History of Cook College: George H. Cook and the Land Grant College

By Dr. Barbara Munson Goff Assistant Dean, Academic Programs

Higher education was changed radically and universally in 1862, when Abraham Lincoln signed the Morrill (or Land-Grant College) Act. It is difficult to imagine Congress, embroiled as it was in the Civil War, thinking so far ahead to the country's future. The Morrill Act was driven by the idea that everyone (every young man, at least) could benefit from an education in the sciences. The act provided for:

           the endowment, support, and maintenance of at
           least one college [in each state] where the leading
           object shall be, without excluding other scientific
           and classical studies, and including military tactics,
           to teach such branches of learning as are related to
           agriculture and the mechanic arts. . . . (Sidar, 1976, 84).

These funds would be supplied through the sale of public lands, apportioned to each state according to its congressional representation.

Until the middle of the nineteenth century, colleges existed to prepare young men for the ministry: professors "professed the Faith," the dean was the "deacon" and, to this day, we all dress up like monks, complete with hoods, at graduation. In the sixteenth century, colleges of the "liberal arts" were founded. The liberal arts — essentially reading and writing in Latin and Greek as well as mathematics — were what was deemed appropriate education for "free" (not priests, thus "liberal") men of the ruling class. Colleges became universities by the incorporation of professional schools, originally medicine and law. In short, there were few professional careers in those days: the priesthood, the law, the military, medicine — or independent wealth. Most of the developments in the arts and sciences were accomplished by land-owning gentlemen (or priests, lawyers, doctors) in their spare time. "Modern," institutionalized experimental science, for example, was founded by Sir Francis Bacon, who had been the chief executive of Queen Elizabeth I's royal court.

Harvard College, the first institution of higher education in the British colonies, was founded in 1636 to prepare Puritan ministers. Queen's College in New Brunswick was the sixth. Founded in 1766 by the Dutch Reformed Church, its seminary still occupies the block behind Willie the Silent on the College Avenue Campus, though the seminary itself is no longer affiliated with Rutgers.

George H. Cook (1818-89) came to Rutgers in 1853 from Rensselaer. He was appointed as Professor of Chemistry, though his teaching duties included mathematics and theology. Among his first research projects was the chemical analysis of "greensand marl," a soil deposit underlying the clays of central and south Jersey. Marl had been used as an agricultural fertilizer in England since the seventeenth century. This research led him to determine better the local sources of marl, which in turn led to his appointment as assistant state geologist. In this period, geology was the science that was advancing most rapidly, much like molecular biology in our time. A thorough geological survey of New Jersey, published in 1840, was already out of date and Professor Cook was appointed to undertake its revision. His work became the model for the U.S. Geological Survey.

Cook had already earned the confidence New Jersey farmers, having lectured throughout the state on the benefits of greensand marl as a long-term fertilizer. He was committed to the idea of "scientific agriculture," and when the legislature accepted the provisions of the Morrill Act in 1863, he led the lobby (against Princeton and the state "Normal School at Trenton") to have Rutgers designated as the site of the land-grant college. New Brunswick's geological variety and George H. Cook's reputation with both the farmers and the legislature won the day. Rutgers Scientific School — as it was then called — was founded in 1864, with George H. Cook at the head. A 100-acre farm on the outskirts of New Brunswick was purchased¹from the estate of James Neilson to serve as the school's experimental farm. That land is now the heart of the Cook campus.

In 1880, the Morrill Act was amended by the Hatch Act, which established funds for state Agricultural Experiment Stations. These federal- and state-appropriated funds built New Jersey Hall (across Hamilton St. from Old Queens) to house Rutgers Scientific School and acquired additional faculty and farmland. George H. Cook was, of course, the first Director of the New Jersey Agricultural Experiment Station (NJAES), which now includes satellite stations throughout the state. In 1912, the (by then) College of Agriculture moved from the College Avenue campus to the campus of the experiment station.

The land-grant triad was completed in 1914, with the Smith-Lever Act. This act established the Agricultural Extension Service, which located College of Agriculture faculty in each of the counties. When we refer to "the land-grant concept," we mean the integration of campus-based academic program with experiment station research, which is turn is disseminated to the public by the local extension agents. Extension agents also facilitate communication between the public and the college: a citizen calls the extension agent with a problem, which is then communicated to the appropriate experiment station specialist, who is able either to resolve the problem or initiate research into it.

From the beginning, "home economics" was an integral aspect of the extension service. Quaint by today's standards, it nonetheless provided educated women with their first real break into the faculty ranks. 4-H programs, aimed at youngsters, were administered through the local extension offices and allowed rural women to assume leadership roles in their communities.

New Jersey has not been "rural" for some time, but the college and experiment station met this challenge by enlarging the mission to include the study of pollution problems (the country's first Department of Environmental Sciences), natural resources, fisheries, nutrition, urban gardens, land use planning, small business development, youth-at-risk programs — all of which address the needs of a state no longer predominantly agricultural. In this, Cook has led the nation in keeping what had been an "ag school" abreast of the times and local problems without loss of the fundamental land-grant mission.

The Morrill Act laid the foundation for the development of our nation's great public university systems, to this day the envy of the world. The commitment of Cook College to the land-grant concept makes us unique among the colleges in New Brunswick, a uniqueness that is reflected in the objectives of our curriculum. As Cook College students, you have taken up a tradition of academic study, research and public service, a tradition honored when the College of Agriculture and Environmental Sciences was renamed in 1973 for its founder, George H. Cook. As necessarily committed to "scientific agriculture" as George H. Cook was in the nineteenth century, the Cook College faculty of the twenty-first century realizes that, while science can identify problems in our food and environment, it cannot resolve them without consideration of their social, cultural, economic and political implications — and the public will to address them. The frank and informed public discussion of these problems is what PERSPECTIVES ON AGRICULTURE AND THE ENVIRONMENT attempts to initiate. Regardless of your intended major or career(s), you are — and will always be — members of a community and beneficiaries of a great experiment in democracy that was initiated in 1862.

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1 The "land" of the land-grant college act was land in the West -- Rutgers got 210,000 acres of what is now Utah —, proceeds from the sale of which would be used to establish the college and purchase land for the experimental farm.

REFERENCES

Sidar, Jean Wilson. 1976. George Hammell Cook: A Life in Agriculture and Geology 1818-1889. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press. 282 pp.