University of North Dakota: The Prairie University That Named a State
Near Grand Forks, North Dakota
The University of North Dakota is older than the state it sits in. The Dakota Territorial Assembly established it in eighteen eighty-three, six years before North Dakota achieved statehood, and when the territory finally split in two in eighteen eighty-nine, UND had already been teaching for five years. That founding sequence matters: the university did not grow out of the state. In an important sense, the state grew out of the university.
The mission at the start was practical and expansive: arts and sciences, teacher training, and eventually law and medicine. The law school opened in eighteen ninety-nine. The medical school followed in nineteen oh five. The first doctorate was awarded in nineteen fourteen. In the decades that followed, UND built something that would define it far more specifically than most regional universities: one of the world's largest collegiate aviation programs.
John D. Odegard launched the flight training department in nineteen sixty-eight. Under his direction it grew into the John D. Odegard School of Aerospace Sciences, operating a fleet of more than one hundred ten aircraft and logging over one hundred twenty thousand hours of flight training annually, more than any other public university in the world. The program has sent graduates into the cockpits of every major airline and into the NASA astronaut corps. Karen Nyberg, who spent a hundred and eighty days aboard the International Space Station, earned her engineering degree here. James Buchli, the first North Dakotan in space, is a UND alumnus who flew four shuttle missions.
Then there is the hockey. UND has produced more NHL players than any other American college program, including Jonathan Toews, TJ Oshie, and Zach Parise. The Fighting Hawks have won eight national championships on the ice.
From a territorial assembly hall in eighteen eighty-three to astronauts orbiting Earth and NHL rosters across North America, the reach of this particular prairie university has been genuinely extraordinary.
