Coeducational College
The College first admitted women in 1870 but the school's relative isolation and lack of women's living quarters tamped coeducational enrollment for decades. The few women who enrolled either boarded with faculty families or were locals who made the daily three-mile trek from Lansing by stagecoach over unpaved Michigan Avenue. The women were educated in the same scientific agriculture courses as men, excepting "practical agriculture." In 1896, the College became one of only fourteen other colleges and universities in America to adopt and meld a home economics curriculum within the liberal arts and sciences program, increasing female enrollment. That same year, the school relocated male students from the old Abbot Hall dormitory to allow for greater a number of women to enroll in the course.
In 1885, in order to fill out its mandate as a Morrill Act college, the College established a Mechanics program which became the College's first full-fledged, degree-granting engineering program.
In 1899, the State Agricultural College finally admitted its first African American student, William O. Thompson. After graduation, Thompson taught at what is now Tuskegee University, founded and headed by Booker T. Washington. Washington later delivered one of his most memorable addresses to the class of 1900 at commencement: in the 1900 commencement address, Booker T. Washington said "Without industrial development there can be no wealth; without wealth there can be no leisure; without leisure, no opportunity for thoughtful reflection and the cultivation of the higher arts." MSU President Jonathan L. Snyder had invited Washington to be the College's Class of 1900 commencement speaker. A few years later, Myrtle Craig became the first African-American woman to enroll at the College. Graduating with the Class of 1907, she received her degree from U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt, commencement speaker for the Semi-Centennial celebration of the College’s opening.
The City of East Lansing incorporated in 1907 as well. Two years later, the college officially changed its name to Michigan Agricultural College (M.A.C.), since by this time there were many other agricultural colleges across the country. Even though the College had been around for over fifty years and was a widely recognized leader of the Land Grant Colleges, some within the state legislature opposed expansion. Despite the Morrill Act’s original mandate that Land Grant Colleges teach engineering (then called "mechanic arts"), some in Michigan believed its agricultural college should not have engineering program because these duplicated the University of Michigan's offerings. Nonetheless, M.A.C. had developed civil, and electrical engineering programs to compliment the original mechanical program of 1885. These separate disciplines were unified in a new Department of Engineering in 1908.
When a 1916 fire destroyed M.A.C.’s nine-year-old engineering hall, there was a movement to have the entire program absorbed by the University of Michigan. Lansing automobile magnate Ransom E. Olds, however, solidified the program on the East Lansing campus with a gift of $100,000 in 1917 for a new engineering building to be erected directly upon the foundations of the burned hall. The donation, the College's first significant private gift for a building, resulted in Olds Hall. The original building is still standing but now houses MSU’s University Relations division as well as classroom space.
In 1914, the United States Congress passed the Smith–Lever Act, which provided federal funding for a system of state cooperative extension service. Like T.C. Abbot's initial "Farmers' Institutes", these extension services spread college-based knowledge about agriculture and related issues to citizens around the state. Such extension services served as the third prong of the Land Grant college mission of education, research and public service. With this new mandate, the College looked to expand its curriculum beyond agriculture and engineering. By 1925, the institution had expanded enough that it petitioned the state of Michigan to remove the word "agriculture" from its name, but the University of Michigan opposed the name change. As a compromise, the state government decided to call it Michigan State College of Agriculture and Applied Science (M.S.C.). However, the College's athletic teams were still known as the "Aggies". Thus M.S.C. held a contest to find a new nickname. They decided to call the teams the "Michigan Staters". Local sports writers for the Lansing State Journal and the Capital News went through the losing entries to find a shorter and more heroic name. They decided on the "Spartans". By coincidence, Justin Morrill had once compared the Land Grant colleges to the schools of ancient Sparta. With a heroic name and a historic precedent, the "Spartans" quickly caught on as the teams' new nickname. Within a few years, the College changed the lyrics of the Fight Song to reflect the name change of the College and its sports teams.
Read more about this topic: History Of Michigan State University
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