In 2012, the country's land-grant colleges and universities will celebrate their sesquicentennial. This anniversary provides a good opportunity to consider how these distinctively American institutions have evolved over the past 150 years and how well they are doing today in preparing students for the 21st century. Resilience will be a key capability for thriving in a world of constant flux. Land-grant colleges and universities have an urgent role to play in cultivating this capacity in their students in order to support the economic vitality of their communities. To a large extent, the emergence and growth of these institutions in the 20th century helped this country to become a leader in scientific and technical innovation and laid the educational foundation for the affluence that Americans have enjoyed. Today, they are responsible for educating more than 1.5 million undergraduate and graduate students annually and are among the country's leading academic research institutions. But have these institutions been able to update their missions to serve the needs of a post-industrial economy? In particular, how have they responded to the increasing rate of change and intensifying global competition that are hallmarks of the 21st-century? In this article, the authors attempt to answer these questions. They describe North Carolina State University, a 120-year-old land-grant institution located in Raleigh, North Carolina, which serves as a model of learning for the 21st century. (Contains 6 resources.)