page_title: Michigan State University
section_title: 19th century
hierarchical_section_title: Michigan State University / Alumni / 19th century
caption_attribution_description: English: A photograph of the Human Ecology Building located on the Michigan State University campus in East Lansing, Michigan. This photograph is one of a series taken for Wikipedia by the submitter on May 28th, 2006 between the hours of 3pm and 6pm.
context_page_description: Michigan State University is a public research university in East Lansing, Michigan. MSU was founded in 1855 and served as a model for land-grant universities later created under the Morrill Act of 1862. The university was founded as the Agricultural College of the State of Michigan, one of the country's first institutions of higher education to teach scientific agriculture. After the introduction of the Morrill Act, the college became coeducational and expanded its curriculum beyond agriculture. Today, MSU is one of the largest universities in the United States and has approximately 634,300 living alumni worldwide.
  U.S. News & World Report ranks its graduate programs the best in the U.S. in elementary teacher's education, secondary teacher's education, industrial and organizational psychology, rehabilitation counseling, African history, supply chain logistics and nuclear physics in 2019. MSU pioneered the studies of packaging, hospitality business, supply chain management, and communication sciences. Michigan State is a member of the Association of American Universities and is classified among "R1: Doctoral Universities – Very high research activity".
context_section_description: Important College leaders in the 19th century include John C. Holmes, who kept the Agriculture School from being a part of the University of Michigan and is widely credited with being the prime mover for the school's founding; Joseph R. Williams, the first president, and Theophilus C. Abbot, the third president who stabilized the College after the Civil War, were both key in establishing and maintaining the college's early balanced liberal/practical curriculum. Also of importance was botany professor William J. Beal, an early plant (hybrid corn) pre-geneticist who championed the laboratory teaching method. Another distinguished faculty member of the era was the alumnus/professor Liberty Hyde Bailey. Bailey was the first to raise the study of horticulture to a science, paralleling botany, which earned him the title of "Father of American Horticulture". William L. Carpenter, a jurist who was elected to the Third Judicial Circuit of Michigan in 1894, and member of the Michigan Supreme Court from 1902 until 1904. Other famous 19th-century graduates include Ray Stannard Baker, a famed "muckraker" journalist and Pulitzer Prize winning biographer; Minakata Kumagusu, a renowned environmental scientist; William Chandler Bagley, a pioneering education reformer; and Lyman J. Briggs, 1893 graduate and renowned engineer and physicist who was the chairman of the U.S. Uranium Committee before the Second World War.
caption: The Human Ecology Building
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