What does a modern land-grant university look like?

Former president of The Ohio State University and president emeritus of West Virginia University E. Gordon Gee returned to campus last week for a lively discussion with Stephen Gavazzi, director of Ohio State’s Center for Human Resource Research, and David Rosowsky, senior advisor to the president of Arizona State University, about the role of the land-grant university at America’s 250th birthday.

“The land-grant universities remain among the most successful institutions ever created in America’s history,” Gavazzi said in his introduction. “They educate millions of students, conduct world-class research, contribute to economic growth and strengthen communities across the country. It’s a pretty good track record.”

The question at hand, he said, was not whether land-grant universities are relevant today but “whether they are organized in ways that make sense for the country they now serve.”

With that notion as a throughline, the three men – frequent research collaborators on the subject – spoke for an hour before taking audience questions.

All three agreed that public education and access to it are foundational to the idea of America. Gee told a story about Sen. Justin Morrill speaking with Abraham Lincoln during the height of the Civil War about the establishment of public colleges.

“In comes this young [man] from Vermont and he says, ‘Mr. Lincoln … it really is not about race alone. It’s about access to the American dream. It’s about what makes a difference between our citizens and an educated citizenry. It’s about democracy in its fullest.’”

Gavazzi and Rosowsky discussed changing views Americans have about higher education institutions. Gavazzi shared figures from a recent poll that asked Americans about their overall trust in higher education. While 80% of Americans trust universities to provide a good education, only 50% trust universities to prepare citizens to function in a democracy.

And most challenging, he said, was the less than 30% of Americans who trust universities to keep political bias out of the classroom.

Rosowsky believes that the trust problem isn’t a marketing issue and that telling a different story about higher education won’t change how people view it.

“Remember why we’re here. We’re the land-grant institution. You go to [your community] and you take the time to understand their pressure points and their needs and their expectations of their great state land-grant university,” he said. “And then you go back and say, ‘What do we have in our quiver that we can bring to bear to make their life better, solve their most pressing problems?’”

Extension programs were held up as an example of how this type of community engagement is already working.

“I think that Extension, of course, really is the concept of translating knowledge into reality, into purpose, into the daily life,” Gee said. “I think that we really have a responsibility to use Extension as the portfolio for how we deliver educational services across many different platforms. I think that’s exactly what Extension should be doing. We don’t want to lose the sense of our community bases.”

Another example the panel pointed to was the School of Music’s Opus 88 program, which brings musical experiences to all 88 of Ohio’s counties.

“I thought it was absolutely fascinating,” Gee said.

“There’s a lesson there,” he went on. “What humanists need to do, is we need to show that we’re important by doing important things and but not hiding under a bushel, so to speak.”

The issues communities face today are complex and do not fit neatly within academic boundaries, Gavazzi said. Connections must be made between disciplines. Land-grant universities have always been a type of civic infrastructure. That will be the key to their continued success.

“Just as transportation systems connect people and places,” he said, “universities can connect communities to expertise, research to application, evidence to decision-making and opportunity to public need.”