The
Report.com
Entomology unit gets top national
ranking
Article
Launched: 12/02/2007 07:34:16 AM PST
The Department of Entomology at the University of California,
Davis,
is ranked No. 1 in the country, in rankings just released by the Chronicle of
Higher Education.
"This was for our remarkable
performances in faculty scholarly productivity, scientific citations per
faculty, percentage of faculty with a journal publication, number of journal
publications per faculty, and grantsmanship, among
other factors," said Walter
Leal, professor and chair of the
Department of Entomology. Last year the Chronicle
ranked the UC Davis Department of Entomology as No. 8 in the country.
"We're back at the top where we belong," Leal said. The Chronicle of
Higher Education is considered the top news and job-information source for
college and university faculty members, administrators and students. The 2007
index compiles overall institutional rankings on 375 universities that offer
the Ph.D. degree. Faculty members can be judged on as many as five factors,
depending on the most important variables in the given discipline: books
published; journal publications; citations of journal articles; federal-grant
dollars awarded; and honors and awards. UC
Davis scored 1.87 in the faculty scholarly
productivity index, outdistancing the 1.44 index of the University of Wisconsin,
the runner-up.
UC Davis scored a perfect 100
percent for percentage of faculty with a journal publication. Other top
categories included journal publications per faculty, an average of 12.39; and
percentage of faculty with a journal publication cited by another work, 94
percent. Citations of journal articles per faculty averaged 70.28.
The average amount of
grant funding per faculty member for the past fiscal year totaled $412,251.
Thirty-three percent of the faculty received a new grant. Eleven percent of the
faculty received an award, according to the data collected.
The Entomology
Department is the home of the Bohart Museum of
Entomology, which houses more than seven million specimens. It is also involved
with projects at the Jepson Prairie Reserve in Vacaville, the Harry H. Laidlaw Jr. Honey Bee
Research Facility, the UC Davis Superfund Basic Research and Training and the
statewide UC Mosquito Research Program. Grant
data were collected from the National Institutes of Health, the National
Science Foundation, the U.S. Department of Education, the
National Endowment for the Humanities, the U.S. Department of Agriculture,
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and from three programs in the
Department of Energy. For awards and honors, data were collected from the Web
sites of 357 organizations that grant awards and honors and they are matched to
names and programs.
The department traces
its beginnings back to 1907 when a UC Berkeley
professor lectured on whiteflies at a farmers' short course in Davis. UC Davis launched its
two-year entomology program in 1913, leading to degrees offered in 1923-24.
Areas of emphasis
include biological control, economic entomology, pollination biology, insect
chemical ecology, insect olfaction, insect demography, insect physiology,
insect toxicology, integrated pest management, ecology and evolution, forensic
entomology, medical entomology (human and animal health) and systematics.
Headquartered in Briggs
Hall, the department enjoys a fusion of teaching faculty, Cooperative Extension
specialists, professional researchers, international scholars, graduate and
undergraduate students, and academic and staff support. The department's work
on fundamental and applied problems has led to ground-breaking scientific
discoveries, integrated pest management approaches in California's
agricultural and urban environments, management of insect-vectored human diseases
and a global impact that stretches from UC
Davis to Africa and South
America and beyond, Leal said.
Department faculty
housed at the UC Kearney Agricultural Center, Parlier, conduct research
involving insect-plant interactions, economy entomology, and mosquito-borne
diseases, such as West Nile virus and malaria.
In addition, related research spans a variety of UC ecological preserves and
biological field stations, including the Stebbins Cold Canyon Reserve in the Vaca Mountains; Sierra Foothill Research and Extension
Center, in Northern California's foothills; Sagehen
Creek Field Station, near Truckee; Jepson Prairie Reserve in Vacaville; Bodega
Marine Reserve; Hopland Field State near Ukiah; Wolfskill
Experiment Orchard in Winters; UC South Coast Research and Extension Center in
Irvine; and the Blodgett Experimental Forest in the Sierra Nevada Mountains.
Graduate students in
the entomology program, or housed in entomology, conduct research in insect
demography, medical entomology, insect systematics,
biological control, integrated pest management, insect biochemistry, insect
ecology, insect pathology, biology and evolution of insects, aquatic ecology,
insect physiology, environmental toxicology, apiculture, horticultural
entomology, and insect vectors of plant pathogens.
Many of the UC Davis Department of Entomology
alumni now chair entomology departments at other universities or hold higher
administrative posts; head professional scientific organizations; or lead teams
advancing scientific studies. Fifty-five alumni hold university faculty
positions.