| HOME | HELP | FEEDBACK | SUBSCRIPTIONS | ARCHIVE | SEARCH | TABLE OF CONTENTS |
|
|
|
|||||||
|
|||||||||
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
SPECIAL TOPICS |
* Institute of Agriculture, University of Tennessee, Knoxville 37996
and
College of Agricultural and Life Sciences, University of Wisconsin, Madison 53706
and
College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, North Carolina State University, Raleigh 27695
Department of Animal Sciences, Oregon State University, Corvallis 97331
 |
Abstract |
|---|
Key Words: animal science department • contemporary food animal production • funding • land-grant college • university
|
THE PAST TO THE PRESENT |
|---|
When animal science departments were created, 33% of the US population was engaged in farming and ranching (1910 US census), but today, this has decreased to 1% of the US population (2000 US census). Nevertheless, numbers of students majoring in animal sciences continue to increase. For example, at Oregon State University, enrollment in the Department of Animal Sciences increased from 231 majors in 1997 to 404 in 2007. This growth has occurred because of the increasing proportion of college-bound students that are interested in horses, companion and exotic animals, and veterinary medicine. These students are represented by a greater proportion of females than the population of all entering students.
The animal science programs of today are coping with the changing view of animals by society. The majority of the current US population has experienced animals only as companions, and many consider these animals as family members. This evolving perception of animals has moved departments to expand curricula to include more species and more topics, such as ethical treatment of animals.
Research in animal science departments began with a distinct focus on applied nutrition. New disciplines were added gradually, but the research still had a strongly applied character until the early 1960s, when the pendulum began to swing more toward discovery and fundamental research. Today, the emphasis on discovery is even stronger.
The clientele that departments of animal science serve has become more complex and diverse. Family farms of a century ago maintained cattle, hogs, sheep, and chickens, but today, food animal production is highly specialized. In contrast, equine and companion animal industries reflect traditional family farm images. Originally, the Agricultural Extension Service supplied one-on-one and small-group education for producers, but today, Cooperative Extension focuses more on training managers, professional consultants, and veterinarians. Information available through the World Wide Web has made it simpler for clients to obtain information from distant resources. Thus, an Oregon rancher can access information as easily from Oklahoma State University as from Oregon State University, making clients less dependent upon universities located within their state or region.
In this centennial year of the American Society of Animal Science, it is appropriate that we look not only at the history of departments of animal science but also at what is in store for these departments through the next century. This paper will describe contemporary universities and animal science departments and speculate on universities and animal science departments of the future.
|
CONTEMPORARY FOOD ANIMAL PRODUCTION |
|---|
). Animals provide the main dietary protein source in Europe and the western hemisphere, and animal protein intake is increasing in most developing countries. Markets for animal products have spread globally with removal of trade barriers. Increasing specialization has characterized several segments of the food animal industry in the United States during the last 4 decades. Between 1974 and 2002, number of broiler chickens per farm increased 262%, number of milk cows per farm increased 275%, and number of hogs per farm increased 691% (2002 census of agriculture). Only beef cow-calf (4% increase in beef cows per farm) and sheep (21% decrease in sheep per farm) sectors escaped specialization and remain generally smaller-sized and pasture-based. Specialization along with improved genetics and management has improved production traits such as efficiency of conversion of feed to meat or milk, milk yield per cow, and pigs produced per sow per year. Vertically integrated poultry, swine, and finished beef sectors today comprise enterprises associated with industrialized production, processing, and retailing. Contracts between growers and companies that function as vertical integrators account for over 90% of production of market hogs and poultry in the United States.
Concentrated animal production has resulted in changes that are perceived as both positive and negative (Farm Foundation, 2006). There has been a shift in distribution of livestock enterprises among certain geographical areas; for example, number of hogs increased in eastern North Carolina with a parallel loss of production in other areas of the Southeast and the Northeast. Number of suppliers of inputs such as equipment, feed, and pharmaceuticals has decreased, and those that remain are clustered around centers of animal production. Integrators employ their own experts or retain expert consultants to keep abreast of the latest technologies. They seek knowledge from the best sources, regardless of geographical location.
Technology transfer from development to implementation has quickened with industry consolidation, and access to technology has leveled the global playing field. At the same time, industry has become more sensitive to how consumers perceive the use of certain practices and technologies. For example, the leading pork-producing company in the United States has decided to phase out gestation crates for sows over the next decade. This decision was market-driven because of public concern about how animals are housed in confinement systems. Through public referendums, activist organizations are changing state laws related to food animal welfare (Humane Society of the United States, 2008).
Contemporary animal production has generated several societal concerns around issues such as displacement and distribution of farm workers, degradation of air and water quality, emergence of new diseases, diminishment of animal welfare, and loss of a competitive price structure for terminal markets. Moreover, use of antibiotics, hormones, and other pharmaceuticals for production enhancement has become increasingly controversial.
Public concerns about large-scale, vertically integrated animal production systems have created new production opportunities in areas such as free-range eggs and chickens, organic meat and animal products, farm-based milk and cheese, and locally produced foods. Agrotourism focused on family farm experiences has emerged as a new source of income for livestock producers.
|
CONTEMPORARY UNIVERSITIES AND AGRICULTURAL COLLEGES |
|---|
 TopAbstractTHE PAST TO THE...CONTEMPORARY FOOD ANIMAL... CONTEMPORARY UNIVERSITIES AND... CURRENT ANIMAL SCIENCE...UNIVERSITIES AND COLLEGES OF...ANIMAL SCIENCE DEPARTMENTS OF...LITERATURE CITED |
|---|
Teaching and Learning
The revolution in information technology has permanently changed teaching methods and learning styles (Tabron, 2008). The teachers of today deliver lectures and manage learning, and their interaction with students has moved from chalk board and overhead projectors to digital presentations, asymmetric engagement through the Internet, and use of commercial venues such as YouTube. Teachers communicate with students through e-mail, text messaging, and blogs. College students that have lived their entire lives during the information technology revolution have a different expectation for information delivery than many teaching them.
Greater demands from placebound college-age and adult learners are forcing universities to use advances in information technology to deliver courses and degree programs in Web-based formats to wherever the student resides. Many institutions now have off-campus teaching or learning centers, sometimes located throughout the state, to meet the needs of such students. For certain specialized programs, universities from different states have developed successful regional efforts.
Research and Outreach
A significant trend in universities has been the rapid growth of important scholarship at the intersections of specific disciplines. For the most part, these critical interdisciplinary programs have been accommodated administratively through the development of centers, institutes, and programs whose work spans department and college boundaries, rather than through the formation of new departments. Formal extension outreach programs remain a prominent feature of land-grant universities, but increasingly, extension is not located administratively in the agricultural college. Agriculture remains a dominant emphasis of Cooperative Extension in close collaboration with the agriculture college, but generally, Cooperative Extension has less capacity to address production agriculture than in the past and has fewer educators located in counties. Nevertheless, agricultural producers have access to a wide variety of expert consultants, many of whom have graduate degrees from colleges of agriculture.
Globalization
In response to globalization of the economy and society, globalization of curricula and programs is a priority of most agricultural colleges. International programs now are focused less on assistance to developing countries and more on collaborative relationships with foreign universities that have complimentary strengths and can participate in joint grant proposals, research, courses, and student or faculty exchange programs. Study abroad programs have increased because graduates with study abroad experiences possess greater cultural and communication skills, attributes that are sought by employers (Forsberg et al., 2003). International students continue to be an important segment of the graduate student population in agricultural colleges, with the plant sciences generally having a greater proportion of international graduate students than the animal sciences; however, engineering disciplines and physical sciences generally have the greatest proportions of international graduate students in most public universities.
Funding of Higher Education
Public universities in the United States have experienced a drastic shift in the sources of funds to support their activities. State legislatures have been uniformly unwilling to maintain their former levels of appropriations to universities, and state appropriations account for a decreasing proportion of total university expenditures. For example, nationwide state-appropriated funding for higher education decreased from $10.13 per $1,000 of personal income in 1990–1991 to $7.57 per $1,000 of personal income in 2000–2001 (Grapevine, 2001). Tuition has increased more than inflation, and tuition income approaches or exceeds appropriated funds to support the instruction mission. The research enterprise, once supported heavily by state appropriations and federal formula funds, now requires significant generation of extramural revenue. Grantsmanship is a prerequisite for success in a faculty position, and in many research-intensive land-grant universities, research expenditures from grants and contracts greatly exceed those from state appropriations and federal formula funds. Contracts from industry have led to increased scrutiny of faculty regarding conflict of interest between academic assignments and work for industry. Fee generation has become an income source for extension in some states. Philanthropy is now a significant source of revenue and resources for agriculture colleges.
Tenured faculty positions remain the norm in agricultural colleges, but many institutions have moved from calendar year to academic year appointments in agricultural colleges. Number of nontenure-track positions has grown in many universities (Gravois, 2006), but this trend has not occurred to the same extent in agricultural colleges as in other academic units.
Even as state appropriations and federal formula funds have decreased as a proportion of total expenditures of universities, officials have demanded more accountability regarding benchmarks such as graduation rates, administrative costs, job creation, economic development, and new business spin-offs.
Accessibility and Diversity
In the last decade, trends of more competitive admission standards and increased tuition rates have decreased accessibility at public universities in many states, particularly among campuses established by the Land Grant Act of 1862. In states with more rapidly growing populations, the increase in number of high school graduates that are entering college is greater than the increase in student capacity for many land-grant universities. Historically, admission to these universities was open to any student who graduated in the upper 50% of their high school class, but now students often must be in the upper quartile or greater to be admitted because of the competition for available seats among all applicants. Many non-land-grant universities have expanded their total capacity and have experienced growth in student numbers in the animal sciences (FAEIS, 2004). This has helped accommodate the demand for admission into such programs.
With increased tuition rates, access to scholarships has a great effect on accessibility and on who attends the university. Most institutions and many states have recognized that accessibility is an issue and are taking specific actions such as waiving tuition for low-income students or incorporating admission programs that require students to attend lower-cost 2-yr institutions before transferring to 4-yr institutions. Some states have established scholarship programs funded with state lottery income as a means to offset some of the effects of tuition increases.
Many institutions have specific efforts to increase diversity of students, faculty, and staff to more closely reflect the diversity of their state or region. In colleges of agriculture, the proportion of women faculty has increased markedly in the past 25 yr; however, the proportion of women faculty still does not equal the proportion of women in either the undergraduate or graduate student population (Glover et al., 2002). Changes in the ethnic diversity of agricultural colleges and departments of animal science generally lag the rest of the institution. But, the number of foreign-born faculty in agriculture and animal science faculties is increasing.
Leadership and Accountability
During the early history of land-grant universities, leaders generally were familiar with agriculture. Individuals with agricultural backgrounds frequently held positions of president, chancellor, provost, or graduate school dean. Today, university leaders generally have much less direct knowledge of or connection to agriculture. As other areas of the economy have grown more rapidly than agriculture, agricultural issues and problems receive less priority on agendas of universities. Nevertheless, in an era in which public accountability, strong public presence, and commitment to problem solving are so important, agricultural colleges have a competitive advantage. For example, deans and department heads of agricultural colleges tend to reach a wide spectrum of legislators often unavailable to others on campus perceived as removed, urban, or elite. And, agricultural colleges have a very important portfolio of disciplines that are highly relevant to pressing problems of this century – adaptation to and mitigation of climate change, energy, applied social sciences, applied business, food safety and security, and health-related animal and plant biology. As colleges focus on these and similar strengths, they will remain as part of the core of strong universities.
|
CURRENT ANIMAL SCIENCE DEPARTMENTS |
|---|
Number of students pursuing a degree related to animal science has increased during the past decade, and animal science is currently the largest major in colleges of agriculture (Figure 1). More than 85% of beginning students in animal science departments indicate their species of most interest is horses, companion animals, or exotic animals, reflecting their urban backgrounds. In the Great Plains states with larger livestock industries, more students still indicate their species of choice as beef cattle, dairy cattle, swine, or sheep. The undergraduate population majoring in animal science is predominately female, representing 70% of the total number of bachelor’s degrees awarded in 2003 (Esbenshade, 2007). This trend continues for students working on master’s degrees, although there are more male than female students seeking doctor of philosophy degrees (K. L. Esbenshade, query report generated at http://faeis.ahnrit.vt.edu/ last accessed Feb. 8, 2007).
|
Animal facilities on many campuses have been relocated several miles away from the main campus because of pressures of urbanization, and this has created challenges in moving students to animals or animals to students in support of teaching and research. In many cases, operation of the animal facilities has been removed from the animal science department and assigned to the college or university to enhance the efficiency of the production and farming operations. Budgetary, environmental, and regulatory pressures have left many campuses without the full complement of livestock, dairy, poultry, and horse facilities.
|
UNIVERSITIES AND COLLEGES OF AGRICULTURE OF THE FUTURE |
|---|
General Organization
Residential campuses will not disappear, as some have predicted, because structured and unstructured interactions that occur on a university campus will increasingly be important contributors to the intellectual and social development of students of all ages. Direct or virtual face-to-face interaction among faculty, staff, and students will continue as a major feature of the learning environment, which will be greatly enhanced through developments in information technologies.
Public universities will have colleges that include agriculture as a major part of their missions and departments whose major focus is on the science of food and companion animals. Agriculture may or may not be included in the college name, and colleges will have a more holistic mission than the traditional agriculture college. A name such as College of Environment and Renewable Resources might be more descriptive of their missions, which will be focused more on the needs of society as a whole, sustainability, and the environment than is the current case.
Tenured positions or long-term renewable contracts will still be the norm for faculty, but annual performance reviews or posttenure reviews for these appointees will be more rigorous. Some nontenure faculty positions may be used to meet needs quickly when universities deal with pressing critical issues that do not fall within the usual academic portfolio. Faculty turnover rates will be greater in the university of the future, and the age and rank stratification of the faculty will differ from today. Individuals will have more graduate and postdoctoral experience and most will be in the mid-thirties or older before beginning faculty careers. Fewer faculty will serve tenures of 30+ yr than in the past.
Sources of Funding
If public funding for higher education continues to decline, it will be challenging financially for public universities to serve the public good, but public officials will expect such universities to fulfill a public role if they receive any public funding. Globalization might change the funding pattern for public higher education in the United States as higher education systems in developing countries modernize and threaten the technological advantage of the United States. Increased funding rates for higher education in other countries may force the United States to fund more of the higher education costs of its students to remain competitive globally.
Without a change in current funding trends, public universities will become more like private universities, depending mostly on tuition, gifts, and endowment income to provide programmatic flexibility. Tuition at public 4-yr institutions is likely to increase at a rate greater than inflation for the foreseeable future, especially as states allocate more funding to lower-cost 2-yr colleges to encourage students to choose a lower-cost option for their baccalaureate degrees. Gift and endowment income will grow in importance at public universities to replace losses of state appropriations and to provide financial flexibility. For example, the number of faculty positions funded with endowment income will increase remarkably as public institutions pursue the fundraising paths taken by private universities.
A central question for public universities and colleges of agriculture will be to define what it means to be dedicated to the public good and how it will perform that mission when its mix of flexible funding is predominately tuition, gift, and endowment income along with a meager amount of tax support. Clearly, skills in development or advancement to increase gifts and endowments will be an increasingly critical expectation for university agricultural and animal sciences leaders if their areas are to prosper with the rest of the university.
Responding to Shifts in Ethnic Diversity of Students
During the remainder of this century, there will be major shifts in the ethnic background of the population of the nation. Public universities, especially land-grant universities and agricultural colleges, will be expected to respond to these changes in ethnicity of the US population by modifying academic and outreach programs to serve this changing clientele. Public universities and agricultural colleges will have more diverse student bodies, and the faculty and staff will become more diverse in terms of sex and ethnicity. Extension programs will be inclusive of the ethnic backgrounds of supervisors and employees of dairy, feedlot, poultry, and swine production units, and extension agricultural units will increasingly recruit employees whose ethnicity reflects the clientele that they serve.
Linkages and Resources
Linkages with other institutions will be increasingly prominent among public universities of the future. These linkages will be substantive and encompass the entire scope of institutional missions and operations. One example of such a linkage is the Committee on Institutional Cooperation (CIC, http://www.cic.net; last accessed Sep. 13, 2008), a 60-yr-old consortium of the 11 Big Ten institutions plus the University of Chicago. The consortium focuses on 3 areas of collaboration: national leadership for higher education; combining, leveraging, and expanding resources for member universities; and expanding learning opportunities by sharing unique programs and courses. The CIC universities collaborate in areas such as access to study abroad opportunities, large-scale purchases and electronic licenses, professional development, access to library materials, and shared data networks. One recent CIC effort to share library resources is an agreement with Google to digitize up to 10 million volumes from the holdings of institutions as part of the Google Book Search Project. Campus officials document millions of dollars of cost avoidance and savings annually from the CIC consortium. Another example is the Worldwide Universities Network (http://www.wun.ac.uk; last accessed Sep. 13, 2008), an international consortium of 16 leading research universities from the United States, Western Europe, China, Canada, and Australia. A primary objective of the Worldwide Universities Network is to create effective international research partnerships. In 6 yr since its formation, it has implemented successful research partnerships and collaborations among the member institutions in physical sciences, information technology, earth sciences, social sciences, health and life sciences, and arts and humanities.
Increasingly, free open courseware in multiple languages will be developed and shared among universities of the future using approaches like those used to create the Wikipedia encyclopedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page; last accessed Sep. 13, 2008). There will be a rapid growth in the existing Open Courseware Consortium (http://www.ocwconsortium.org/; last accessed Sep. 13, 2008), and this free courseware will be downloadable and will replace printed textbooks.
Several successful consortia and linkages exist in agriculture and specifically in the animal sciences. For example, the Midwest Poultry Consortium (http://www.mwpoultry.org/; last accessed Sep. 13, 2008) Center of Excellence is a collaborative among 14 states to provide undergraduate courses and internships in poultry science. Deans of agriculture colleges and leaders of animal science departments will need to commit to stronger and more substantive collaborations in the future. A distinguishing characteristic of all successful linkages and consortia is that the leaders of participating institutions commit strongly to the enterprise and provide dedicated funding for a small central consortium staff whose role is facilitation and coordination of the programs of the consortium.
Research and Intellectual Property
Universities of the future will play a more prominent role in research breakthroughs and generation of new knowledge. In recent years, industry has decreased internal basic research and increased its focus on developmental research that has a prospect for more rapid payback in the marketplace. This gap has and will continue to be filled by university research laboratories and government funding for research will increase to keep the United States competitive internationally (NSF, 2007).
The prospect of turning discoveries into valuable intellectual property will continue to push universities toward the discovery end of the research and development continuum. Public universities will increasingly turn intellectual property into revenues to support their programs and to generate start-up companies – an important accountability goal of public officials. As this occurs, there will be continued debate about how to address the public good, especially in the agricultural and food sciences. For generations ahead, the public will still view food as the most basic need, different from other areas of science and technology. Thus public institutions such as public agricultural universities will be expected to continue their legacy of serving the public through programs that keep food affordable and safe.
|
ANIMAL SCIENCE DEPARTMENTS OF THE FUTURE |
|---|
|
TopAbstractTHE PAST TO THE...CONTEMPORARY FOOD ANIMAL...CONTEMPORARY UNIVERSITIES AND...CURRENT ANIMAL SCIENCE...UNIVERSITIES AND COLLEGES OF...ANIMAL SCIENCE DEPARTMENTS OF...LITERATURE CITED |
|---|
Emerging Issues
Adaptation to and Mitigation of Climate Change Changes in global climate associated with overproduction of greenhouse gases (GHG) in the next century will drive governments to adopt laws and regulations to decrease production of GHG and to help society adapt to climate change. Animal scientists need to develop ways to decrease GHG and particulates from livestock production facilities and decrease the environmental impact of production units on environmental quality. Topics on climate change need to be incorporated into curricula, and extension programs need to develop related educational material for their clientele.
Energy and Energetic Efficiency Increasingly, the public is raising concerns about the total energy used to produce the foods that we consume. Modern agriculture depends heavily on petroleum-based fertilizers, fuels, and pesticides and utilizes large amounts of energy for processing, transporting, and distributing foods. Animal scientists need to conduct comprehensive modeling of the total energy used in the supply and distribution chains to produce animal products and develop model systems for improving energetic efficiency in producing such products. These efforts will need to include assessment of changes in composition of food animals and food animal products; use of alternative feeds; siting of production facilities; logistics of production, transportation, and distribution; and methods for improving energy efficiency in production and processing. Animal scientists could develop models to replace the food animal production and processing systems of today over the next century by focusing on overarching issues of climate change and energetic efficiencies.
Alternative Feed and Food Sources Worldwide use of food sources (corn, soybean and palm oil, sugar cane) to produce fuel is creating serious concerns about availability and affordability of food as stated recently by the director-general of the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations (http://www.fao.org/english/dg/2008/agro.htm; last accessed Sep. 13, 2008). Animal scientists need to become engaged with scientists developing cellulosic ethanol technologies so that feed- and food-grade starches can be derived from complex carbohydrates using microbial, enzymatic, and chemical processes developed to make cellulosic ethanol. This could decrease dependence of food animals on corn and other food grains and utilize crop and food-processing residues as a source of dietary energy for nonruminants. It could also lead to emergence of grasses or other perennials as sources of feed-grade starches, thereby decreasing use of petroleum in food animal production and decreasing GHG emissions.
Enhanced Animal Health and Food Safety Health of food animals needs to be improved permanently through genetic strategies to decrease dependence on vaccines and drugs and to improve food safety. Animal scientists need to capitalize on information derived from studies of animal and human genomes to speed the process of developing food animals that have superior immune systems and that tolerate environmental challenges that impair health. Animal scientists need to do more analyses of the entire supply chain to understand how safety of food is affected from conception through final processing and distribution.
Adaptation of Animals to Changing Environments Many food animals are not adapted well for the environments in which they are maintained and managed, and this leads to problems such as low fertility in dairy cattle and lack of tolerance to heat stress in broilers. Climate will be more variable over the next century, and there will be a need for food animals to tolerate greater and more variable temperatures. Animal scientists need to start now to develop genetic lines, crossbreds, hybrids, and composites that are more tolerant to greater temperatures and other environmental stressors.
Basic Biology of Animal Well-Being Although well-being is important for food and domestic animals, we know little about the basic biology of what contributes to animal well-being. Animal scientists need to undertake studies at molecular and genomic levels to begin to understand well-being in a more scientific manner, using laboratory animal models at first but then extending this to food and domestic animals.
Students, Faculty, and Curricula
The growth in enrollments within animal science departments over the last decade has built the largest alumni constituency group among agricultural colleges (Figure 1
). This constituency will continue to change over the next century as a reflection of cultural backgrounds and interests of students. Departments must adapt to this change in the background and interests of their future alumni constituency. Future alumni will replace other groups, including traditional livestock producers, as the strongest constituents of animal science departments, because alumni have stronger ties to a department than do academic leaders, industry stakeholders, or legislators. Alumni have historically exerted strong political and financial pressure on university administrators and state legislators when the continued existence of their department is threatened, and there is no reason to expect that this will change.
Students that enroll in animal science departments over the next 2 decades will reflect the maturing interest of society in animals of all types. The interest and demands of students will drive departments to expand their academic offerings to include companion animals, laboratory animals, and exotic and zoo animals. In some departments, wildlife, aquatic mammals, and fish will be included in this mix. Separate academic units that now deal with laboratory animals and fish may merge with animal science departments, but natural resources or forestry units may retain wildlife in their portfolios.
Students, staff, and faculty of the departments of tomorrow will represent a more diverse cross section of society than is the case today. In contrast to the current status (Forsberg et al., 2003), students will be multilingual and will study in another country for some period while pursuing their baccalaureate degree. The student population will reflect the change in ethnic diversity in the nation, and it is likely that there will even be differences in ethnic background among students interested in the different species within the portfolio of a department. There will be more faculty members that originate from other countries, particularly India and the Pacific Rim, and faculty members will be more likely to hold appointments in more than 1 university – often in more than 1 country. Graduate students in the animal sciences will be more likely to travel outside the United States to receive an advanced degree or to pursue postdoctoral opportunities.
The programmatic emphases in teaching, research, and outreach programs in future animal science departments will focus less on improving husbandry and production and more on complex issues. A change to more holistic approaches in dealing with problems and issues in the animal sciences will result in much more emphasis on long-range rather than short-term views in teaching, research, and outreach.
Courses that will be included in the animal science curriculum in the future will include traditional offerings (nutrition, genetics, anatomy and physiology, animal behavior, animal health, animal products) and new ones (animal well-being, food animals and climate change, human-animal bond, animals in sustainable ecosystems, protecting threatened species, robotics in animal production systems). More graduate courses will be offered through interdepartmental and interdisciplinary programs because of the complexity of issues being confronted by animal scientists.
Technological changes will influence profoundly how teaching, learning, research, and outreach programs are conducted by departments of animal science. Techniques for managing new information and for updating existing knowledge bases will make it easier for teacher and learner to focus on using information and knowledge efficiently. There will be more just-in-time learning, in which students will learn new skills or gather new information just before it is needed to solve problems as teachers and students undertake more complex topics in the curriculum.
One technological change that will accelerate is replacement of manual labor by automation, sensors, and systems in many livestock production enterprises. Robotic systems are already used to milk cows, but future systems will prepare rations, feed animals, handle and process animal waste, measure animal performance, monitor animal health, and process animals for food. New sensor technology, smaller and more powerful computer processors, and new materials will allow robotic technologies to replace manual labor – just as such technologies have done and will continue to do in manufacturing and medicine. Management of robotic processes will be included in the curriculum of students focused on producing food from animals.
Research programs in the animal sciences in the future will be even more multidisciplinary than today. In addition to animal scientists, the research team will include natural, physical, computational, and medical scientists; sociologists; ethicists; futurists; and economists. Research projects will have a broader scope and longer horizon than projects of today. More funding will originate from agencies focused on environmental sustainability, natural resources, and fundamental science.
Outreach or Cooperative Extension at the departmental level will play a major role in offering courses and training for certificate and licensure programs. Anyone working with animals in any setting will be required to be licensed by a government-approved board or agency, and annual continuing education and certification will be required. Owners of livestock, horses, companion animals, exotic animals, and aquacultural species will be required to have a permit to own these species and to pass a licensing test to obtain the permit. There will be a strong demand for educational programs focused on all aspects of animal care and well-being.
Academic Resources
Departments of the future will share more resources than is the case today. Faculty will utilize free course-ware in guiding learning of their students, and the contributions of a faculty member to free courseware will be assessed in performance reviews. Contributors will receive automatic peer feedback through mechanisms incorporated into the process of compiling courseware.
Departments will share specialized teaching and research resources that are costly to construct and maintain, such as intensive livestock facilities, meat processing facilities, or exotic animal facilities. Such facilities will be shared through mechanisms similar to those used by the Academic Common Market of the Southern Regional Education Board (http://www.sreb.org/programs/acm/acmindex.asp; last accessed Sep. 13, 2008). Students and faculty from one campus may spend an extended block of time (weeks to semesters) at the facility of another campus as part of the curriculum of study. For example, students with an interest in thoroughbred horses may spend a semester at a university located in a region with thoroughbred horse resources. Or, this might be accomplished through required structured internships in commercial settings. States will share more resources to support specialized teaching and learning facilities, because the cost of duplicating these facilities in every state will be prohibitive. Industry and interest groups will support this action.
Departments will become more specialized to fill natural niches created by their location or proximity to natural and environmental resources. For example, campuses located near zoos and conservation reserves will capitalize on those resources to create centers of excellence. These living laboratories will replace traditional livestock operations on many campuses, and departments will utilize proximity to these resources to attract students and faculty.
Summary
Animal science departments of the future will have a broader academic portfolio and longer view than departments of today. The programmatic initiatives of departments will focus more on complex issues that affect society, sustainability, and the environment than on incremental improvements in production efficiency. Student populations will be more diverse, and most learning will occur in multidisciplinary settings where students tackle complex problems with multiple solutions. Limits on financial resources will drive departments to build stronger regional and national linkages to undergird high-quality academic, research, and outreach programs. Animal scientists will develop new feeds that compete less with human foods and that have less impact on climate change. Animal scientists will unravel the molecular and behavioral basis of animal well-being and through outreach will develop public models for well-being of companion and food animals. Alumni will be the strongest constituents for maintaining animal science departments and will influence the teaching, research, and outreach programs of departments more than the food animal industry. Animal science departments will thrive in the 22nd century.
|
Footnotes |
|---|
2 Corresponsing author: jbritt{at}tennessee.edu
Received for publication March 7, 2008. Accepted for publication June 18, 2008.
|
LITERATURE CITED |
|---|
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| HOME | HELP | FEEDBACK | SUBSCRIPTIONS | ARCHIVE | SEARCH | TABLE OF CONTENTS |
