Graduate students can now combine advanced agricultural studies at UC Davis and California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, through a new joint graduate-education program that will strengthen the research connection between the UC and CSU systems and provide top students for doctoral studies at UC Davis.
The McOmie Graduate Education Program, made possible by a private gift to the two universities, will give students the opportunity to start their master’s degree studies in Cal Poly’s College of Agriculture and continue their doctoral studies through graduate programs administered by UC Davis’ College of Agricultural and Environ-mental Sciences.
The new graduate program expands on the original vision behind the McOmie trust fund to include an array of graduate programs administered by the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences.
The program, launched in September with each institution contributing $35,000 for the first year, is subject to review every five years.
"This program will allow our faculty and students access to some advanced technologies and programs at Davis that we cannot provide at Cal Poly and will help develop relationships between the scientists at both institutions that will benefit the state of California," said Dave Wehner, interim dean of the College of Agriculture at Cal Poly.
The new program affirms the informal relationship between the two universities in the agricultural sciences that has been established over the years.
Gary Anderson, chair of the UC Davis animal science department, noted that several of his students who earned their bachelors’ degrees at Cal Poly have gone on to distinguish themselves in their graduate studies at UC Davis.
The McOmie Graduate Education Program is funded by a charitable remainder trust now valued at $20 million. The trust was established in 1975 by Lorenzo and Judith McOmie as a $5 million fund at UC Davis and Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo. It was dedicated to the support of research programs at both universities, especially in the areas of animal husbandry and field crops.
UC Davis’ $10 million share is the second largest gift ever to the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences.
Lorenzo McOmie was raised on farms from Idaho to California. He graduated from Stanford University in 1930 and began a career as a farmer and rancher, owning numerous properties throughout California’s Central Valley. He died in 2001, preceded by Judith in 1984.