James Lewis Morrill (September 24, 1891 – July 1979) was a professor and academic administrator who served as the president of the

University of Wyoming The University of Wyoming (UW) is a public land-grant research university in Laramie, Wyoming. It was founded in March 1886, four years before the territory was admitted as the 44th state, and opened in September 1887. The University of Wyoming ...

and the

University of Minnesota The University of Minnesota, formally the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, (UMN Twin Cities, the U of M, or Minnesota) is a public land-grant research university in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and Saint Paul, Minnesota, United States. ...

. He attended

Ohio State University The Ohio State University, commonly called Ohio State or OSU, is a public land-grant research university in Columbus, Ohio. A member of the University System of Ohio, it has been ranked by major institutional rankings among the best publ ...

for his undergraduate education and, after a brief career as a journalist, he returned there for a career in teaching and administration. In 1942 he left to accept the position of president at the University of Wyoming. After only three years he was recruited to become the eighth president of the University of Minnesota. During his time at the University of Minnesota he oversaw a period of immense growth; enrollment at the school more than doubled in a single year due in large part to returning servicemen using the

G.I. Bill The Servicemen's Readjustment Act of 1944, commonly known as the G.I. Bill, was a law that provided a range of benefits for some of the returning World War II veterans (commonly referred to as G.I.s). The original G.I. Bill expired in 1956, bu ...

to pursue a college education. Morrill put forward a plan to expand the campus across the

Mississippi River The Mississippi River is the second-longest river and chief river of the second-largest drainage system in North America, second only to the Hudson Bay drainage system. From its traditional source of Lake Itasca in northern Minnesota, it fl ...

to ensure the university would have room to accommodate the coming generation of

baby boomers Baby boomers, often shortened to boomers, are the Western demographic cohort following the Silent Generation and preceding Generation X. The generation is often defined as people born from 1946 to 1964, during the mid-20th century baby boom. ...

. After retiring in 1960 he moved to Ohio. He died in 1979.

References

1891 births 1979 deaths Presidents of the University of Minnesota Presidents of the University of Wyoming 20th-century American academics {{US-academic-administrator-1890s-stub