Auburn University

Auburn University. Alabama’s Oldest Land-Grant University. Used popularly since the founding of East Alabama Male College in 1856, the name Auburn University was made official by the Legislature in 1960, in recognition of the school's second century of service to the state and nation. Originally affiliated with the Methodist Church, the college became public in 1872, allowing it to come under the Morrill Act as a Land Grant University with the name Agricultural and Mechanical College of Alabama. With continued growth, the school was renamed again in 1899 as Alabama Polytechnic Institute., Since acquiring its name in 1960, Auburn University has become a comprehensive land, sea, and space grant institution, thus expanding the mission set forth in the 1862 Morrill Act. Women were admitted in 1892, making Auburn the oldest four-year coeducational school in Alabama. Auburn University's first African American student was enrolled in 1964 during the administration of President Ralph Brown Draughon. It was Draughon who said, “Owing much to the past. Auburn's mission makes its greater debt ever to the future." a promise realized in the thousands of academic degrees awarded each year.