Education
Brigham Young University. Cornell University; Cornell University College of Agriculture and Life Sciences.
Brigham Young University. Cornell University; Cornell University College of Agriculture and Life Sciences.
His administration was the longest in Brigham Young University history and saw the granting of the first master"s degrees. Under his administration the school moved towards being a full 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
He received his doctorate from Cornell University. He had served as the agriculture department head and head of the experiment station at Utah State Agricultural College and left Brigham Young University to become president of that institution.
The Harris Fine Arts Center on Brigham Young University"s Provo campus is named after him. Harris was born in Benjamin, Utah Territory, United States.
Harris did his early studies at Brigham Young University before going on to receive his doctorate from Cornell.
One of Harris"s first announcements on coming to campus was a need to make Brigham Young University a center of religious scholarship and a desire to have a broad spectrum of religious books in the library. The first building built on Brigham Young University campus during Harris"s administration was the Heber J. Grant building which at that point was a library. This was the first Brigham Young University building built as a library, but it soon became too small to hold all the books Harris had managed to have the University acquire.
In June 1945 Harris left Brigham Young University to assume the presidency of Utah State Agricultural College.
In 1938 Harris was the Republican candidate for United States Senate in Utah. He lost to Democrat Elbert Thomas.
In 1926 he served as a missionary in Japan. He also served a short mission among the Latter-day Saints in Syria in 1927.
In 1929 Harris was involved with founding a Jewish colony in Siberia.
He died in 1960.
In 1923 Harris was made a member of the General Board of the Young Men"s Mutual Improvement Association.
