Editor's Note

SUSPROT article

A Look Back

Faculty Spotlight

Graduate Student Interview

Catching Up with an Alum

Undergraduate Profile

Upcoming Events

Recent Publications

Contact Us

Students studying sustainable agriculture at UC Davis will have the opportunity to study and conduct research abroad thanks to a multi-institution grant from the US Department of Education. The project-oriented SUSPROT (Sustainable Crop Protection) program is designed to prepare agricultural students for work in a global market economy and to encourage research in sustainable crop protection methods.

The program will promote transatlantic academic cooperation between universities with strong crop/plant science programs through a combination of coursework and research. American universities will provide on-line courses for their European counterparts, taught by participating faculty members. Faculty from each institution will conduct site visits and give public presentations about chemical ecology and sustainable agriculture. Undergraduate and graduate students will travel to participating international institutions to take courses and conduct research.

The international faculty coordinating the program has identified the broad topic of sustainable agriculture as the basis for the cooperative venture, and will concentrate their initial efforts on an important component of this topic, chemical ecology. Exchange students in any area related to sustainable agriculture (including but not limited to plant pathology, entomology, nematology, IPM, and biological control) are encouraged to participate.

"This projects paves the way for scientific collaborations between our faculty, graduate, and undergraduate students with counterparts from European universities," says Dr. Walter Leal, entomology professor and coordinator of the SUSPROT project on the UC Davis campus. The project aims at promoting scientific cooperation and collaborative education with the intent that it will lead to longer-term transatlantic cooperation in agricultural research.

The project is a collaboration among three universities in the U.S.- UC Davis, Penn State, and University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign - and four in the European Union - Institut National Agronomique Paris-Grignon (France), Hohenheim (Germany), Wageningen University and Research Centre (The Netherlands), Gembloux Agricultural University (Belgium). A total of 42 students and twelve faculty across all participating institutions will be involved in the exchange component of this program, but many more will benefit in the multinational collaboration by interacting with international visitors and viewing on-line presentations and courses.

According to Leal, the program is sure to benefit the Entomology Department at UC Davis and will "further strengthen our world-class graduate program in entomology."