| Student News :: Spotlight |
New MajorsAgricultural and Environmental Science EducationConcerned that training of agricultural teachers is not keeping up with the demand for these specially trained educators, UC Davis developed a new agricultural and environmental science education major, offered for the first time fall 2007. The new major, a collaborative effort by the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences and the School of Education at UC Davis, will provide students with a broad background in agricultural and environmental sciences, as well as the social sciences related to human-resource development. It will equip them for teaching careers in schools and other educational programs including, for example, nature preserves and environmental camps. "With this new major, UC Davis will prepare teachers with the most comprehensive science background in the state," says Cary Trexler, a professor of education and master advisor for the new major. "Not only will our students be ready to teach agricultural and environmental science, they also will be credentialed to teach other science courses as well." After completion of the undergraduate degree, students would be prepared to enroll in the UC Davis School of Education's credential program, and could simultaneously earn a teaching credential and a master's of education degree in agricultural and environmental science in just six quarters, the equivalent of two school years at the university. "By educating more college students to be teachers, we are supporting the ongoing success of agriculture and the protection of our environmental resources in California," said Neal Van Alfen, dean of the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences. "At the same time, this major will help improve science literacy for Californians now and into the future." Middle East/South Asia StudiesThe new major in Middle East/South Asia Studies will be available to undergraduate students in the fall of 2008. An editorial in The California Aggie commended the student-led efforts to establish the major, and points out that in 1998, when the process to create the major was begun, UC Davis offered only two non-European languages: Chinese and Japanese. In spring 2005 students collected nearly 900 signatures on a petition requesting that the campus offer both Hindi/Urdu and Arabic as regular language classes within the UC Davis quarter system. By adding Hindi/Urdu and Arabic, UC Davis will be expanding to 12 the number of languages it teaches. UC Davis now offers 70 courses in its social science and humanities programs related to Middle East and South Asia studies, and the campus has 24 faculty members teaching regular courses in the area. Typically, South Asia is a regional term for India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Nepal and Bangladesh, though Afghanistan sometimes is included. The definition of the Middle East is more amorphous: For some it stretches from North Africa to the Arabian peninsula and north into Turkey, Iran and Afghanistan. For others, it is strictly the eastern Mediterranean Arab countries. The UC Davis program covers 35 countries. "The very act of defining the two regions can be political, given the diversity of religions, ethnic origins and languages, not to mention their histories as overlapping empires and colonies," said Suad Joseph, professor of anthropology and women and gender studies and director of the Middle East/South Asia Studies Program, who pointed out that the UC Davis program will take a historical approach. |