Franklin S. Harris

Franklin Stewart Harris (August 29, 1884 – April 18, 1960) was president of Brigham Young University (BYU) from July 1921 until June 1945, and president of Utah State University from 1945 to 1950. His administration was the longest in BYU history and saw the granting of the first master's degrees. Under his administration the school became an accredited university. He set up several colleges, such as the College of Fine and Performing Arts with Gerrit De Jong as the founding dean. Harris was an agricultural scientist, holding a doctorate in agronomy from Cornell University. He had served as the agriculture department head and head of the experiment station at Utah State Agricultural College and left BYU to become president of that institution. Harris also traveled to Russia and to Iran and other parts of the Middle East in order to provide expert advice on agriculture issues. The Harris Fine Arts Center on BYU's Provo campus was named after him. Early life Harris was born in Benjamin, Utah Territory, United States. In the 1890s his family moved to the Mormon colonies in the Mexican state of Chihuahua. Harris did his early studies at BYU, taking a year to teach at Utah State Agricultural College, before going on to receive his doctorate from Cornell. After Cornell, Harris traveled back to Logan to become a professor of agronomy and an agronomist at Utah State Agricultural College (USAC). In 1920, Harris was working as director of the Utah State Agricultural Experiment Station and was also head of the department of zoology and Entomology at USAC. Although he held these administrative positions at USAC and was already the president of the American Society of Agronomy, Harris accepted the General Church Board of Education's offer of the BYU presidency on April 22, 1921. He was the first non-polygamous president of Brigham Young University. As president of a university