Philosophical & Institutional Innovations of Kenyon Leech Butterfield and the Rhode Island Contributions to the Development of Land Grant and Sea Grant Extension

Abstract

Land Grant Education in Rhode Island began with the awarding of 1862 Morrill Act funds to Brown University, making it Rhode Island's first Land Grant College. Continuing controversy over the next two decades mostly through Rhode Island's Grange and other farm organizations led to the formation of the Rhode Island College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts (RICAM now the University of Rhode Island or URI). From the establishment of the Rhode Island Agricultural Experiment Station (RIAES) in 1888, station scientists engaged in a wide variety of Extension activities with local farmers and fishermen. The second president of RICAM now the University of Massachusetts). While at MAC he established an Extension Department there which further influenced the creation of the federal Smith-Lever Act of 1914 that established a Cooperative Extension program at all Land Grant Colleges nationwide. Later in 1966, administrators and faculty at URI made contributions to the expansion of the Land Grant philosophy toward the seacoast through the National Sea Grant College and Program Act of 1966. A Sea Grant College Act first proposed in 1963 by Athelstan F. Spilhaus of the University of Minnesota. It was later championed by John D. Knauss of the URI who worked with Sen. Claiborne Pell of Rhode Island in promoting the Sea Grant College and Program Act in 1965. First hearings for the Sea Grant bill were on 2 May 1966 at the URI campus in Kingston. The Smith-Lever Act Cooperative Extension programming philosophy was explicitly used by Pell as the model for the Sea Grant Marine Advisory Service, which is now successfully serving coastal communities nationwide.