Colleagues refer to him as the “godfather of the land-grant,” or some variation of that.

Slapped with that moniker, you can tell right off the bat that C. Peter Magrath is deeply invested in the mission of the land-grant institution.

Magrath, former interim president of West Virginia University and current president of Binghamton University in New York, will speak on “The Land Grant Faith and Its Practice” at 7:30 p.m. Monday (Sept. 12) in the Marlyn E. Lugar Courtroom at the WVU College of Law.

The lecture kicks off WVU’s celebration of its land-grant status as part of the sesquicentennial anniversary of the 1862 Morrill Act that paved the way for WVU’s founding. It also is the first of this year’s David C. Hardesty Jr. Festival of Ideas lectures. Other Festival speakers will be announced later.

Land-grant events on campus will run until 2013. Magrath will get the celebration started by discussing the allure of the land-grant institution and how it needs to thrive in the 21st century.

Before the introduction of the land-grant institution, higher education was viewed as an elite enterprise exclusive only to wealthy white males.

The Morrill Act knocked down those barriers. It granted each state 30,000 acres of land for each member it had in Congress, with the land and gross proceeds used to fund educational institutions focused on agriculture, engineering and other subjects.

A college education became more affordable and accessible to a broader scope of folks, including the working class. Unlike existing higher education institutions, land-grant universities reached out to improve communities and made their research widely available. All the while, land-grant institutions tried to maintain the level of research quality expected at their private or Ivy League counterparts.

The state of West Virginia didn’t exist until 1863, a year after the Act’s passage. In 1866, state Sen. William Price, of Monongalia County, introduced a bill offering the properties of Monongalia Academy and Woodburn Seminary to start a new college, the Agricultural College of West Virginia, which became officially known as West Virginia University in 1868.

Magrath is viewed as a leading advocate for public universities embracing the concept of outreach and community engagement. He served as interim president of WVU during 2008-09 and has led other major public universities that include the University of Minnesota and the University of Missouri System.

He has presided over what is now the Association of Public and Land-Grant Universities, the nation’s oldest higher education association. The association created the C. Peter Magrath Community Engagement Award to recognize the outreach and engagement partnership efforts of four-year public universities.

Magrath graduated from the University of New Hampshire with a bachelor’s degree in political science and from Cornell University with a Ph.D. in political science. His scholarly interests include American constitutional law, constitutional history, the operations of the U.S. Supreme Court, higher education administration and leadership, public policy and financing and international affairs.

Magrath is currently on leave from his position as senior presidential adviser to The College Board, which he has served since 2006.

-WVU-

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