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Dean's Perspective

By Dr. James C. Cato
Senior Associate Dean and Director, SNRE

As we begin to settle into the fall season, it's a perfect time to reflect on our accomplishments and set our sights on new goals for the current academic year. SNRE programs continue to show tremendous success and growth. Our academic degree programs are recruiting students in the top of their field and admission has become increasingly competitive. The undergraduate Environmental Science Degree program has 112 students enrolled this fall; an increase for the third consecutive year. Our graduate Interdisciplinary Ecology Degree has 145 students this fall, with 61% enrolled as PhD students. This is another new high.

Likewise, our Extension programs continue to foster collaboration around the state. The Natural Areas Training Academy (NATA) held eight workshops during the past year, with 173 participants coming from 50 organizations. The Natural Resources Leadership Institute (NRLI) graduated 20 students in October. We worked with the Program for Resource Efficient Communities (PREC) to submit a major proposal to EPA to expand their research and Extension activities. And recently, we received a commitment from a private donor to fund a three-year land use and natural resource based economic development research and education program in Hamilton County in north Florida. That project will hold its organizational meeting in Hamilton County in late fall and begins with the start of the spring semester. It will involve faculty and graduate students from the College of Design, Construction and Planning, the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, three academic departments within those colleges and IFAS Extension in Hamilton County.

SNRE is also supporting our faculty and students by publicizing potential funding opportunities available to them. To meet this goal, a Grants Database (http://www.snre.ufl.edu/funding/grants.asp) has been developed to help our faculty workgroups identify funding possibilities and foster interdisciplinary research within our established workgroups. Additionally, Nancy Peterson, our Associate Director for Research and Outreach/Extension has participated on behalf of UF and SNRE in the annual meetings of the Cooperative Ecosystem Studies Units (CESU) to continue networking possibilities for our faculty and students. Participation with this network has proved to be a useful source of funding and has resulted in successful collaborations between faculty and federal agencies. Utilizing the South Florida-Caribbean CESU, our Academic Programs Director Dr. Stephen Humphrey secured funding through the National Park Service for five, two-year post-doctoral appointments. Dr. Humphrey has also secured supplemental grants to support faculty and student research. SNRE would like to increase involvement of faculty and staff in using the CESUs.

We have just completed our mini-grants competition for 2007-08. The goal of the Seed grant is to provide funding to interdisciplinary groups which allows them to collect data or other activity that enhances their ability to secure larger interdisciplinary extramural grants. The New Faculty grants work to help new professors design new and innovative programs aimed at environmental issues and challenges. This year SNRE funded four "new faculty" proposals and five "seed grants" projects, from 70 submissions. Contributors to the program this year were the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, the College of Engineering, the College of Law, the College of Veterinary Medicine, the College of Design Construction and Planning, the IFAS Dean for Research and the Vice President for Research.

As this academic year continues, we look forward to helping faculty and students create professional opportunities and secure funding to ensure success. One of our limiting factors of course is available budget. Like everyone in the university system, we are dealing with our share of budget reductions, but hopefully statewide economic conditions will soon improve and we can again progress in a growth mode.

We wish you a wonderful and exciting year. Go Gators!!

For more information about SNRE please read:

• Annual Report for 2006-07
• 2005-06 SNRE Mini-grant Program Report

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