From land-grant roots to local service

This week, we met with Ruby Collins, an entomologist based at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln Extension office in Red Willow County for our monthly “Coffee Talk.” She is a remarkable professional, and we are fortunate to have an expert of her caliber working locally and accessible to the community.

In preparation for that conversation, I set out to write a brief explanation of what an Extension office is and what it does. That turned out to be easier said than done. The history behind Extension proved too interesting to ignore, drawing in the founding fathers, the secession of the South and the run-up to World War I, with an obligatory side trip into the Pleistocene Ice Age and Nebraska’s megafauna along the way. Quite frankly, the project got away from me. Consider this a sidebar to the conversation with Ruby and, for most readers, a matter of review. Nebraskans already know much of this story—but it is worth revisiting now and then.

It is difficult to discuss Extension without first touching on land-grant universities, and that story reaches back to our national origins. Thomas Jefferson believed the republic depended on independent, educated landholders—what he called the yeoman farmer. His founding of the University of Virginia reflected an idea that would later define land-grant institutions: education should serve practical life, public service and republican citizenship, not simply classical refinement. Those ideals gained urgency in the mid-19th century as westward expansion, industrialization and soil exhaustion collided with a growing demand for broader access to education.

Land-grant universities were ultimately created by the Morrill Act of 1862, which provided federal land—or the proceeds from its sale—to states to fund colleges focused on agriculture, science and the mechanical arts. Earlier proposals had been blocked in Congress, largely by Southern Democrats wary of federal involvement in education and the rise of Northern industry. That resistance collapsed after Abraham Lincoln’s election and the secession of Southern states, allowing the Morrill Act to pass. The law granted states 30,000 acres per member of Congress, leading to the creation of institutions such as Cornell, Michigan State, and Rutgers and to the permanent expansion of public higher education.

If the name Justin Smith Morrill rings a bell, it should. Morrill Hall, one of the University of Nebraska’s oldest buildings, was named for the Vermont congressman whose legislation made the university possible. The name is especially familiar to Nebraska schoolchildren. Morrill Hall is home to “Archie,” a Columbian mammoth discovered in 1921 on farmland just north of Curtis.

Congress eventually concluded that knowledge generated by land-grant universities should not remain confined to campus. The Hatch Act of 1887 (not the later one that regulates political activities of federal employees) established agricultural experiment stations, producing practical, location-specific research. Still, that knowledge reached farmers unevenly at a time when agriculture was becoming more technical and mistakes could be financially devastating. The solution came with the Smith-Lever Act of 1914, which created the Cooperative Extension System, placing educators in counties, tying their work to university research, and ensuring stable, locally relevant public education.

At its core, the mission of Extension remains what it was in 1914: delivering research-based education where people live and work. The audience may change, but the method does not—practical information, grounded in science, delivered by educators embedded in our communities.