Land Grant System, U.S.

The U.S. system of land grant state colleges and universities has been supportive of science and technology communication for nearly 150 years. Initially focused on agricultural and mechanical arts education for working-class citizens, the schools were so named because they were first funded by grants of federal lands to the states. Land grant schools have been noted as the first academic institutions to (a) communicate science to the general public, (b) translate scientific discoveries into applied practices and technologies, and (c) communicate technical expertise to professionals in the field, among other communication-related innovations. Land grants initiated academic programs in scientific and technical communication, inaugurated social-science-based research programs on the uses and effects of such communication, and continue to pioneer in mass and interpersonal media transmission of science and technical innovations for use by appropriate segments of the public.

The land grant emphasis on public communication received a major boost in the early 1900s with the formalization of cooperative extension programs, so named because their purpose was literally to extend the knowledge base of the universities beyond the campus into communities—most notably, at the time, including farms and ranches. Agriculture was at the heart of land grant universities from their inception in the 1860s and remains a major player in most extension programs today. Closely behind was education in the mechanical arts, ranging from engineering to landscape architecture and eventually home economics, which encompassed a wide range of household, childrear-ing, and community development skills. Natural resources education grew along with along with focuses on forestry, mining, and fishing.

So-called classical education, involving the arts and humanities, played a secondary role in the developing schools, that of broadening the intellectual and cultural scope of the students, most of whom came from modest upbringings and who were often the first in their families exposed to higher education (and in many cases to secondary school). At most institutions, basic science programs (such as physics) existed mainly to serve the applied sciences (such as mechanical engineering).