Our goals for the College of Agricultural Sciences and Natural Resources, the Tennessee Agricultural Experiment Station and the Tennessee Agricultural Extension Service are to develop the UT Institute of Agriculture (UTIA) into the premier agricultural university in the Southeastern U.S. and into one of the major agricultural universities in the country. To facilitate achieving these goals, the UTIA is implementing a restructuring plan that involves three departments: Plant and Soil Sciences (PSS), Ornamental Horticulture and Landscape Design (OHLD), and Agricultural & Biosystems Engineering (ABE).
We are creating two new departments to strengthen our academic programs, extension programs and research competitiveness in the Institute of Agriculture. The natural synergies among faculty and programs of the three existing departments will be exploited more fully with this new configuration.
The mergers will create many opportunities for team building. The new departments will have opportunities to strengthen their undergraduate and graduate curricula in the plant sciences as well as biosystems engineering. This will enable the Institute of Agriculture to more fully address the needs of Tennessee agricultural producers and Tennesseans in general.
These changes will put us on track to higher levels of excellence in teaching, research and extension. The changes we are making involve the following:
- OHLD and PSS will be joined into a single department. The faculty involved in soil research, teaching and extension will move to ABE.
- The newly configured departments of OHLD/PS and Agricultural and Biosystems Engineering will have opportunities to develop new names, which will be passed through the UT central administration and submitted for consideration to the UT Board of Trustees in June 2001.
- Academic programs and degrees will remain as they are, but the newly configured departments will have opportunities to revise curricula and degrees, or propose new degrees if they so desire.
- Dr. Robert Trigiano has agreed to serve as the interim head for OHLD/PS.
- We will immediately initiate a national search for Head of the OHLD/PS department. We expect to have a new Head on board by January 1, 2002.
- Dr. Ronald Yoder will continue to serve as Head of the Department of Agricultural and Biosystems Engineering.
- These departmental changes will occur officially July 1, 2001.
horticulture
