Historical records indicated that E.S. Keene was appointed Agricultural Engineer with the Agricultural Experiment Station in 1892, two years after the North Dakota Agricultural College was established. R.C. Miller organized the Agricultural Engineering Department as a degree granting department in 1924-25. The first BS degree in Agricultural Engineering was granted in 1931. The first MS degree was awarded in 1933. A BS/MS degree program in Agricultural Mechanization was initiated in 1951. This program also provided service courses to Agricultural Education majors and to other degree programs in the College of Agriculture. In 1980, an interdisciplinary Ph D program was established as a component of the College of Engineering and Architecture.

        In 1989, the department hired its first food engineering faculty. The department’s Agricultural Engineering program name was changed to Agricultural and Biosystems Engineering in 1996. The ABEN program was reviewed by ABET in October 2000 (under EC2000 criteria) with resulting re-accreditation to 2006. In June, 2002, a Ph D program in ABEN was approved by the State Board of Higher Education (SBHE).