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Utah State University
Established	1888
Type	Public Land-grant Space-grant
Endowment	US $145 million[1]
President	Stan L. Albrecht
Faculty	870
Staff	1,800
Undergraduates	20,289
Postgraduates	3,636
Location	Logan, Utah, USA
Campus	Suburban
Colors	Aggie Blue & Fighting White
Nickname	Utah State Aggies
Mascot	Big Blue
Website	www.usu.edu

Utah State University (USU) is a public land-grant university with its main campus in Logan, Utah.

USU was founded in 1888 as the Agricultural College of Utah under the Morrill Act. The college's name was subsequently changed to Utah State Agricultural College, and became Utah State University in 1957. USU now has 870 faculty, and over 25,000 students enrolled in fall 2009^[2]. USU is accredited by the Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities, and is now a major research university with longstanding ties to the Department of Defense and NASA, for which it conducts extensive aerospace research.

Beyond its Logan campus, Utah State's Extension community provides academic resources and support for the state as a whole, including a Continuing Education program. Created in 1907, Extension now includes USU Regional Campuses at Brigham City, Tooele, and the Uintah Basin, as well as USU Centers at Moab, Ogden, Price, and Salt Lake City. USU operates Extension locations in each of Utah's 29 counties. Snow College, at Ephraim, is also affiliated with the university.^[3] USU's current president is Stan L. Albrecht.^[4]

Contents 1 Academics 1.1 Agriculture 1.2 Engineering 1.3 Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences 1.4 Natural Resources 1.5 Science 1.6 Education and Human Services 1.7 Business 2 Campus and location 3 Research 4 Environmentalism 5 Humanitarianism 5.1 Ethiopia 5.2 Thailand 6 Athletics 7 Publications, press, and media 8 Notable alumni 9 References 10 External links

[edit] Academics

Utah State University is a land and space-grant research-extensive institution in northern Utah, 80 miles from the state capital. The university enrolls 25,065 students as of 2009.^[5] Slightly more than 80% of the students are undergraduates. The Princeton Review ranked Utah State University among the "Best Western" schools in 2009.^[6]

The university offers 113 distinct undergraduate majors leading to 176 different bachelor's degrees, which is by far the most in the state. The university also offers 97 master's and 38 doctoral degrees.^[7]

The University is organized into 7 academic colleges:

• College of Agriculture
• College of Engineering
• College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences
• College of Natural Resources
• College of Science
• Emma Eccles Jones College of Education and Human Services
• Jon M. Huntsman School of Business

[edit] Agriculture

The College of Agriculture is known for Nutrition and Food Science research, as well as significant breakthroughs and global outreach in plants and soil science, animal science, veterinary science and economics. College researchers were instrumental in the creation of the first cloned equines (horses), in a project collaboration with researchers at the University of Idaho.^[8] The college is also a leader in the international project to classify and research the sheep genome. The departments of the College of Agriculture include the Plants, Soils and Climate Department, the Animal, Dairy and Veterinary Science Department, the Nutrition and Food Science Department, and the Agricultural Systems & Technology Department.^[9]

[edit] Engineering

Much of USU's most widespread academic renown stems directly from the College of Engineering. USU houses the Space Dynamics Laboratory (SDL), which is a research facility focusing on military and science applications. The SDL frequently submits projects to the Department of Defense and NASA. According to recent National Science Foundation statistics, USU ranked first among all universities in the U.S. in funding for aerospace research.^[10] USU has also won multiple national aerospace engineering competitions in the past, including two in the 2008-09 academic year alone.^[11]

The Utah Water Research Laboratory is the oldest and largest facility of its kind in the nation. USU is considered the world's #1 university in a number of water-related engineering and scientific disciplines due in large part to the UWRL. The lab heads and contributes to numerous international projects, particularly in arid Middle Eastern nations.^[12]

[edit] Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences

The College of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences (HASS), the largest college at Utah State University, is also its most diverse and touches nearly every student on campus through its teaching of required general education classes. The College has fourteen Departments and fourteen additional programs, and offers 28 majors.^[13]

In the Humanities, USU has long history in the study of the American West. The university, through its departments of English and History, is the host institution for the scholarly journals Western American Literature and the Western Historical Quarterly, the official publications of the Western Literature Association and the Western History Association.^[14] The Mountain West Center for Regional Studies, a Humanities outreach center at USU, sponsors public events and research focusing on the cultures and history of the Interior West and larger American West. University Special Collections and Archives, located at the Merrill-Cazier Library, has extensive archival holdings documenting the histories of Utah, the Intermountain West, and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, as well as collections pertaining to American folklore and the lives and works of western authors such as Jack London and poet May Swenson, a Logan native and USU alumna.

Unique among USU’s colleges, HASS includes the Caine School of the Arts, which houses the departments of Art, Music, Theatre Arts, Landscape Architecture and Environmental Planning, Creative Writing, and Interior Design, along with the Nora Eccles Harrison Museum of Art.^[15] Performance facilities include the Kent Concert Hall and the Manon Caine Russell-Kathryn Caine Wanlass Performance Hall,^[16] completed in 2006. The 400-seat Performance Hall, designed by the architectural firm Sasaki Associates, has been praised as one of the best acoustic performance spaces in the American West, and received an Honor Award from the Utah Chapter of the American Institute of Architects. The Nora Eccles Harrison Museum of Art, designed by architect Edward Larrabee Barnes and opened in 1982, contains one of the largest art collections in the Intermountain Region. Its holdings include nationally-significant collections of ceramics, Native American art, and especially artworks produced in the American West since 1945. Notable departments within the Caine School of the Arts include Art, Landscape Architecture and Environmental Planning, Music, Interior Design, and Theatre Arts.

[edit] Natural Resources

The College of Natural Resources includes the departments of Watershed Sciences, Environment and Society, and Wildland Resources.^[17] USU has a long and illustrious history in the science and management of forests, rangeland, wildlife, and fisheries and watersheds. Many graduates of the College of Natural Resources have gone on to high-ranking careers in the National Forest Service, National Park Service, and the Bureau of Land Management. The College of Natural Resources also operates the Quinney Library, with collections relevant for natural resources education, management, and research.

[edit] Science

USU's College of Science houses the Departments of Biology, Chemistry & Biochemistry, Computer Science, Geology, Mathematics & Statistics, and Geology.^[18] Among the most impressive aspects of the College of Science include the rates at which its students are accepted into medical and dental schools. Despite the absence of such schools at USU, students are admitted to medical and dental programs at a rate of more than 20 percent above the national average each year. This is largely due to the rigorous Prehealth Advising Program.^[19]

[edit] Education and Human Services

USU's Emma Eccles Jones College of Education and Human Services has been ranked by U.S. News and World Report in the top 2% of prestigious graduate schools of education in the U.S. for the past decade.^[20] One aspect of that, the College houses one of America's few combined programs in graduate psychology training, which integrates doctoral-level training across clinical, counseling, and school psychology, and is accredited by the American Psychological Association. Faculty are active in many of areas of psychological research, including neuropsychology, child development, health psychology, and behavior therapy.

Department of Psychology faculty member Karl R. White is director of the National Center for Hearing Assessment and Management, which focuses on the early identification and intervention of hearing loss in infants and young children.

[edit] Business

In 2007, Utah State's College of Business became the Jon M. Huntsman School of Business after a $26 million donation by the billionaire. The School hopes to model itself after Huntsman's alma mater and prestigious business school, Wharton, located at the University of Pennsylvania.^[21]

The Huntsman School of Business offers a number of graduate and undergraduate degrees in fields including management, accounting, economics and finance, and management information systems (MIS). The bachelor's degrees in entrepreneurship and international business are also unique to USU within the state.^[22] The school's travel programs, including the Huntsman Scholar Program, have received much renown as of late as well.^{[by whom?]}

[edit] Campus and location

USU's main campus in Logan is considered one of its greatest assets. It is situated on about 500 acres, approximately one mile northeast of downtown Logan, at the mouth of Logan Canyon. Campus contains more than 100 major buildings. Most student activity is centered around the south end of campus, which is home to the vast majority of academic departments, the quad, the Taggart Student Center, and the Old Main building.

Notable structures include Old Main, the college's first building, the Merrill-Cazier Library, the 305,000-sq.ft. ultra-modern library, and the Manon Caine Russell-Kathryn Caine Wanlass Performance Hall, an architectural marvel which is said to contain some of the best acoustics in the entire Western United States.^[16] Most students live on or near campus, and many arrive via university shuttles, which service the neighborhoods nearby.

The Logan City Cemetery splits much of the campus in half. To the south lie most academic buildings, and to the west and north are situated the Dee Glen Smith Spectrum and Romney Stadium, respectively. Many scientific and agricultural research buildings are located even farther north, on the shuttle lines. Nearby Logan Canyon is a popular recreation destination for students, with a system of trails and parks running along the river. In addition to camping and hiking, the canyon also serves as the primary route to nearby Beaver Mountain Ski Resort and Bear Lake.

[edit] Research

• In 2005, a Utah State University researcher discovered inorganic aromaticity, a property in chemistry that was initially thought to occur only in organic material. Researcher Alexander Boldyrev, along with his colleague Lai-Sheng Wang, a professor at Washington State University and a researcher at the Pacific Northwest Lab, made a breakthrough by discovering aromaticity in inorganic material such as metals. Today, Boldyrev and Wang have made another breakthrough and discovered antiaromaticity, which was a featured article in the April 24 issue of Science magazine.

• A team of USU and University of Idaho researchers were the first in the world to successfully clone an equine. The baby mule, named Idaho Gem, was born May 4, 2003.

• Research efforts are underway to produce a cost-competitive bio-diesel from algae. Algae can produce up to 10,000 gallons of oil per acre and can be grown virtually anywhere. Seefeldt, along with several fellow USU professors, formed the Biofuels Program to develop new and emerging technologies that will produce methane, biodiesel, hydrogen and alcohols from renewable, carbon-dioxide-neutral energy sources, such as consumer and agricultural waste and sunlight. [1]

• Utah State University promotes the OpenCourseWare (OCW) Project (open and free university courses) and developing an open content management system for OCW called eduCommons^[23]. This open source content management system is one of the important technology projects in the MIT OpenCourseWare Initiative^[24]. eduCommons aids in the creation of OCW sites and has already been adopted by several universities for this purpose.^[25]

• Over the past few years, on clear nights, one might have seen a mysterious green beam of light shooting upward from the USU campus in Logan. The beam is called LIDAR, which stands for "LIght Detection and Ranging". The LIDAR atmospheric observatory, part of the Center for Atmospheric and Space Sciences, is housed in Utah State's Science and Engineering Research building. The LIDAR is used in Utah State's study and categorization of atmospheric dynamics.

[edit] Environmentalism

As a major university in the American West, Utah State University students and faculty are concerned with the environment both locally and globally. In reaction to massive oil spills by Exxon Valdez in particular, and the EPA's creation of the Spill Prevention Control and Countermeasure plan (SPCC), USU has created an SPCC with a detailed map of locations, oil types, quantities and containment specifications. They have mapped all possible outfalls from oil storage locations that may impact the waters of the United States. They have developed a plan that utilized engineering controls and emergency spill response to stop all unplanned releases.

Among other things, Utah State University's Environmental Health & Safety Resource Center provides training or resources in dealing with biotoxins such as Anthrax, extensive battery recycling, hazardous waste, mercury thermometer replacement, Indoor Air Quality (IAQ), and much more pertaining to radiation, waste, chemicals, biological, and maintenance. [2]

[edit] Humanitarianism

[edit] Ethiopia

The Pastoral Risk Management Project (PARIMA), led by Utah State University and federally funded since 1997, is a consortium of university collaborators from the United States and Kenya, as well as an extensive network of partnerships with East African public and private entities. Coordinated by Layne Coppock, principal investigator and associate professor in the College of Natural Resources’ Department of Environment and Society, the team’s major focus is helping southern Ethiopia’s poor rural households, most of which depend on herding for sustenance, diversify their livelihoods. In addition, the project seeks to bolster residents’ economic security by linking them with livestock export markets.

PARIMA has developed a successful model to facilitate collective action by 60 women’s groups, which now boast more than 2,000 members in southern Ethiopia. The groups provide peer mentoring, instruction and support in helping members develop income-generating ventures to supplement their families’ traditional earning sources. Through the PARIMA groups, women are pooling resources and learning how to set up their own viable cottage businesses. Women participating in the groups have saved significant amounts of money, greatly improved how their households are run, are sending their sons and daughters to school and are creatively engaged in the marketplace.[3]

PARIMA was recently honored by the Oromia State Government, Ethiopia’s largest regional state, for “providing outstanding service to pastoral people.

[edit] Thailand

In October 1997, Utah State University began the Skills Development Project in Thailand. A five-year contract was made between USU, the Consortium for International Development(CID) and the Department of Skill Development(DSD) and the Thai Ministry of Labor and Social Welfare. A loan from the Asian Development Bank was given to help fund the $10-million project. In the past, Thailand's economic strength was based on its agriculture but they have undergone a shift to industrial exports over the past 25 years. To stay competitive in the international market, Thailand needed to make some changes to bring its workforce up to current international standards. Therefore, the CID/DSD project began with the objective to "produce skilled and semiskilled workers and to upgrade the skills of Thai workers as a means of promoting Thailand's competitiveness in the world market."^[26]

The project team from USU was led by engineering dean Bruce Bishop and sociologist Yun Kim. They were joined by 21 international consultants, 42 domestic Thai consultants, and more than 50 DSD staff. Their goals included modernizing the country's vocational training and tripling the number of students served by the DSD's 52 vocational and technical schools. Two groups were targeted: minimum wage earners whose opportunities for advancement are limited by their lack of technical training, and disadvantaged rural people such as farmers, women and uneducated youth. In 1999 the Thai government indicated that the schools targeted by this project were currently training more than 300,000 individuals per year, and that they projected that number to increase to more than a million by the conclusion of the project.^[26][27]

[edit] Athletics

USU's sports teams are known as the Aggies and are a part of the NCAA Division I Western Athletic Conference (WAC). The official mascot is Big Blue. The university sponsors football, men's and women's basketball, volleyball, softball, women's soccer, track and field, golf, tennis, cross country, and gymnastics.

The Aggies have been members of the WAC since 2005 and have won conference championships in that time, including men's basketball and men's indoor track in 2008, outdoor track in 2007, and cross country each year since joining the conference. Women's cross country has also won WAC championships in 2006 and 2008. Utah State has won numerous conference championships in previous conferences. National championships include women's volleyball in 1978 and softball in 1980 and 1981. Immediately previous to the WAC, Utah State was a member of the Big West Conference.

Utah State offers financial aid for athletes. Of students receiving athletic financial aid, 107 were male students(49% of those receiving aid) and 111 were women (51% of students receiving such aid).

[edit] Publications, press, and media

Journals published by the university include Utah Science, Western Historical Quarterly, Isotope, and Western American Literary Journal. The Utah State University Press publishes works in composition studies, folklore, Mormon history, Native American studies, nature and environment, and western history.^[28]

Two primary print outlets serve the USU student body: (1) The Utah Statesman is sponsored by the university and is published three times per week. The Statesman won best non-daily student paper for region nine in the SPJ awards last year. (2) The Hard News Cafe news website is operated by USU's Department of Journalism and Communications and has won numerous awards for its student reporting, partially because it is often the only entrant in the categories in which it wins.

Utah Public Radio is heard on KUSU (91.5 FM) and KUSR (89.5 FM) in Logan, and throughout Utah on a system of 26 translators. UPR "broadcasts a mix of information, public affairs, and fine arts programming." KUSU is a National Public Radio member station, and an affiliate of Public Radio International.

Aggie Television (ATV) is a cable service lineup of approximately 110 channels offered free of charge to all on-campus residents. ATV produces Crossroads, a bulletin/announcement channel; and Aggie Advantage, providing local and student video programming.

[edit] Notable alumni

Notable alumni of Utah State University include Harry Reid, current U.S. Senate Majority Leader; May Swenson, poet; Rick Bass, writer and environmental activist; Charlie Denson, President of Nike Brand; Merlin Olsen, pro football hall-of-famer and commentator; and Mary L. Cleave, NASA astronaut.

[edit] References

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[edit] External links

• Utah State University official site
• USU official athletics site

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