a bitter controversy between supporters of the existing university and proponents of a new, independent institution. John Clough Holmes, secretary of the agricultural society, worked tirelessly to convince the legislature to establish an agricultural college. Holmes was born in Massachusetts and moved to Michigan in 1835. He served as president of the Detroit Horticultural Society in 1847, and then in 1849, he co-founded the Michigan State Agricultural Society. Henry Philip Tappan, president of the university, forcefully made the case for the creation of a department of agriculture in the university. Holmes and advocates for the separate institution feared that agricultural studies would not receive the attention needed to survive and thrive in the university, which put great emphasis on the study of medicine and law and a literary curriculum rooted in classical languages. In addition, Tappan made no provision for the “model farm”—deemed essential by farmers. In early 1855, Holmes convinced the legislature to pass an act establishing “a State Agricultural School” to be located on a site selected by the Michigan State Agricultural Society within ten miles of Lansing. On February 12, 1855, Michigan Governor Kinsley S. Bingham signed a bill establishing the nation's first agriculture college, the Agricultural College of the State of Michigan. The State Board of Education was designated as the institution’s governing body. The board also oversaw the Michigan State Normal School in Ypsilanti, which had opened in 1852. Classes began in May 1857 with three buildings, five faculty members, 63 male students, and a college president. The College's first president Joseph R. Williams, a Harvard graduate, was a passionate promoter for interdisciplinary education. Under Williams, following input from the faculty, the College established a curriculum offering two-thirds science and one-third liberal arts coursework. It is noteworthy that the agricultural college’s enabling legislation mandated a curriculum that went far beyond practical agriculture: “The course of instruction in said college shall include the following branches of education, viz: an English and scientific course, natural philosophy, chemistry, botany, animal and vegetable anatomy and physiology, geology, mineralogy, meteorology, entomology, veterinary art, mensuration, leveling and political economy, with bookkeeping and the mechanic arts which are directly connected with agriculture, …” From its inception, the Agricultural College of the State of Michigan offered courses of study that would characterize the land-grant philosophy of higher education after the passage of the Morrill Act in 1862. Michigan’s agricultural college educated people to