CSU LIFE
FACULTY & STAFF
SEPTEMBER 2019
President McConnell joins the Ram Family Joyce McConnell has been busy becoming part of the Ram Family since she became CSU’s 15th president in July. She has stuffed backpacks for the annual School is Cool drive for Poudre School District, she has attended the grand opening of the Food Bank for Larimer County as well as the Fort Collins BrewFest at Canvas Stadium and many other community events, she has lunched with the University Distinguished Professors and Teaching Scholars, welcomed first-year students at the annual Convocation during Ram Welcome, and she has even served coffee at Sweet Sinsations in the Lory Student Center. During the first week of classes, she also held meet-andgreet events at the Iris and Michael Smith Alumni Center for faculty, Administrative Professional and State Classified personnel, pictured here. Photo by Ben Fogelberg, Alumni Association.
In the beginning: Colorado Agricultural College By Kate Jeracki It all started with Abraham Lincoln. Sort of. Yes, the nation’s 14th president signed the Morrill Act of 1862 that created the framework for the founding of one college in every state dedicated to the agricultural and mechanical arts, open to all who wanted an education and supported by the federal government in perpetuity. But deep in the throes of the Civil War, who thought that was a good idea? Not everyone, at first. It was actually a movement two decades in the making, based on the model that created Michigan State College in 1855. Justin Smith Morrill, U.S. congressman from Vermont, and a founder of the Republican Party, was enlisted to carry the bill forward at the federal level. It was originally vetoed by President James Buchanan, but then amended to include military education along with agriculture and engineering and became law. Populous Eastern states from Vermont to Ohio rapidly sold their 30,000 acres of land allotted per member of Congress to finance public higher education institutions. But Colorado wouldn’t be a state for another 14 years. So why are we celebrating the founding of Colorado State before there was a state of Colorado? Colorado Territorial Gov. Edwin McCook signed the act authorizing the State
Agricultural College in Fort Collins on Feb. 11, 1870. Think of Denver boosters fundraising to build Coors Field before the city was actually awarded a baseball team.
Land acknowledgment
While Fort Collins landowners were happy to donate the land the University occupies today, and erected the famous Claim Shanty to prove they were serious about their pursuit of higher education, finding those 30,000 acres to sell at a profit took a lot longer. For one thing, most of what is now Colorado wasn’t for sale; it was the ancestral home of various Native American peoples. See CAC on page 4.