Penn State alumnus Roger Williams, who recently was awarded the 2018 Lion’s Paw Medal award for his service to the university, will discuss his new book on Penn State’s first president, Evan Pugh, at 3:30 p.m. Tuesday, April 24 in Foster Auditorium at Paterno Library. Abook signing from 4:30 to 5:30 p.m. will follow the lecture.
The talk also will be livestreamed here.
“Evan Pugh’s Penn State: America’s Model Agricultural College” was released in March and is Williams’ second book about the history of Penn State. The other — “The Origins of Federal Support for Higher Education: George W. Atherton and the Land-Grant College Movement” — hit bookshelves in 1991.
“Evan Pugh was a Pennsylvania native and a highly accomplished agricultural researcher when he arrived in Centre County to lead the Farmers’ High School as its founding president,’ Williams said in a news release. ‘In just four years, he achieved his vision, what he called a ‘great experiment’ — establishing the first and greatest agricultural college in America. And he did it during the Civil War, the greatest crisis in America’s history.”
He said that Pugh’s vision made the school a national model and set the foundation for Penn State’s future.
Williams’ dedication to Penn State has been lifelong. The Huntingdon, Pa. native’s father, who graduated from the university in 1948, encouraged his son’s love for Penn State by taking him to football games. Williams graduated from Penn State in 1973 with a degree in history and eventually earned a master’s degree in journalism and a doctorate in education.
Once he concluded his studies, he served as Penn State’s director of university relations from 1986 to 1995. After administrative stints at Georgetown University and the University of Arkansas, he returned to his alma mater in 2003 to serve as director of the Penn State Alumni Association. He retired from this post in 2015.
