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The University Since admitting its first students in 1859, Penn State has awarded some 642,000 degrees whose value is recognized worldwide. That value reflects an educational experience second to none in quality and richness. In addition, Penn State alumni — there are more than 285,000 in Pennsylvania alone — have job- and social-networking opportunities that no other college or university in the Commonwealth can surpass. The University’s beginnings were humble. Chartered as a college of scientific agriculture, the institution was located in rural Centre County after James Irvin, a partner in the Centre Furnace iron works (remains of which can be seen today along East College Avenue), agreed to donate 200 acres of farmland for a campus. Founding President Evan Pugh wanted Penn State to embody a new approach to higher education that blended traditional studies with subjects that had practical value. He joined similar visionaries in other states in convincing Congress to pass the Morrill Land-Grant Act in 1862. The act gave individual states tracts of federal land to sell; the proceeds would support colleges that agreed to include engineering, science, and the liberal arts as well as agriculture in their course of studies. In 1863, the Pennsylvania legislature designated Penn State the Commonwealth’s sole land-grant institution, thus bestowing on the privately incorporated college a wide range of public functions and obligations that continue to this day.
Initial efforts to diversify the curriculum met with mixed success, but by the 1890s Penn State was making its mark. It ranked among the nation’s 10 largest undergraduate engineering schools, a distinction it still holds. President George Atherton invigorated the liberal arts, and recruited Professor of English Fred Pattee to teach the nation’s first course in American literature, heretofore considered an unworthy stepchild of English literature. Professor of Agriculture Whitman Jordan’s pioneering research on using fertilizers for soil enrichment had global impact on crop yields. Penn State in 1871 became one of the first land-grant schools in the Northeast to admit women, graduated its first international student in 1890, and its first African-American student in 1905. In the early 1900s, Penn State launched an extensive system of outreach education, “carrying the college to the people,” as then-President Edwin Sparks liked to say. It established the nation’s first collegiate-level correspondence courses in agriculture, and in 1912 helped create a statewide system of county agents in agriculture and home economics. Today’s Penn State World Campus, with its “anywhere, anytime” learning through the Internet, is descended from that strong outreach tradition. But undergraduate education remained foremost. As enrollment surpassed 5,000 students in 1936, Penn State became Pennsylvania’s largest source of baccalaureate degrees. Also in the 1930s, a statewide system of undergraduate centers was created for
170 PENN STATE 2010-2011 WOMEN’S VOLLEYBALL
students who, in the depths of the Great Depression, could not afford to leave their hometowns to get a college education. The centers offered the first year of baccalaureate studies and were the predecessors of today’s system of 19 primarily undergraduate campuses located throughout the Commonwealth. Following the Second World War, Penn State underwent unprecedented expansion, first to meet the needs of returning military veterans and later to accommodate the Baby Boom generation. Total enrollment at all Penn State campuses climbed to 40,000 by 1970. The University also emerged on the national scene as a research powerhouse. Research — a landgrant obligation — first garnered international attention in fields as diverse as dairy science, acoustics, psychology, and petroleum refining. As worldrenowned faculty encouraged greater student participation in research and creative activities, Penn State was able to provide an enriched undergraduate experience unavailable at the state-owned universities. Annual research expenditures now exceed $765 million and help to make Penn State the largest single non-governmental contributor to Pennsylvania’s economy. The University generates about $8.5 billion in total economic impact each year. Today, as measured by the more than 100,000 applications for admissions it receives annually, Penn State is America’s most popular university. Enrollment is spread across the University Park campus, the research and administrative hub; 19 undergraduate campuses; Penn State Milton S. Hershey Medical Center, including the College of Medicine; the Pennsylvania College of Technology; the Penn State Dickinson School of Law, Carlisle campus; the Penn State Great Valley School of Graduate Professional Studies; and the Penn State World Campus.
13-TIME BIG TEN CHAMPIONS ‘92, ‘93, ‘96, ‘97, ‘98, ‘99, ‘03, ‘04, ‘05, ‘06, ‘07, ‘08, ‘09