In 1889, Grant Adelbert Covell was appointed to the first professorship exclusively devoted to engineering at Oregon Agricultural College and soon thereafter he established the Department of Mechanical Engineering. When the School of Engineering was formed in 1908, Covell was selected to serve as the School's first Dean, a position he held until 1927.
Grant Adelbert Covell was born on a farm in Bradford County, Pennsylvania on August 30, 1862. He attended and graduated from high school in Troy. In 1883, at the age of 21, he entered Cornell University where he earned his BS in Engineering in 1887. Upon graduation, he was named as an instructor of engineering at Cornell for the next year, during which time he completed his M.E. degree. He taught in Minnesota for one year before moving west to Oregon in 1889. Covell married Mary Spencer, a public school teacher in Corvallis, in 1893. He died at his home in Corvallis on November 20, 1927.
From the guide to the Grant Adelbert Covell Papers, 1883-1904, 1889-1904, (Oregon State University Libraries)
