One Hundred Twenty-Five Years of Shaping the Future

When Abraham Lincoln signed the Morrill Act legislation that gave the states seed money for land grant colleges, he meant the investment to change the world.

In 1887 the people of North Carolina seized that opportunity, establishing the North Carolina College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts. For 125 years the school—now NC State University—has demonstrated a genius for imagining the future and then doing the thinking, research, and work to make that future happen.

Presented through photos, images, and artifacts from the University Archives housed in the NC State University Libraries, from the State Archives of North Carolina, and from a host of individuals and groups that love the university, Shaping the Future covers a broad range of topics—from athletics to atomic research, notable milestones to nanotechnology, economics to electrical engineering—that leads the visitor from the New South to the New New South, and tells the story of NC State’s transformative role in that journey.