In 1914, the United States Congress passed the Smith–Lever Act, which provided federal funding for a system of state cooperative extension service. Like T.C. Abbot's initial "Farmers' Institutes", these extension services spread college-based knowledge about agriculture and related issues to citizens around the state. Such extension services served as the third prong of the Land Grant college mission of education, research and public service. With this new mandate, the College moved to expand its curriculum beyond agriculture and engineering, including expanding liberal arts coursework, which has been central to the university's mission since its founding, into a separate degree-granting division (and later, college) which was established in 1924. By 1925, the institution had expanded to the extent where it petitioned the state of Michigan to remove the word "agriculture" from its name, but the University of Michigan opposed the name change. As a compromise, the state government decided to call it Michigan State College of Agriculture and Applied Science (M.S.C.). However, the College's athletic teams were still known as the "Aggies". Thus M.S.C. held a contest to find a new nickname. They decided to call the teams the "Michigan Staters". Local sportswriters for the Lansing State Journal and the Capital News went through the losing entries to find a shorter and more heroic name. They decided on the "Spartans". By coincidence, Justin Morrill had once compared the Land Grant colleges to the schools of ancient Sparta. With a heroic name and a historic precedent, the "Spartans" quickly caught on as the teams' new nickname. Within a few years, the College changed the lyrics of the Fight Song to reflect the name change of the College and its sports teams.