1.3 Community Building and the Land Grant Mission

Johanna L. Phelps

We know that community engagement is a strategy for experiential learning, and in technical communication classrooms it is widely practiced to support students’ understanding of the social impact of communication and language. But there is another layer that informs how we engage with our communities in this course, having to do with the sort of institution you are attending. Washington State University is a land-grant institution; each state in the United States has at least one land-grant institution (a map of such institutions can be explored here). This designation carries a great deal of meaning. WSU offers explanation of their approach to their land grant status here, noting:

The Morrill Acts of 1862 and 1890 answered demand for practical education that was accessible to agricultural and industrial workers. The legislation granted federally controlled land to the states, which states could then sell to fund establishment of “land-grant” colleges. Curricula at land grant institutions served a broad swath of the population by focusing on agriculture and technical subjects.Ensuing legislation established an agricultural experiment station with each land-grant institution. Cooperative extension services were created to circulate information about the stations’ research findings. Washington State College was established in 1890 as a land-grant institution. It has become a distinguished public research university, but its mission remains rooted in accessibility and public service.

It is important to recognize that WSU’s status as a land grant institution is not without fraught and complex history. As Spencer (2020) pointed out in their synthesis of the literature:

In the case of WSU and other Land Grant Institutions outlined in the 1862 iteration of the act, [we should be] mindful of the racist and colonialist connotations of that act as they inform contemporary functions of their university – particularly when invoking the ideals of the Morrill Land Grant Act as justification for broader implementation of community engagement initiatives. WSU was established in the latter half of the 19th century in consequence of the Morrill Land-Grant Act of 1862. Subsequent iterations of this act designated several historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) and tribal colleges and universities (TCUs) as land-grant institutions – notably, without any actual granting of land, as their predecessors had received, and at a much later date (1890 and 1994, respectively).

Institutions such as WSU, known as the “1862 land grant institutions,” received 30,000s acres per member of Congress. Most of this land was stolen from Indigenous tribes who had lived there for generations. Additionally, Martin and Hipp (2018) argue that this land given as an initial resource to the 1862 institutions “provided the basis for solidifying the 1862 institutions.” Not awarding similar land grants to subsequent land grant institutions “institutionalized an inability of tribal colleges to catch up in any meaningful way to the deeply embedded infrastructures that have advantaged the 1862 institutions.” There is, in short, a specific, distinctly racialized, and colonialist foundation underlying the 1862 land grants requiring specific redress. While it is not at the behest of any individual classroom to afford 1890 or 1994 institutions sufficient funding to bridge this infrastructural gap, a working knowledge of this dynamic as it informs the way Indigenous communities interact with the WSU campuses, including WSU Vancouver.[sic]

We introduce these concepts so you are aware of this reality, recognizing that the complexities here are not challenges one student or one class can ameliorate. Instead, they are part of an infrastructure that’s promoted and benefited from racism and colonialism in the form of education and land use. So what does the land-grant designation mean for WSU?

The land grant mission of the university compels the university’s constituents (its leadership, faculty, staff, and students) to directly support the communities in which they are located, with an emphasis on the state and its peoples and economies. The Association of Public and Land Grant Universities (APLU) notes that “The original mission of these institutions, as set forth in the first Morrill Act, was to teach agriculture, military tactics, and the mechanic arts as well as classical studies so members of the working classes could obtain a liberal, practical education.”

Today, a land grant mission can promote community engagement as an important element of both learning and research. But it is noteworthy that there are universities that are not land-grant institutions where community engagement is commonly practiced. For instance, private colleges may have funders that request these efforts be foregrounded, religious universities may recognize community engagement as core to their mission due to service-mindedness of the religion, regional teaching schools may recognize the imperative of training citizens who will remain in the communities after graduation, and community colleges recognize that students are already engaged deeply and rooted in their local communities and these environments provide ideal learning experiences.

Regardless of why a university prioritizes community engagement, there are foundational principles that inform our work at Washington State University, and WSU Vancouver more specifically. Aside from our land-grant designation, WSU’s mission is:

To advance knowledge through creative research and scholarship across a wide range of academic disciplines.
To extend knowledge through innovative educational programs in which emerging scholars are mentored to realize their highest potential and assume roles of leadership, responsibility, and service to society.
To apply knowledge through local and global engagement that will improve quality of life and enhance the economy of the state, nation, and world.

The work of community engagement is clear in the third component of the mission and community engagement is an additional strategy for the institution to achieve all other goals in the mission. More locally, our strategic plan at WSU Vancouver illustrates an even clearer imperative as to why we engage with communities. One tenet of WSU Vancouver’s strategic plan is to “establish and maintain mutually beneficial community outreach, research, financial and civic engagement partnerships.”

All told, it is important to recognize that WSU and WSU Vancouver are oriented toward community-driven and -supported efforts. At WSU Vancouver, 89% of graduates remain in the area. Therefore, as we build opportunities for you to practice technical and professional writing skills and develop proficiencies before you leave WSU, we recognize you will be the next generation of teachers, architects, small business owners, human resource managers, engineers, coders, and colleagues. We recognize connecting learning opportunities that support the nonprofit and grassroots organizations that help keep our community humming keeps us all rooted as citizens, life-long learners, and neighbors.