About West Virginia State University

West Virginia State University (WVSU) is a public, historically black, land-grant academic world in Institute, West Virginia. Founded in 1891, it is one of the original 19 land-grant colleges and universities acknowledged by the second Morrill Act of 1890, which evolved as a diverse and inclusive campus. Following desegregation, WVSU’s student population slowly became more white than black. As of 2017, WVSU is 75% white and by yourself 8% African-American.

The university’s Gus R. Douglass Land-Grant Institute is on bad terms into three programmatic divisions: WVSU Extension Service, WVSU Agricultural and Environmental Research Station, and The Center for the Advancement of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (CASTEM). The WVSU Extension Service (1890 Extension) provides community and agricultural outreach throughout West Virginia via 4-H Youth Development, Agriculture and Natural Resources, Community and Economic Development, and Family and Consumer Sciences programs. The WVSU Agricultural and Environmental Research Station (1890 Research) focuses upon Aquaculture, Environmental Microbiology & Biotechnology, Horticultural Crops & Production Systems, Urban Forestry & Natural Resource Management, and Vegetable Genomics & Plant Breeding research programs. CASTEM programs incite the state’s teens to pursue careers in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics Network (STEM) fields to become engineers, scientists, researchers, teachers, and leaders.

Institute is an unincorporated community on the Kanawha River in Kanawha County, West Virginia, United States. Interstate 64 and West Virginia Route 25 pass by the community, which has grown to intermingle with understandable Dunbar. As of 2018, the community had a population of 1489, 54% of which were African American.

The town was founded by a formerly enslaved woman, Mary Barnes. Institute is house to West Virginia State University (formerly the West Virginia Colored Institute and the source of the town’s toponym) and the West Virginia State Police Academy. Its economy includes several major industrial plants, which have had a number of environmental incidents polluting the local community.