Born at Richmond, Utah, April 3, 1901, Milton Rees Merrill began his career at USU in 1927 in the Office of Publicity and Public Relations. A USU alumnus (1925), Dr. Merrill also held the master’s degree (1932) and the Ph.D. (1951) from Columbia University. He married Bessie Austin in 1926. They were the parents of two sons, Richard and Stephen.

Dr. Merrill served in a number of positions at USU, including director of Extension, dean of Summer School, department head for History and Political Science, dean of the School of Business and Social Science and lastly, as USU’s first vice president during the 1960s.

A gifted teacher and mentor, students privileged to have had him as an instructor remember him fondly, characterizing him as having “a colorful classroom appearance, a scintillating sense of humor, a lucid informal manner of lecturing, [with] a complete mastery of his subject.” The Department of Political Science, which he helped nurture throughout his lifetime, still maintains an endowed chair in his honor.

A devoted bibliophile, USU’s Board of Trustees named the campus library for him, following his death on November 23, 1971. When the new library opened in 2005, Milton R. Merrill’s name still adorned the building, shared with that of USU’s twelfth president, Stanford O. Cazier, who Dr. Merrill had hired and mentored as a young history professor in 1964.