Engineering in a Land-Grant Context: The Past, Present, and Future of an Idea

Engineering in a Land-Grant Context, a volume of well-crafted essays, considers the federal government's first foray into higher education by examining engineering education at the nation's land-grant universities over the past 140 years. The authors demonstrate how that history has framed the present and suggest how it is likely to influence the foreseeable future. The expert contributors, all of whom have studied and written prominently on the history of engineering education, concentrate on revealing the critical trends and major events of this 140 year history. Treating their essays as symptomatic and symbolic of the larger issues, they create a volume accessible to engineers, historians and the interested lay readers. Three central themes and important topics are outlined and explored. Each is locked in time. The first, integration of engineers and engineering education within the newly created and not yet defined land-grant colleges, was particularly important in the initial half-century of land-grant university development; while the second, the forces external to the college and the state that help direct the course of engineering education, is especially appropriate in the half century after World War I. The third, the conscious reformulation of the land-grant ideal, stands as testimony to the introspection and assessment of the last several decades.