho, the dean of the College of Education and Human Sciences and the provost at South Dakota State University.