NC State is a land-grant university. The Morill Acts, first signed in 1862 by Abraham Lincoln, granted the use of federal land to states to establish universities dedicated to agricultural, military and technical education of the public.
As such, our school has a long history of involvement in the foundational practices of civilization through agriculture and technology. Our mandate to serve our citizens served as the basis for what has turned into an exceptional hub of engineering education and agriculture. We serve as the center of a cooperative extension service which has offices in all 100 counties of our great state in order to better serve our citizens in an industry that has been important to our state since it was only a colony.
In league with North Carolina A&T, the other land-grant school in the state, which was created as the nonwhite counterpart to NC State in the 1890s and is now registered as an HBCU, NC State provides education, information, training and assistance to farmers about good practices, new research advancements, variety selection and nutrition, as well as sharing new methods for conservation and sustainability in the field of agriculture.
Before we were the Wolfpack, we were “Aggies,” “Techs” and the “Farmers and Mechanics.” Even today, some would disparage our great school as “that farming school down the road.”
Regardless of your interest in the agricultural past and present of the school, it is undeniable that our school is inextricably tied up with the history and the present state of farming in this state. The agriculture and agribusiness industry — from food to fiber to forestry — accounts for nearly one of every six jobs in the state, and a comparable portion of North Carolina’s gross production, accounting for $84 billion of our $482 billion in finished good in 2014. This is only increasing, yet most students spend four or more years here and learn little to nothing about the foundation of our university.
While our curricula have grown and diversified from the original two options of “agriculture and mechanic arts” and we Think and Do so much more than what we did in our humble beginnings, it is unfortunate and inappropriate that parts of the Pack make it from start to finish with little to no exposure to the reason why we even exist as an institution.
As an integral part of our history, the university should adopt a GEP requiring students to take one class about the history of the school, the structure of our extension programs and the basics of agriculture. This requirement would help bring the university closer to its roots while still remaining the diverse and far-reaching educational institution that it has become. The College of Agriculture and Life Sciences (CALS) could either create a new course covering this subject or retool one of its current courses to be freshman-friendly and easy to digest.
Expanding the number of hours for GEPs would be a big deal, but the university could just as easily reassign a math and sciences GEP to a course like this in CALS or shift a free elective to fill this space. The details are less important, we have faculty and administration to figure that out.
The bottom line is that we as students are being underserved and are missing a huge part of our school’s past and present if we do not ourselves choose to take part in the agricultural side of NC State.
With the far-reaching subject that agriculture represents in this state as both a subject of history and one of science, students could be fascinated, excited and impressed by the strong industry of farming in our state, a practice and demographic that is highly overlooked. With as different and far apart as many of us students and our colleges are on campus, we can all be connected through learning about the history and the science that binds us all together at the greatest institution in the state of North Carolina.
