It may have been a quiet summer for most of campus but definitely one of major change for the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, where four departments busied themselves preparing to merge into one Department of Plant Sciences.

Although the merger proposal is still winding its way through the official campus approval process, the departments of Agronomy and Range Science, Environmental Horticulture, Pomology and Vegetable Crops began operating together as of July 1.

The nascent department is led by an executive leadership council headed by Chris van Kessel, current chair of the agronomy and range science department. The council also includes vice chairs Jim Hill and Ken Shackel, who will oversee extension and outreach, and teaching and curriculum development, respectively. Joe DiTomaso, Beth Mitcham and John Yoder will serve as section chairs for the three departmental sections of crop and ecosystem sciences, horticultural sciences, and agricultural plant biology, respectively. Larry Hansen will be the new department manager.

The proposed Department of Plant Sciences will have more than 600 employees, including 85 faculty members, housed in seven buildings across campus. It will run five experimental farms on campus, covering more than 1,000 acres.

The idea to combine the four departments was spawned during the severe budget cuts of the past three years, as the college took a hard look at how to streamline operations without compromising its ability to carry out its mission.

"Many of our peer institutions consider UC Davis to have the premier plant sciences program in our country, if not the world," said Neal Van Alfen, dean of the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences. "It's imperative with this type of reputation that we constantly seek ways to strengthen and improve our programs, even during times of significant financial challenge.

"The merger will provide many opportunities for exciting new programs in plant science teaching, research and outreach," he added. "I look forward to this new department continue as the international leader in plant sciences innovations.

"The new department will be a bit leaner, but the big driving force was the teaching side," said van Kessel, explaining that by combining resources, the consolidated department should be better positioned to fulfill the college's teaching responsibilities.

Faculty of the proposed department have already been rethinking its curricula with an eye to establishing new areas of emphasis within a plant sciences major, perhaps in the areas of weed science and invasive species, sustainable agriculture, and ecosystem management and restoration.

But the new plant science major probably won't be offered until 2006, and, this year, students will largely be unaffected by the merger.

The proposed combination of the four departments was accomplished without any staff layoffs, van Kessel said. "In fact, we're hiring people as fast as we can for vacancies in information technology and accounting that were created by several recent retirements," he said.

Administrative offices consolidate

Administrative staff throughout the four departments moved this summer into new combined offices. The human resources office and van Kessel's office are located on the first floor of the Plant and Environmental Sciences Building, the business office is in Wickson Hall, and the information technology office is in Asmundson Hall. The outreach and extension office will likely be in the Plant Reproductive Biology building.

The three sections planned for the combined department are intended simply to make merit and promotion activities manageable for such a large number of faculty members. All faculty members can choose with which section they want to affiliate.

Electronic technology will be put to better use in the day-to-day business of the new department, van Kessel said. He is encouraged that, with its size, the department will be able to invest in specialized positions strictly committed to activities such as programming and Web management.

"We have to do more and more online, everything from purchasing to promotions," he said. As a result, the new department is finding it needs to significantly upgrade its information technology system. Balancing increased efficiencies with the need to upgrade technology, the merger financially is likely to be "a wash," he said.

Name recognition concerns

Although the merger seems to be moving along well, van Kessel notes the melding of the four departments was not without its rocky spots. His own department, agronomy and range science, originally was quite reluctant to join in the merger.

"The Department of Agronomy and Range Science has been part of UC Davis since day one -- almost 100 years," he said. As a result, the department was well recognized by stakeholders and enjoyed strong financial support from its alumni. Faculty members feared that as they lost their departmental name with which alumni were so strongly associated, contributions might also fall away.

"But we realized that if we didn't go along, the other three departments could go forward with a partial consolidation, which would leave agronomy and range science in a weakened position in obtaining resources," van Kessel said. "We decided it was better to operate as part of the new plant sciences department, rather than be left on the sideline."

The faculty of all four departments voted on the proposed merger in May of this year, with 80 percent voting in favor. Once the decision was made, even those who had misgivings have cooperated with the merger, van Kessel noted.

"The name change reflects a forward-looking department," he said. "We have to just make sure that our alumni and other stakeholders realize that the traditional activities of the individual departments will still continue, but now under the name of Plant Sciences."

To retain the strong ties that the four departments have developed over the years with industry and other off-campus constituents, the proposed plant sciences department will maintain the research and information centers now operating in the areas of agronomy, rangeland, fruits and nuts, postharvest technology, ornamental horticulture, vegetables and weeds. A similar outreach function will be carried out by the Seed Biotechnology Center.

As the proposed merger awaits formal approval from the chancellor and provost, the plant sciences executive council and the chairs of the four departments meet weekly as a transition committee. Because the merged department is not yet official, funds still go to the chairs of the four separate departments.

This summer, Dean Van Alfen allocated three new faculty positions for the upcoming year to the Department of Plant Sciences. A new academic plan for the department is currently being written, and the recruitment process will start this fall.

Van Kessel praises the work of Vito Polito, chair of the pomology department, who shepherded the strategic planning and implementation process for the merger.

"He deserves a lot of credit for not just throwing up his hands," van Kessel said. "He did a marvelous job."

Reserving judgement

Only time will tell whether the proposed Plant Sciences Department is a success, says van Kessel, explaining that he'll be looking for tangible measurements like significant increases in research grant funding, an increase in undergraduate and graduate student enrollment, higher impact of published research, and an increase in the recognition by the department's stakeholders of its outreach and extension efforts.

But he cautions that all of this will not occur overnight.

"It reminds me very much of when I moved to UC Davis from Canada eight years ago," he recalled, smiling. He and his wife agreed that they wouldn't even attempt to evaluate the wisdom of the move until they had been here three years.

"If you had asked us after the first or even second year, we would have said we should never have moved, but after the third year, we realized it was the best thing we had ever done," he said.

He's hoping faculty and staff will do likewise with the departmental merger.

"You have to give it time to settle out," he says. "If after three years we come to the conclusion that the merger was the worst thing we could ever have done, then we should be open about it and talk."