Pennsylvania State University
Pennsylvania State University,
main campus at University Park, State College; land-grant and state supported; coeducational; chartered 1855, opened 1859 as Farmers' High School. It was named the Agricultural College of Pennsylvania in 1862, renamed Pennsylvania State College in 1874, and became a university in 1953. The medical school (1965) is at Hershey. Dickinson School of Law (1834, merged with Penn State 2000) is at Carlisle, and there are large campuses at Harrisburg and Erie. The university maintains numerous other colleges statewide, as well as forestry camps and engineering test stations. Among its extensive laboratory facilities are a nuclear reactor, a seismograph, and research centers for biotechnology, gerontology, and underwater systems.Pennsylvania State University
a state-supported university in Pennsylvania. Together with the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia (founded 1740), it is one of the leading academic centers of the USA.
The Pennsylvania State University was founded in 1855 as a farmers’ high school; it became an agricultural college in 1862 and a university in 1953. It has two campuses, with the main campus in University Park, near Lewistown. The university has (1973) more than ten colleges, including colleges of agriculture, engineering, business administration, medicine, and arts and architecture. It also has a graduate school, a center for air environment studies, and institutes for the study of human resources, land and water resources, and the arts and humanities. Other research institutions include laboratories for space research, for the study of animal behavior, and for materials research. The university’s libraries contain about 2.5 million holdings. In the 1972–73 academic year there were more than 52,000 students and 3,200 faculty members.