January 24, 2007 |
1. Food Science Ranked No. 4 in 'Scholarly Productivity"
2. Minority Student Club Promotes Diversity in Bumpers College
3. MLK Speaker Relates Achievements of Blacks in Agriculture
4. Entomologists Visit Monarchs in Mexico
5. Food and Beverage Innovations Competition - Intent to Enter Deadline, Feb. 16
6. Student Writing Contest Offers Cash and Trip - Deadline is Feb 1
1. Food Science Ranked No. 4 in 'Scholarly Productivity." The Department of Food Science was ranked No. 4 in the nation for "faculty scholarly productivity" by Academic Analytics, which ranks 7,294 doctoral programs at 354 institutions.
The Faculty Scholarly Productivity Index, partly financed by the State University of New York at Stony Brook, rates faculty members' scholarly output based on the number of book and journal articles published by each program's faculty, as well as journal citations, awards, honors, and grants received.
The rankings for 2005 were recently published online at www.academicanalytics.com. Data for the rankings were collected from university Web sites and the Scopus abstract and citation database for more than 15,000 peer-reviewed journals.
A Jan. 12 article in The Chronicle of Higher Education said the new index provides an objective alternative to the influential "reputation based" rankings by U.S News and World Report and the National Research Council.
The only doctoral programs ranked ahead of the University of Arkansas in the "Food Science" category were at Cornell, Illinois and Massachusetts. The rest of the top 10 list, after Arkansas, were Louisiana State, Florida, Wisconsin, Colorado State, Pennsylvania State and Michigan State.
Ron Buescher, UA Food Science Department head, said the ranking recognizes both the quantity and quality of research conducted by the department's 12 research faculty members, graduate students and research support scientists.
"Scholarly research productivity by food scientists at the University of Arkansas has been a tradition and we are honored by this national recognition," Buescher said.
The rankings cited 5.9 journal publications per faculty member and 36.9 citations per faculty member of UA research by other scientists in journal articles.
The U of A System's Division of Agriculture sponsors the department's research and extension program. Undergraduate and graduate degree programs are administered by Dale Bumpers College of Agricultural, Food and Life Sciences at UA, Fayetteville.
"Graduates of Food Science have excellent employment opportunities and they are highly successful in their professional careers," Buescher said. "A major reason for that, as this ranking illustrates, is that our students are taught by some of the top food scientists in the nation."
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2. Minority Student Club Promotes Diversity in Bumpers College. Recruiting minority students is one of the objectives of the University of Arkansas chapter of Minorities in Agriculture, Natural Resources and Related Sciences (MANRRS), says president Jeremiah Wilson of Oklahoma City, a graduate student in Agricultural Business.
The club was recently recognized in connection with its co-sponsorship of a Dr. Martin Luther King Celebration speaker for Dale Bumpers College of Agricultural, Food and Life Sciences.
The speaker, Dr. Handy Williamson, vice provost for international programs at the University of Missouri in Columbia, spent Thursday evening with the MANRRS students on a service project. He was put to work along with the UA students tutoring children and their dads during a "Math, Science and Technology Night" at Apple Glen Elementary School in Bentonville.
"I was very impressed with your MANRRS chapter," Williamson said. "They are helping to build bridges between Bumpers College and the university and the community while developing their leadership and communication skills."
"Agriculture is not a very popular major for minority students," said MANRRS vice president Sherea Dillon, a graduate student in Agricultural Economics from Merrillville, Ind. "Everybody thinks it's just farming; they don't know about all the other opportunities."
Bumpers College Dean Greg Weidemann said most graduates have non-farm careers in business, public service, research, education and communications. Popular career paths include the apparel and fashion industry, human nutrition and the food and hospitality industries, agribusiness, and diverse facets of the meat and poultry and food and fiber commodity industries.
Weidemann said increasing minority enrollment, now about 7 percent of the student body, and diversity in the faculty and staff, are top priorities for Bumpers College and the campus.
"We want the diversity of our students and our faculty and staff to resemble the diversity in the state's population, and we have a lot of work to do to achieve that," Weidemann said.
A new diversity plan for the college includes seeking more minority scholarship funds and increased emphasis on minority-related student groups, such as MANRRS, and recruiting efforts such as the George Washington Carver internship program.
MANNRS president Jeremiah Wilson said, "My experience as a George Washington Carver intern is why I am here."
The Carver Program provides summer internships in academic departments for graduates of historically black colleges and universities, Hispanic serving Institutions and tribal colleges.
"I received a lot of hospitality from the faculty" as a Carver intern in agricultural economics and agribusiness, Wilson said. "I was planning to go somewhere else, but my experience with the faculty here changed my mind.
"I can go to my professors and they will always make time for me. They are interested in me as a person, and they even care about my family, because that is important to me." Wilson said minorities and other students need to hear from their peers about the open, friendly atmosphere in Bumpers College.
MANRRS member Laura Sossamon, a junior in Agricultural Business from Ozark, said, "A bragging point for me with my friends in other majors is that my professors and I really know each other, and I feel like I can talk to any one of them whenever I need to."
MANRRS faculty sponsor Daniel Rainey and a former graduate student, Melvin Landry, started the UA chapter in 2001. Rainey, an associate professor of Agricultural Economics and Agribusiness, helped draft the new Bumpers College diversity plan.
"We felt like MANRRS was needed as a support group for minority students and could also help us with recruiting," Rainey said.
Dillon said the club is important to her as a social group and because she shares the goal of recruiting more minority students. "I would like to see a much more aggressive program to let minorities know what we have to offer them," Dillon said.
Rainey said the primary goals of MANRRS are to promote leadership and increase job and educational opportunities in addition to social and service activities for the members. The national MANRRS organization helps members network with each other and with partner organizations and companies that provide job opportunities.
Rainey said, "Membership is open to anyone with an interest in promoting diversity and inclusion in agriculture, natural resources and related sciences." Membership categories include student, professional, associate, affiliate and business.
For more information on MANRRS, contact Rainey in the Department of Agricultural Economics and Agribusiness.
PHOTO CAPTIONS:
PHOTO NO. 1 -- University of Arkansas graduate student Jeremiah Wilson, president of the U of A chapter of MANRRS, shows elementary school children how to make invisible ink from lemon juice during the Apple Glen Elementary School Math, Science and Technology Night Jan. 18, 2007.
PHOTO NO. 2 -- University of Arkansas graduate student Tiffany Ellison shows elementary school children (and parents) how to work Sudoku puzzles during the Apple Glen Elementary School Math, Science and Technology Night Jan. 18.
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3. MLK Speaker Relates Achievements of Blacks in Agriculture. Dr. Handy Williamson, vice provost for international programs at the University of Missouri in Columbia, spoke about "African Americans' Struggles and Achievements in Agriculture" at noon Friday as part of a weeklong observance of Martin Luther King Day at the University of Arkansas.
Williamson's address, in the AFLS Building's Hembree Auditorium, was co-sponsored by Dale Bumpers College of Agricultural, Food and Life Sciences and the UA chapter of MANRRS, which stands for Minorities in Agriculture, Natural Resources and Related Sciences.
On Thursday, Williamson joined the MANRRS students for a service project at Apple Glen Elementary School in Bentonville. He and the UA students helped conduct "Math, Science and Technology Night" activities for the elementary students.
"I was very impressed with your MANRRS chapter," Williamson said. "They are helping to build bridges between Bumpers College and the university and the community while developing their leadership and communication skills."
In his address, Williamson reviewed the history of African Americans in agriculture, beginning with the origins of civilization and crop cultivation in the Nile Valley of Africa.
Research has revealed that the native ingenuity of Africans was seen in many innovations by slaves, for which their masters received credit, Williamson said.
"The record of black inventions and other accomplishments in agriculture since slavery is just astounding," said Williamson.
He provided details on well known and lesser-known African American leaders in agriculture from Henry Blair, inventor of the corn planter and cotton planter, to Clifford Wharton, an agricultural economist and president of Michigan State University in the 1990s.
Williamson said the 17 historically black "1890 land-grant universities" in the United States, including the U of A at Pine Bluff and Alcorn State University, his alma mater in Mississippi, have produced many accomplished scientists, educators and professionals.
Williamson received a doctorate in agricultural economics from the University of Missouri in 1974, M.S. degrees from Missouri and Tennessee State, a B.S. degree from Alcorn State, and an associate's degree from Pineywood Jr. College, Pineywood, Mississippi.
A former head of the department of agricultural economics at the University of Tennessee, Williamson currently holds tenure as a professor of agricultural economics at MU. His research and publications include studies of land use, resource management, manpower training and efficiency of small and large farms. He has been a consultant on projects and review teams in Africa, the Caribbean, the Far East, the European Union and the United States.
PHOTO CAPTION: Handy Williamson
Dr. Handy Williamson, vice provost and professor of agricultural economics, International Programs and Strategic Initiatives at the University of MIssouri-Columbia, speaks with graduate student Sherea Dillon, vice president of the U of A chapter of MANRRS, before a lecture Jan. 19. Williamson spoke on the topic of the history of African Americans in agriculture during a program to honor Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
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4. Entomologists Visit Monarchs in Mexico. (By Fred Miller) Standing in the midst of swarming monarch butterflies, high in the central volcanic mountains of Mexico, Robert Wiedenmann said he felt like he was in a blizzard.
"But the snowflakes were four inches across and black and orange," Wiedenmann said. "It was nearly disorienting because of the sheer numbers flying by and hitting you in the face and mouth."
Wiedenmann, head of the UA Entomology Department, with colleagues from Purdue University, the University of Kentucky and the Illinois Natural History Survey, led a group of entomology graduate students Jan. 3-7 to two mountain preserves where millions of monarchs from the U.S. and Canada spend the winter.
The butterfly preserves are near Angangueo in the state of Michoacan, about 150 miles west of Mexico City. The group visited the Chincua preserve, located at an elevation of about 11,000 feet, and El Rosario, between 12,000 and 13,000 feet.
The U of A entomology students were Craig Shelton of Lonoke; Jackie McKern of Mount George; Stephanie Hebert of Rayne, La.; Becky Trout of Lexington, Ky.; Robin Verble of Evansville, Ill.; Tara Wood of East Peoria, Ill.; and John Riggins of Riverton, Neb.
Luis Rodriguez, a colleague from Mexico, and his 9-year-old son, Damian, joined the U of A group. Rodriguez is a researcher with the Instituto Nacional de Investigaciones Forestales, Agricolas y Pecuarias, Mexico's equivalent to the USDA Agricultural Research Service.
"It was like a circus," Wiedenmann said. "But I liked the large, diverse group."
Chincua and El Rosario are two of only a handful of Mexican preserves set aside for the protection of over-wintering monarchs, Wiedenmann said.
"All monarchs east of the Rocky Mountains, about three-quarters of the population in North America, migrate to these mountains every winter," Wiedenmann said. "It's one of the true biological spectacles of the world."
Pinning down a number for how many monarchs migrate to Mexico is difficult, though the number is likely more than 100 million, Wiedenmann said. Monarchs tagged as far north as Minnesota and parts of Canada have been recorded as making the trip to the mountains around Anquangueo.
Wiedenmann said no other butterflies have migrations on this scale.
"The monarchs cluster overnight high in the trees," Wiedenmann said. "When the morning sun warms them sufficiently, they 'explode' out of the trees and fly down slope to feeding areas."
"The sound of their wings was heard even above our conversations," he said. "It was almost like hearing the wind through the trees, but there was no wind."
One of the most interesting things about the annual migration is that the monarchs in Mexico now have never been there before. Monarchs go through five to six generations a year.
"The monarchs that over-winter in Mexico go through one generation during their northward migration in the spring," Wiedenmann said. There are a couple more generations in the life cycle over summer, but then the butterflies make the southward migration to Mexico in the lifespan of a single generation, typically returning to the very same trees as their ancestors.
"How do they know where to go?" Wiedenmann asked. It remains one of the many mysteries of the monarch migration, he said.
Because the monarchs do not breed during the winter, the generation that makes the trip to Mexico is the same that begins the return migration to the U.S. and Canada.
"The northward migration lasts longer than the southward one because they are breeding along the way and following the growing season of milkweed, the exclusive food source for immature monarchs," Wiedenmann said.
Wiedenmann went to the same area two years ago with a group of entomology department heads from several other institutions. The January excursion was an exploratory tour aimed at making it an annual trip with faculty and students from multiple institutions. Wiedenmann plans to develop a companion short course for credit.
"A trip like this lets the students see this amazing natural event and, at the same time, experience a culture very different from their own," Wiedenmann said.
PHOTO CAPTIONS:
PHOTO NO. 1 -- The U of A group that toured the monarch butterfly preserves in Mihoacan, Mexico included, front row from left, Robin Verble, Becky Trout, Jackie McKern and Stephanie Hebert. Back row: Lauren Fryxell, John Riggins, Matt McKern, Rob Wiedenmann and Craig Shelton. Not shown are Tara Wood and Michelle Gardner.
PHOTO NO. 2 -- Monarchs spend the freezing nights clustered in mountain fir trees for warmth. The morning sun warms the clusters until the butterflies explode in a swarm of color to spend the day feeding in meadows.
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5. Food and Beverage Innovations Competition - Intent to Enter Deadline is Feb. 16. Do you have an idea of a food or beverage product that should be on the grocery store shelves but isn't? Put your creative energy to work in the Food and Beverage Innovations Competition hosted by the Department of Food Science. All U of A students are encouraged to participate. Go to foodscience.uark.edu for entry and competition requirements. $2,250 in cash prizes will be awarded to students! Intent to enter deadline is Feb. 16.
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6. Student Writing Contest Offers Cash and Trip - Deadline is Feb 1. Bumpers College students are invited to enter a writing contest sponsored by Arkansas Women in Agriculture, Inc., on the topic of "My role in agriculture in 2020." Male and female undergraduate students in Arkansas colleges are eligible to enter. The deadline for entries has been extended to February 1.
Two finalists will receive a $250 cash prize and free registration, meals and lodging to attend the 2007 Arkansas Women in Agriculture conference in Hot Springs March 8-9. The finalists will be honored during the conference.
Essays must be 1,000 words or less, double-spaced, 12 pt. font, with 3-5 references or sources to support information in the essay. For more details e-mail arwomeninag@gmail.com or contact Dr. Jennie Popp, AEAB. Information on the 2007 conference and the writing competition will soon be available at www.arwomeninag.com.
AAES and Bumpers College Web sites:
http://aaes.uark.edu/
http://bumperscollege.uark.edu/