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Over the past 150 years, land-grant universities—America’s first public institutions of higher learning—have had a profound impact on the well-being of our nation. Founded by the 1862 Morrill Land Grant Act and signed into law by President Abraham Lincoln, land-grant universities were given a three-part mission: to teach, to conduct research, and to engage communities across each state in order to meet their localized needs.
Gathered in honor of The Ohio State University’s sesquicentennial celebration, this collection of essays highlights the significant contributions that Ohio State continues to make as part of its twenty-first-century land-grant mission. Authors from across the university—representing fields as various as agriculture, dance, English, engineering, family science, geography, medicine, social work, and veterinary science—provide contributions that highlight the preeminent status of The Ohio State University. In addition, the perspectives of alumni, staff members, and senior administrators (both present and former) round out the picture of Ohio State as the first among equals regarding its land-grant peers. Overall, contributors draw on rich and varied institutional backgrounds to offer invaluable insights for higher education administrators and scholars across the US.
 

The Gee Years chronicles the tenure of E. Gordon Gee, eleventh president of The Ohio State University, from the closely held search process to his departure.

When Gee lost his beloved wife, Elizabeth, to cancer in 1991 and became a single parent, he not only carried on, he carried the university through some of its most exhilarating but contentious times. By 1996, he was so popular, private polls said he could run for Ohio governor—and win—on either ticket. When he, and his new bride Constance Bumgarner Gee, left instead for Brown University in January 1998, they left behind a stronger Ohio State and a string of stories about power brokers, politicians, and just plain Buckeyes. Populated by such figures as Les Wexner and George Voinovich, Andy Geiger and John Cooper, Bernadine Healy and John Glenn, The Gee Years is “inside baseball,” written by a member of Gee’s inner circle, his communications director. From the board room to the press box, from fundraisers to sit-ins, this is the story of a singular academic leader and more than seven years in the history of the complex university he headed.

The Gee Years, 2007–2013 chronicles E. Gordon Gee’s second tenure as president of The Ohio State University and the fourteenth in the university’s history. With previous posts at Vanderbilt, Brown, Colorado, West Virginia, and a previous term at Ohio State, Gee is the longest continually serving college president in the country. His second tenure with Ohio State boasted overall fundraising at record highs, created a $100 million fund for student scholarships, called for affordability for college education for Ohioans which helped to shift study body demographics, and led the charge for restructuring the state of Ohio’s funding of higher education. Part of Gee’s close circle, Herbert B. Asher writes from firsthand experience to relate the major events, developments, and successes of the university from Gee’s recruitment through the president’s departure. The Gee Years reflects on a leader who left an indelible impression on The Ohio State University.