The landmark Old Main, which now serves as the primary administrative building for the university, was built on land known as Maple Grove, at the time the home of the Mount Hebron Church in what was then the state of Virginia.

[11] John Laidley, a local attorney, hosted the meeting which led to the founding of Marshall Academy, which was named after Laidley's friend, the eminent John Marshall[11] who had served as the fourth chief justice of the United States from January 1801 until his death in July 1835.

In 1867, the West Virginia Legislature resurrected the institution as a teacher training facility and renamed it State Normal School of Marshall College.

[citation needed] On the evening of November 14, 1970, the Thundering Herd football team, along with coaches and fans, were returning home to Huntington from Kinston, North Carolina.

The chartered Southern Airways Flight 932 crashed on approach to the Tri-State Airport after clipping trees just west of the runway and impacting, nose-first, into a hollow.

The leaders of the "Young Thundering Herd" (to which the team officially changed its name for the 1971 season) were the few players who did not make the trip due to injury or disciplinary action.

Fifteen sophomores from the previous year's freshman team were included, as well as a group of freshmen who were allowed to play at the varsity level after the NCAA granted a waiver to its rule barring them from doing so.

The tragedy and the rebuilding efforts were dramatized in the 2006 Warner Brothers feature We Are Marshall, which opened in Huntington a week before its national release date.

[citation needed] On February 22, 2023, West Virginia governor Jim Justice signed House Bill 2412 into law, making November 14 an official Memorial Day in remembrance of the Marshall football plane crash across the state.

Kopp died suddenly in 2014, with Gary G. White, former chairman of the Board of Governors, serving as interim president.

[28] In August 2021, Marshall opened the Bill Noe Flight School at Yeager Airport in Charleston, West Virginia.

The Bill Noe Flight School features a 12,000 sq ft. academic building, a hangar, and an aircraft parking apron.

[31] In early 2022, after the first attacks during the Russo-Ukrainian War, Marshall University professors and staff Victor Fet, Anara Tabyshalievaand, Stefan Schoeberlein, and Kateryna Schray start the weekly podcast MUkraine, has been hosted every week since March 2nd, 2022 within a panelist Q&A format.

[32] The podcast has hosted over 120 guests that include university professors, philanthropists, charity organizations and Ukrainian refugees, volunteers and soldiers.

The Arthur Weisberg Family Applied Engineering Complex opened in 2015 near Pullman Square to house educational resources for Marshall's College of Information Technology, Mechanical & Electrical Engineering, Mathematics & Computational Science, Computer Modeling & Digital Imaging, Transportation Research Corporation, and Marshall University Research Corporation (MURC).

[47] The Forensic Science Center houses the state's Combined DNA Index System laboratory facility.

Marshall now offers a Ph.D. in Biomedical Sciences, an EdD in Educational Leadership or Curriculum and Instruction, and professional doctorates in Nurse Anesthesia, Pharmacy, Psychology, and Physical Therapy.

The core curriculum is designed to assist each Yeager Scholar in developing skills in analysis, synthesis, and critical thinking.

In 1965, students, alums and faculty settled on Thundering Herd in a vote, and Big Green was given to the athletic department's fund-raising wing.

Sports at the school include women's softball, swimming and diving, tennis, volleyball, and track and field; men's football, baseball; and teams for both genders in basketball, cross country, golf, and soccer.

The plane crash on November 14, 1970, whose 75 victims included most of the 1970 Thundering Herd football team, continues to have a lasting impact on the university and Huntington community.

Disciplinary problems became national news in 2014 when The Atlantic published an article about drug and alcohol abuse in Greek chapters on campus.

Also available to students is the Marshall Artists Series, which brings Broadway, dance, music, comedy, and opera to the university, and two international film festivals.

The facility features an aquatic center with a spa, 3 lap lanes, a vortex whirlpool, and a leisure area.