File UA-43, Box 1, Folder 8 - Report of the Committee to study the Farm Courses of the Nova Scotia Agricultural College / Kenneth Cox, and other related records

Kenneth Cox was the sixth principal of the Nova Scotia Agricultural College and made significant contributions to the Maritime agricultural industry. Born in 1899 in Upper Stewiacke, Colchester County, he received his early training at NSAC, where he graduated with the Class of 1921. In 1924 he earned a BSc in Agriculture from the Ontario Agricultural College, studying animal husbandry. He followed this with graduate studies in agronomy at Macdonald College, McGill University, graduating with an MSc in 1929.

Cox returned to Nova Scotia to work at the Dominion Experimental Farm in Nappan, where he was employed as assistant to the superintendent and carried out research on cereals, forages, root crops and fertility. In 1937 he was appointed Provincial Agronomist and Professor of Agronomy at NSAC, and Vice-Principal and Farm Director in 1941. He became Acting Principal in 1946 and was appointed Principal in 1948, a position he held until his retirement in 1964.

Respected across the agricultural community, Kenneth Cox was a member of the Canadian Society of Technical Agriculturalists and served as president of the Nova Scotia Institute of Agrologists and honorary president of the Nova Scotia Federation of Agriculture. In 1960 he was made a fellow of the Agricultural Institute of Canada and an honorary life member of the Canadian Seed Growers Association. His contribution to agricultural education was recognized with an honorary LLD from McGill in 1964.

In 1968 the Cox Institute of Technology on the NSAC campus was named in his honour and in 1991 Kenneth Cox was granted a Distinguished Alumnus Award. He died in 1994.