West Virginia State University West Virginia State University West Virginia State University (WVSU) is an 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". It is one of the original group of African American land-grant colleges established by the second Morrill Act of 1890. African-American students currently are a minority of attending students. The University is a member-school of the Thurgood Marshall College Fund. The university's Gus R. Douglass Land-Grant Institute is divided into three programmatic divisions: WVSU Extension Service, WVSU Agricultural and Environmental Research
Virginia State Route 144 and north as a continuation of Chester Road through an interchange with the SR 288 freeway. What would become SR 144 was first commissioned in 1930 as SR 425. It was significantly shorter than today's route, only running from State Route 407 in Chester to State Route 410 in Centralia. The route was given its current designation during the 1933 Virginia state highway renumbering. In 1943, it was extended west along SR 407 for a short length, then south to US 1 and US 301 using the routing of what was at the time State Route 621, a secondary road;