Virginia State University
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Virginia State University
Established:	March 6, 1882 (1882-03-06) (age 126)
Type:	Public, land-grant, HBCU
President:	Eddie N. Moore, Jr.
Faculty:	276
Students:	5,000
Undergraduates:	4,306
Postgraduates:	566
Location:	Petersburg, Virginia, United States
Campus:	Suburban, 236 acres (95.5 ha)
Colors:	Blue and Orange
Nickname:	Trojans
Athletics:	NCAA Division II
Affiliations:	Central Intercollegiate Athletic Association
Website:	www.vsu.edu

For the previously named Virginia State University see Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University.

Virginia State University is a historically black university and land-grant university located in Petersburg, Virginia in the Richmond area, and was founded on March 6, 1882 (1882-03-06). It was the United States's first fully state-supported four-year institution of higher learning for black Americans. Its first president was John Mercer Langston, who later became the first African-American elected to Congress from Virginia. The board of trustees was almost entirely African-American, except for one member. The faculty of the collegiate program and the normal school was African-American until the mid-1960s. The name used by the school's athletic teams is the "Mighty Trojans." The third season of the reality television series College Hill was filmed at Virginia State University in 2006. The university is a member school of the Thurgood Marshall Scholarship Fund.

History

Following the American Civil War, William Mahone (1826-1895) of Petersburg, Virginia was the driving force in the linkage of Norfolk and Petersburg Railroad, South Side Railroad and the Virginia & Tennessee Railroad in 1870 to form the Atlantic, Mississippi & Ohio Railroad (AM&O), a new line extending from Norfolk to Bristol. After several years of operating under receiverships, Mahone's role as a railroad builder ended in 1881 when the AM&O was sold at auction to form the Norfolk and Western Railway.

Mahone, a former Confederate general best known as the hero of the Battle of the Crater, later led Virginia's Readjuster Party and was a major proponent of public schools for the education of the former slaves and free blacks. He became a United States Senator from Virginia, and arranged for the proceeds of the AM&O sale to help found a school for teachers near Petersburg. In 1882, the Virginia Normal and Collegiate Institute at Petersburg was established. State delegate Alfred W. Harris, a black attorney, introduced the bill that established the institute.

The school was designated one of Virginia's land grant colleges in response to the 1890 Amendments to the Morrill Act, which required that states either open their land-grant colleges to all races or else establish a separate land-grant educational facilities for blacks.

In 1902, the legislature revised the school's charter and renamed it the Virginia Normal and Industrial Institute. In 1923, the college was renamed Virginia State College for Negroes, shortened to Virginia State College in 1946, and finally renamed Virginia State University in 1979. Meanwhile, the school's two-year branch in Norfolk, Virginia, founded in 1935, became Norfolk State College, now known as Norfolk State University.

Robert Russa Moton wrote in his autobiography, Finding a Way Out (Garden City, N.Y., and Toronto,Doubleday, Page & Company, 1921):

"The next morning I asked my father about the school for coloured people, which was being projected under the influence of General Mahone at Petersburg, now a State Normal School. He told me much about it. It was to open the following fall. The Hon. John M. Langston, he said, a coloured man who was as well educated as any white person that he knew of, was to be the president. He said I might go if I wished and that he would do what he could to help me. It being a state school, and he having certain strong friends in the Republican Party (General Mahone among them), Hon. B.S. Hooper, a member of Congress from the Fourth Congressional District of Virginia, would probably arrange for me to have a scholarship." ^{[1] [2]}

In 2003, the University accepted its first students in its first Ph.D. program. The University is also under a new era of construction on all its buildings and landmarks to accompany the rise in enrollment. President Eddie N. Moore, former Treasurer of the Commonwealth of Virginia, has outlined his plans for the school, known as the 2020 plan, including new facilities, a new law school and docotrate programs.

Campus

The University has a 236-acre (0.96 km²) main campus and a 416-acre (1.68 km²) agricultural research facility. The main campus includes more than 50 buildings, including 15 dormitories and 16 classroom buildings. The main campus sits atop a rolling landscape overlooking the Appomattox River in the Chesterfield County village of Ettrick.^[3]

Organization

This is a list of the Departments within each School:^[4]

• School of Agriculture
  • Agriculture and Human Ecology
  • Hospitality Management
  • Dietetic Internship, ADA Accredited
  • Cooperative Extension
  • Agriculture Research Station
• School of Business
  • Accounting and Finance
  • Computer Information Systems
  • Management and Marketing
• School of Engineering, Science, and Technology
  • Engineering, Engineering Technology, Industrial Education and Technology
  • Engineering Technology
  • Computer Engineering
  • Industrial Education and Technology
  • Manufacturing Engineering
  • Biology
  • Chemistry and Physics
  • Mathematics and Computer Science
  • Mathematics
  • Computer
  • Psychology
  • Nursing
• School of Liberal Arts and Education
  • Professional Education Programs
    • Graduate Professional Education Programs
    • Center for Undergraduate Professional Education Programs
  • Economics
  • Health, Physical Education and Recreation
  • History and Philosophy
  • Languages and Literature
    • English
    • Mass Communication
  • Military Science
  • Music, Art and Design
  • Political Science and Public Administration
  • Sociology, Social Work, and Criminal Justice
• Bachelor of Individualized Studies
• School of Graduate Studies, Research, and Outreach (offering Master Degrees in):
  • Biology
  • Career and Technical Studies
  • Counselor Education
  • Criminal Justice
  • Economics
  • Education
  • Educational Administration and Supervision
  • English
  • History
  • Interdisciplinary Studies
  • Mathematics
  • Psychology
  • Sport Management

The University also has the Office for International Education and the Institute for Study of Race Relations.

Notable alumni

This list includes graduates, non-graduate former students and current students of Virginia State University.

This is an incomplete list, which may never be able to satisfy certain standards for completeness. You can help by expanding it.

External links

• www.vsu.edu Official web site

References