Standard | Guide Home | Java-enabled | Index of Markers

First Ag Degrees

Penn State was the first U.S. university to award baccalaureate (1861) and graduate (1863) degrees in agriculture. This pioneering effort to formalize higher education in agriculture helped the agricultural sciences to become an accepted and vital part of higher education and America to become the world's premier agricultural nation.

In 1892, under the direction of Professor Henry Waters, Penn State became the first American institution of higher education to offer correspondence courses in agriculture. The goal was to make scientific studies available to those persons unable to attend traditional college classes. Penn State's initiative was followed by a national expansion of correspondence instruction in technical fields.

The Penn State Creamery in 1892 offered America's first collegiate instruction in ice cream manufacture, a program that has helped to make the University an international center for research in frozen confections. The original Creamery, built in 1889, also housed the nation's earliest extension course in dairy science. The current facility dates from 1932.

Used for improved livestock breeding, was made feasible for dairy cattle by the work of prof. John Almquist, who, beginning in 1944 in Borland Lab, perfected the use of antibiotics to preserve semen and develop commercial methods of using it. His internationally acclaimed research increased food production and breeding efficiency worldwide.

Penn State became the international center for art education with the arrival of Austrian-born Viktor Lowenfeld in 1946. The most influential art educator of the 20th century, he wrote the field's dominant book, "Creative and Mental Growth" - based on pioneering work in psychology and the art of the visually impaired - and taught here until his death in 1960.

Designed and first operated in 1902 by pioneer animal nutritionist Henry Armsby, the calorimeter was housed in this specially constructed building and monitored an animal's metabolism to determine the net energy value of food- the portion of food energy that an animal uses to produce milk or meat. It attracted worldwide scientific interests and helped to develop feeds of higher nutritive value.

Became the center of agricultural research and instruction at Penn State in the 1880s with the founding of the experiment station, followed over the next 25 years by three nearby buildings and the Armsby Calorimeter, with its internationally recognized studies in animal nutrition.

Pennsylvania's first pure food laws were largely founded on the work of Penn State chemist William Frear (1860-1922), whose pioneer analyses of foods enabled the state to enforce truth-in-labeling laws.

Was housed here beginning in 1889, following passage of the Hatch Act, which made ongoing federal funds available for the first time to support agriculture research at universities. Scientific studies here and at other land-grant colleges helped to make the American agriculture system the world's most productive. Once at the hub of "Ag Hill," the building is now used for other purposes.

Mountain lions still roamed this area in the mid-19th century, but the idea of the Nittany Lion mascot was originated by a student, H.D. "Joe" Mason, in 1904. By the 1930s, the Lion mascot was a popular feature at sporting events. The class of 1940 commissioned artist Heinz Warneke to sculpt the lion in limestone and located it here in what once was the center of the University's athletic grounds.

Penn State's American Indian Leadership Program, established in 1970, is the oldest and most successful of its kind. It was among the first graduate fellowship programs anywhere to offer Native Americans formal opportunities to strengthen their administrative and leadership skills in order to return to their respective tribal communities as role models.

In 1931, psychology professor Robert Bernreuter established the psycho-education clinic in the former school of education and began refining his "Bernreuter Personality Inventory," the pioneer multiphasic test of traits that became the standard by which other personality tests were measured. The test is still in use worldwide for counseling and personnel selection.

Established in 1915 as one of the nation's first continuing education programs for business and industry. These programs, an outgrowth of engineering extension, boosted Pennsylvania's economy by tailoring instruction of thousands of clients statewide in such fields as IME Management, Employee Motivation, and Leadership. They served as models for similar continuing education efforts nationwide.

In 1935, under J. Orvis Keller, Penn State centralized correspondence and evening courses, technical institutes, and most other continuing education offerings, creating a model adopted by other universities. Successors E.L. Keller and Floyd Fischer helped form off-campus centers into the Commonwealth Campus System in 1959. Fischer later won national acclaim for broadening continuing education to include such fields as health care, technical and public television.

Renowned meteorologist Hans Panofsky conducted fundamental work at Penn State (1952-82) that led to a new understanding of atmospheric turbulence, air pollution, ozone depletion, and planetary atmospheres. He was among the first to apply computer analysis to weather prediction. His collaboration with young scientists worldwide left a valuable legacy in atmospheric research.

In 1969-70, leading faculty from the Colleges of Earth and Mineral Sciences, Engineering, Liberal Arts, and Science founded the nation's first interdisciplinary program in science, technology, and society. Its integrative courses, addressing critical issues in these areas, served as a model for similar programs at many other universities.

Professor of Industrial Engineering Amos Neyhart taught America's first classes for driver education teachers near this site in 1936, three years after he began the nation's first driver education course at State College High School. He became an internationally known traffic safety expert, and his methods helped millions of Americans learn to drive safely.

The first fully electronic digital computer built by Penn State and among the first to be constructed on any college campus. Assembled 1953-55 by the Department of Electrical Engineering from parts donated by private industry, it proved to be an invaluable research tool for many disciplines and presaged widespread academic applications of computers.

The nation's first academic department and baccalaureate curriculum in industrial engineering were established at Penn State in 1909, housed in Engineering Unit A. Founding department head Hugo Deimer was a nationally recognized advocate of managerial training for engineers and a colleague of Frederick Taylor, father of scientific management.

Penn State offers America's oldest continuously accredited curriculum in this field. A baccalaureate program was founded in 1910 to provide "Liberal training in both the aesthetic and construction sides of architecture." It was first accredited in 1936 by the newly formed Engineers' Council for Professional Development as part of a national effort to implement professional competency standards.

Standardized measures of resistance to heat transfer, were first proposed in 1945 by Everett Shuman, who continued to promote their adoption as director of Penn State's building research institute. R Values were later widely applied to industrial and residential insulating materials and helped consumers make more energy-efficient choices.

Developed by faculty in the colleges of medicine and engineering in 1976 to prolong the lives of cardiovascular patients. It pioneered applications of fluid mechanics and was the first surgically implantable, seam-free, pulsatile blood pump to receive widespread clinical use. It led to the Penn State Heart, first successfully implanted in 1985.

In a lab of the old Engineering Building near this site, professors Paul Schweitzer and K.J. Dejuhasz in 1923 began one of the first systematic research programs in diesel engineering to be undertaken on any college campus. Their discoveries over the next 30 years in such fields as supercharging and scavenging pointed the way for today's more efficient and powerful engines.

On this site, at the petroleum refining lab, chemists conducted the University's first major industry-sponsored research beginning in 1929. They improved the refining process of crude oil and pioneered in identifying its components. The lab was razed in 1958, but Penn State still ranks among America's top universities in industry-sponsored research.

Lining the mall are part of an early campus landscaping plan that called for trees and other plantings to be used as an arboretum for teaching and research purposes. While age and disease take their toll, Penn State still has one of the largest elm stands in the nation. Gifts from the class of 1986 purchased new trees for the mall and the class of 1996 endowed a fund for preserving all the elms.

Completed in 1904 with a gift from Penn State trustee and industrialist Andrew Carnegie, it was the University's first library building. It typifies more than 2,000 college and community libraries built with donations from Carnegie.

With the arrival in 1894 of Fred Lewis Pattee, for whom the Pattee Library is named, Penn State became one of the earliest centers for American literature studies- at the time a controversial departure from English literature. A pioneering scholar in American literary history, Pattee was the first in the nation to hold the title of Professor of American Literature.

Joseph Heller and his famous novel "Catch-22," germinated during his faculty tenure at Penn State in the early 1950s. Pulitzer prize-winning poet Theodore Roethke wrote his first book, "Open House," during his seven years of teaching at the University. After teaching here in the 1950s, novelist John Barth used the University Park campus setting for "Giles Goat Boy."

Built in 1887, the oldest campus building whose exterior has not been significantly altered. Designed in a "Richardsonian Romanesque" style, it had greenhouses attached, a formal garden in front, and was long a center for botanical studies.

Buried here, headed Penn State from 1882 to 1906 and brought it back from the brink of ruin. He drafted and championed the Hatch Act of 1887 and Morrill Act of 1890, establishing federal aid to higher education, and served as first president of the land-grant college association.

The first campus building to be financed by a private gift. Bethlehem Steel Corp. founder Charles M. Schwab, a member of the University's Board of Trustees, gave $150,000 to build the Beaux-Arts structure, which was completed in 1903.

Penn State's first president (1859-64) was a national advocate of adding science, agriculture, and engineering to traditional college studies. Penn State emerged as one of three agricultural colleges in the U.S. before the 1862 Morrill Land-Grant College Act- which promoted these new subjects and for which Pugh lobbied hard. Because of him, Penn State was named Pennsylvania's sole land-grant college in 1863.

Near this site from 1892 to 1964 stood the armory, which symbolized Penn State's Land-Grant Act commitment to offer military training as part of the nation's tradition of the citizen-soldier. Before World War I, participation in the Cadet Corps was mandatory for all male undergraduates. The armory, flanked in this 1894 view by young campus elms, also was used for physical education, varsity athletics, and social events. Its Richardsonian Romanesque architecture made it a campus landmark.

For decades freshmen bowed to this landmark as Penn State's oldest living tradition. Planted near this site by William Waring in 1859, it fell in 1923 and has been replaced several by descendants of the original. Legend claims the tree grew from a cutting brought by president Pugh from the home of English poet Alexaner Pope.

Built in 1930, using limestone blocks from the first Old Main, completed on this site in 1863. The original building housed classrooms, offices, labratories, and student and faculty living quarters. It also served, as does its successor, as Penn State's administrative center. Inside are the famous Land-Grant Frescoes by Henry Varnum Poor.

Built in 1930, using limestone blocks from the first Old Main, completed on this site in 1863. The original building housed classrooms, offices, labratories, and student and faculty living quarters. It also served, as does its successor, as Penn State's administrative center. Inside are the famous Land-Grant Frescoes by Henry Varnum Poor.

In 1937, in Pond Laboratory, pioneer steroid chemist Russell Marker discovered the first practical synthesis of the pregnancy hormone progesterone. His research laid the foundation for such medical applications as the birth control pill, cortisones, and various hormone and steroid therapies.

Home of 11 of Penn State's presidents, from 1864 to 1970. Designed and in part financed by the first president, Evan Pugh, the structure has undergone many alterations but still stands as the oldest building on the campus. The last president to reside here was Eric Walker.

Professor Haskell Brooks Curry (1900-82) was a pioneer of modern mathematical logic. His research in the foundations of mathematics led him to the development of combinatory logic. Later, this seminal work found significant application in computer science, especially in the design of programming languages.

Penn State physicist Ferdinand Brickwedde in 1931 produced the world's first measurable amount of deuterium, a hydrogen isotope found in "heavy water," used in nuclear and biological research. Earlier, Brickwedde had been co-discoverer, with Harold Urey and George Murphy of Columbia University, of deuterium. Urey was awarded the 1934 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the discovery.

In Osmond Laboratory, professor of physics Erwin Mueller in 1955 became the first person to "see" an atom, using an electron microscope of his own invention- a landmark advancement in science instrumentation that magnified these building blocks of the universe more than two million times.

Pine (1888), Spruce (1889), and Birch (1915) are reminders of an earlier era in Penn State's history, when a fledgeling institution offered on-campus residences as part of faculty compensation, and when students and teachers mingled in a family-like setting. Later used for sorority housing and academic and administrative purposes.

Representing a pioneering attempt to determine long-term effects of fertilizers on soil and crops. 144 plots between today's Eisenhower Auditorium and College Avenue, were established in 1882 by Professor Whitman H. Jordan. Soil remained under study as late as 1959.

Was the world's largest when built in cooperation with the Navy in 1949. Designed to test properties of torpedoes, submarine hulls, propellers, and other underwater shapes by driving water through a central test section, it also had peacetime applications in hydrodynamics and acoustics. Named for Lt Garfield Thomas, first Penn State alumnus killed in naval service in WWII.

Founded in 1945 under director Eric Walker, it succeeded Harvard University's underwater sound lab as the Navy's principal academic center for basic research in underwater weaponry. It was part of a postwar policy to bolster national defense through scientific research. The ARL's work also had important peacetime applications in acoustics, hydrodynamics, and electric circuitry.

Penn State in 1955 became the first university licensed by the Atomic Energy Comission to operate a nuclear reactor as part of U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower's "Atoms for Peace" program. Named for Wm. Breazeale, Penn State's first professor of nuclear engineering, the reactor became a training and research tool for peaceful applications of atomic energy.

In 1960, Penn State established the nation's first interdisciplinary curriculum in solid state technology and in 1962 created the interdisciplinary materials research laboratory- the first such unit in the U.S. to be organized without federal block support. The lab won international recognition in the fields of materials synthesis, electroceramics, diamond films, and chemically bonded ceramics.

On June 4, 1990, the Big Ten Conference admitted Penn State as its eleventh member. Established in 1895 as one of the nation's first intercollegiate organizations, the Conference instituted a blueprint for the control and administration of college athletics under the direction of appointed faculty representatives. The Big Ten became a model for the successful jointure of academic integrity and athletic excellence.

In the 1920s, Penn State became the first land-grant college to initiate a comprehensive mushroom research program. Led by internationally recognized scientists and supported by the mushroom industry, the program developed improved composts and production practices that were adopted by growers worldwide. It also helped Pennsylvania retain its leadership in U.S. mushroom production.