West Virginia State University (WVSU) is a public historically black, land-grant university in Institute, West Virginia. Founded in 1891 as the West Virginia Colored Institute, it is one of the original 19 land-grant colleges and universities established 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's student body was 75% white and only 8% African-American. The university's Gus R. Douglass Land-Grant Institute is divided 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 on Aquaculture, Environmental Microbiology & Biotechnology, Horticultural Crops & Production Systems, Urban Forestry & Natural Resource Management, and Vegetable Genomics & Plant Breeding research programs. CASTEM programs encourage the state's youth to pursue careers in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics Network (STEM) fields to become engineers, scientists, researchers, teachers, and leaders. History WVSU is located on land once occupied by mound builder Native Americans. The British government granted the site to George Washington for his service in the British military during the French and Indian War. It was subsequently sold and operated as a plantation, using enslaved labor. During the early 19th century, the son of Virginia Governor William H. Cabell, Samuel I. Cabell, moved to the Kanawha River valley and married Mary Barnes, a former slave, who bore thirteen children. He bought the property in 1853 and much to the displeasure of their white neighbors, took elaborate precautions to ensure that Mary, his wife, and their children would inherit his wealth and not be sold into slavery, including officially emancipating Mary and their then-living children in 1858. Sam Cabell was murdered shortly after the American Civil War and the creation of the state of West Virginia. Two decades later, his daughter Maria Cabell-Hurt sold some land to the new state to permit creation of the West Virginia Colored Institute, since Sam's descendants and neighbors had to send their children across the Ohio River to Ohio for higher education. Sam and Mary Cabell and their children are