Review
------
"Land-Grant Universities for the Future is a wonderful mixture of wise commentary from its two authors and quotes from
in-depth interviews with leaders from many of these schools. It reveals the challenges and rtunities facing our
preeminent public universities."
(Rebecca M. Blank, Chancellor, University of Wisconsin-Madison)
"At a time when public confidence in higher education is on the decline, Gavazzi and Gee offer a critical road for
land-grant universities going forward. One is reminded of the power of public higher education when land-grant and
public universities work to build meaningful partnerships with their communities. Faculty, administrators, and
policymakers should take this message to heart and regain the critical support needed for public higher education in
America."
(Randy Woodson, North Carolina State University)
"Gavazzi and Gee have written an eloquent history of land-grant universities and their promising future. Institutions
with degrees in higher education administration should make this required reading for all students. This book will
inspire future leaders to embrace teaching, service learning, civic engagement, and research, all born of a proud
history."
(Barbara Gellman-Danley, Higher Learning Commission)
"Gavazzi and Gee provide important new ins about the need for land grant universities to develop a renewed
community-focused orientation for the twenty-first century. Internal and external stakeholders interested in the unique
role of land grant universities in higher education will find this an engaging read."
(Joseph E. Steinmetz, University of Arkansas)
"With Gavazzi's deep knowledge of university engagement and Gee's vast presidential experience, these authors deliver a
tour-de-force that chronicles the present state and future direction of land-grant universities. It is a call to arms to
rebuild relationships with a skeptical public to preserve the land-grant idea for future generations."
(Nathan M.Sorber, Center for the Future of Land-Grant Education, author of Land-Grant Colleges and Popular Revolt: The
Origins of the Morrill Act and the Reform of Higher Education)
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Book Description
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Land-grant colleges and universities have a storied past. This book looks at their future.
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From the Author
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(from the introduction)
We are passionate, nay zealous about public higher education. And we are radical adherents to the idea that land-grant
universities, based as they are on the ideals put forward by Senator Justin Morrill, President Abraham Lincoln, and the
other social and political giants of their time, continue to set the bar for performance excellence in the realm of
public higher education. We are, you might say, fiercely land-grant in our orientation. Yet we are also rather
matter-of-fact in our assessment that not all is well in land-grant land these days.
How exactly did your authors arrive at this place and time to both extol the virtues of land-grant institutions while
simultaneously examining their warts? By explanation, we begin this book with our personal land-grant stories, the
transformative events from our lives that,in combination, brought us together to write this homage and critique of the
land-grant university. After these personal vignettes, we provide our readers with a brief description of the Strengths,
Weaknesses, rtunities, and Threats (SWOT) analysis that we conducted through interviews with 27 of the presidents
and chancellors of the 1862 land-grant universities located in the 48 continental United States. To a person, these
presidents and chancellors were brimming with enthusiasm about the strengths and rtunities of present-day land-grant
universities, just as surely as they were deeply concerned about some of the weaknesses and threats facing these
institutions of higher learning.
Next, we include some critical commentary about the political climate within which these interviews were conducted. We
had contact with approximately half of the presidents and chancellors in the months preceding the 2016 U.S. presidential
election, with the remainder interviewed after Donald Trump was declared the electoral victor over Hillary Clinton. The
impact of the campaigns that these candidates had chosen to run were significant and unmistakable for many of the
presidents and chancellors we interviewed. We believe there are many important lessons to be extracted from the
electoral process and its aftermath that can serve as teachable moments for land-grants and other public universities,
and we provide some preparatory remarks about those critical elements in this first chapter.Most importantly, we believe
that this evolving political context provides us with important information regarding the very definitions of those
communities with whom colleges and universities should be engaging (spoiler alert: there is no one all-encompassing
community that institutions of higher learning can approach with a single,unified message).
We also provide our readers with some introduction to a marital metaphor we will employ to describe the most desirable
type of relationship that should be developed and maintained between campuses and the communities they are designed to
serve. Marriages are thought to be most satisfying and stable - termed harmonious relationships -when partners are
actively making efforts to meet each other's needs in ways that create a sense of overall comfort. On the other hand,
marital partners find themselves in more difficult circumstances when one or both spouses are displaying less effort in
maintaining the relationship and/or when those efforts are counter-productively creating greater degrees of
discomfort.Sounding a similar note, we assert that universities will regain the high ground only when it is certain that
the public at large is experiencing a more harmonious relationship with its land-grant institutions. Here we mean to say
the efforts undertaken by each university must generate a sense of reassurance that the immediate interests of different
communities are being served in tandem with those activities being recognized as vital to the future well-being of those
communities.
This primary orientation toward meeting the needs of communities rests on the decisive determination that land-grant
institutions must position themselves as standing for distinctly different values than all other universities, both
public and private. In higher education, there has been along-standing drive to make institutions more genized. We
believe exactly the site should be the case, in large part because we know that the strength of the American higher
educational system historically has rested on its diversity. For that reason, we are aggressive in insisting that the
march toward becoming more fiercely land-grant in orientation coincides with the adoption of a servant leadership
mentality on campus - in essence, trumpeting the cause of the servant university, or the people's university if you will
-as we explain in more detail in our first chapter.
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From the Inside Flap
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Land-grant colleges and universities occupy a special place in the landscape of American higher education.
Publicly funded agricultural and technical educational institutions were first founded in the mid-nineteenth century
with the Morrill Act, which established land grants to support these schools. They include such prominent names as
Cornell, Maryland, Michigan State, MIT, Ohio State, Penn State, Rutgers, Texas A&M, West Virginia University, Wisconsin,
and the University of California--in other words, four dozen of the largest and best public universities in America. Add
to this a number of historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) and tribal colleges--in all, almost 300
institutions. Their mission is a democratic and pragmatic one: to bring science, technology, agriculture, and the arts
to theAmerican people.
In this book, Stephen M. Gavazzi and E. Gordon Gee discuss present challenges to and future rtunities for these
institutions. Drawing on interviews with 27 college presidents and chancellors, Gavazzi and Gee explore the strengths
and weaknesses of land-grant universities while examining the changing threats they face. Arguing that the land-grant
university of the twenty-first century is responsible to a wide range of constituencies, the authors also pay specific
attention to the ways these universities meet the needs of the communities they serve. Ultimately, the book suggests
that leaders and supporters should become more fiercely land-grant in their orientation;that is, they should work to
more vigorously uphold their community-focused missions through teaching, research, and service-oriented activities.
Combining extensive research with Gee's own decades of leadership experience, Land-Grant Universities for the Future
argues that these schools are the engine of higher education in America--and perhaps democracy's best hope. This book
should be of great interest to faculty members and students, as well as those parents, legislators, policymakers, and
other area stakeholders who have a vested interest in the well-being of America's original public universities.
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From the Back Cover
-------------------
Stephen M. Gavazzi is a professor of human development and family science at The Ohio State University. He
is the author of Families with Adolescents: Bridging the Gaps between Theory, Research, and Practice.
E. Gordon Gee is the president of West Virginia University.He is the coauthor of Law, Policy, and Higher Education and
Leading Colleges and Universities: Lessons from Higher Education Leaders.
"A thoughtful, engaging, and important book that will be of interest to anyone who cares about land-grant institutions
and their future. I highly recommend it."--Robert J. Sternberg, Cornell University,editor of The Modern Land-Grant
University
"Land-Grant Universities for the Future is a wonderful mixture of wise commentary from its two authors and quotes from
in-depth interviews with leaders from many of these schools. It reveals the challenges and rtunities facing our
preeminent public universities."--Rebecca M.Blank, University of Wisconsin-Madison
"Gavazzi and Gee have written an eloquent history of land-grant universities and their promising future. Institutions
with degrees in higher education administration should make this required reading for all students. This book will
inspire future leaders to embrace teaching, service learning, civic engagement, and research, all born of a proud
history."--Barbara Gellman-Danley, Higher Learning Commission
"Gavazzi and Gee provide important new ins about the need for land grant universities to develop a renewed
community-focused orientation for the twenty-first century. Internal and external stakeholders interested in the unique
role of land grant universities in higher education will find this an engaging read."--Joseph E. Steinmetz, University
of Arkansas
"With Gavazzi's deep knowledge of university engagement and Gee's vast presidential experience, these authors deliver a
tour-de-force that chronicles the present state and future direction of land-grant universities. It is a call to arms to
rebuild relationships with a skeptical public to preserve the land-grant idea for future generations."--Nathan M.Sorber,
Center for the Future of Land-Grant Education, author of Land-Grant Colleges and Popular Revolt: The Origins of the
Morrill Act and the Reform of Higher Education
"At a time when public confidence in higher education is on the decline, Gavazzi and Gee offer a critical road for
land-grant universities going forward. One is reminded of the power of public higher education when land-grant and
public universities work to build meaningful partnerships with their communities. Faculty, administrators, and
policymakers should take this message to heart and regain the critical support needed for public higher education in
America."--Randy Woodson, North Carolina StateUniversity
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About the Author
----------------
Stephen M. Gavazzi is a professor of human development and family science at The Ohio State University. He is the author
of Families with Adolescents: Bridging the Gaps between Theory, Research, and Practice. E. Gordon Gee is the president
of West Virginia University. He is the coauthor of Law, Policy, and Higher Education and coeditor of Leading Colleges
and Universities: Lessons from Higher Education Leaders.
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