Enoch Albert Bryan

Enoch Albert Bryan (May 10, 1855 – November 6, 1941) was president of Vincennes University in Indiana from 1883-1893 and of Washington's land-grant institution, today called Washington State University, from 1893-1915. At the latter institution he was the third president but the first with a long tenure, following George Lilly, 1891-1892, and John W. Heston, 1892-1893.

Bryan was born on May 10, 1855, in Bloomington, Indiana, the son of Rev. John Bryan, a Presbyterian minister, and Eliza Jane Phillips Bryan. Rev. Bryan had come to serve a Bloomington congregation on a supply basis in January 1855, then received a call to the pastorate there and was installed in September 1855.

Enoch was educated at home and in the public schools. He then studied in the classical course at Indiana University, earning an A.B. degree in 1878 and an A.M. degree in 1884. In 1893, he earned an A.M. degree in classical studies from Harvard University. He was the recipient of honorary Doctor of Law degrees from Monmouth College (1902),Michigan State University (1907), Indiana University (1920), and Washington State University (1929).

Bryan was Superintendent of Public Schools in Grayville, Illinois, for three years before becoming professor of Latin and Greek at Vincennes in 1882 , and taking the presidency in 1883. Founded in 1801, the university in Vincennes, Indiana, had twelve faculty members in 1891. Among them was William Jasper Spillman, a botany and physics instructor. Bryan later invited him to join the faculty at his next institution, known in its early years as the Washington Agricultural College and School of Science.

Bryan arrived at Washington's fledging land-grant institution in 1893, three years after its founding by the Washington Legislature and one year after it opened its doors in Pullman, a town in the fertile agricultural region of Eastern Washington called the Palouse. By 1894, he had built up a faculty of fourteen in fields at diverse as English, botany, chemistry, physics, zoology, agriculture, horticulture, and civil and mechanical engineering. Bryan himself was professor of history and political science as well as president and director of the Experiment Station.

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