Campus Water Works

Traditions accumulate one ordinary morning at a time.  

Auburn University was inspired by Methodist traditions. Chartered in 1856 as East Alabama Male College, it opened in 1859 as a private liberal arts school sponsored by the Methodist Episcopal Church, South. The first president, Reverend William J. Sasnett, and many trustees were Methodist clergy. Local Methodist leaders and the Auburn Methodist Church played key roles in its founding.

The college emphasized Christian moral education alongside classical studies. After the Civil War, financial difficulties led the Methodist Church to transfer control to the state in 1872, creating Alabama’s first land-grant university—later renamed Auburn University.

Though now a public, non-sectarian university, its Methodist heritage endures through campus traditions, the nearby Auburn United Methodist Church, and the active Wesley Foundation ministry.