Founded in 1866 as the New Hampshire College of Agriculture and the Mechanic Arts, the University of New Hampshire was one of the early land-grant New Hampshire colleges established to serve the sons and daughters of farming and laboring families.

What makes the University of New Hampshire a great institution among New Hampshire colleges? Every day, brilliant, dedicated, inventive, hard-working people come together to teach, learn, and discover, always with an entrepreneurial spirit that has made many of our academic and research programs world-class. They are motivated by passion, by a spirit of inquiry, and by a desire to give back to their communities.

What makes the University of New Hampshire outstanding is that we combine the "best of both worlds." We offer students the living and learning environment of a small New England liberal arts college with the breadth, spirit of discovery, and civic commitment of a land-, sea-, and space-grant research university. This is rare among American institutions of higher education, and students and faculty will tell you it is our greatest asset.

Today the University of New Hampshire is not only a land-grant institution but also a designated sea- and space-grant University, and is among the top-tier research institutions among New Hampshire colleges and even nationally. The University of New Hampshire is made up of dozens of academic departments, interdisciplinary institutes, and research centers that attract students and faculty from around the world. As state-of-the-art facilities are built to support academic growth, and new residence and dining halls are built to meet the growing popularity of campus life, the University of New Hampshire continues to rest lightly on the Durham landscape. Some 13,000 students and hundreds of faculty and staff live and work amid the rolling hills and riverbeds of one of the most beautiful campuses in the nation.