Clemson University

Clemson connections make the difference Clemson students, faculty and staff are instantly plugged into a network of leaders and mentors in a variety of industries, all of whom are willing and interested in lending a hand to their fellow Tigers. WHERE IS CLEMSON? Clemson University is situated on 1,400 acres in Upstate South Carolina, with one edge of campus resting on the waters of Lake Hartwell and the other deep in the Experimental Forest. Midway between Atlanta, Georgia, and Charlotte, North Carolina, Clemson offers students the convenience of a small town with easy access to the attractions found in major cities. Clemson University's land-grant mission and forward vision Achieving Thomas Green Clemson’s vision of “a high seminary of learning” to develop “the material resources of the State” for the people of South Carolina is the mission that binds together researchers, teachers and faculty members at Clemson every day. United in the pursuit of this vision, Clemson employees and strategic partners collaborate to move South Carolina’s people and industries forward. HISTORY Clemson was founded in 1889 through a bequest from Thomas Green Clemson, a Philadelphia-born, European-educated engineer, musician and artist who married John C. Calhoun’s daughter, Anna Maria, and eventually settled at her family plantation in South Carolina. A longtime advocate for an agricultural college in the Upstate, Clemson left his home and fortune to the state of South Carolina to create the institution that bears his name. In November 1889, Gov. John Peter Richardson signed a bill accepting Clemson’s gift, which established the Clemson Agricultural College and made its trustees custodians of Morrill Act and Hatch Act funds, federally provided for agricultural education and research purposes by federal legislative acts. Initially an all-male, all-white military school, Clemson Agricultural College opened in July 1893 with 446 students. Clemson became a coeducational, civilian institution in 1955. In 1963, with the admission of Harvey Gantt, Clemson became the first traditionally white institution in South Carolina to desegregate since Reconstruction. With academic offerings and research pursuits, the institution became Clemson University in 1964.