West Virginia State University (WVSU) is a historically black public university founded in 1891 in Institute, West Virginia. In the Charleston-metro area, the school is usually referred to simply as “State” or “West Virginia State”.

The university’s Gus R. Douglass Land-Grant Institute is divided into three programmatic divisions: WVSU Extension Service, WVSU Agricultural and Environmental Research Station, and The Center for the Advancement of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (CASTEM).

The WVSU Agricultural and Environmental Research Station (1890 Research) focuses on Aquaculture, Environmental Microbiology & Biotechnology, Horticultural Crops & Production Systems, Urban Forestry & Natural Resource Management, and Vegetable Genomics & Plant Breeding research programs. CASTEM programs encourage the state’s youth to pursue careers in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) fields to become engineers, scientists, researchers, teachers, and leaders.