Revised December 8, 2016 Board of Governors, State University System of Florida Request to Offer a New Degree Program (Please do not revise this proposal format without prior approval from Board staff) University of Florida Fall 2021 University Submitting Proposal Proposed Implementation Term Horticultural Sciences, Agronomy, School of Forest Resources and Conservation, College of Agricultural and Life Sciences Environmental Horticulture Name of College(s) or School(s) Name of Department(s)/ Division(s) Doctor of Philosophy Plant Breeding Academic Specialty or Field Complete Name of Degree 01.1104 Proposed CIP Code The submission of this proposal constitutes a commitment by the university that, if the proposal is approved, the necessary financial resources and the criteria for establishing new programs have been met prior to the initiation of the program. President Date Date Approved by the University Board of Trustees Date Date Signature of Chair, Board of Vice President for Academic Trustees Affairs Provide headcount (HC) and full-time equivalent (FTE) student estimates of majors for Years 1 through 5. HC and FTE estimates should be identical to those in Table 1 in Appendix A. Indicate the program costs for the first and the fifth years of implementation as shown in the appropriate columns in Table 2 in Appendix A. Calculate an Educational and General (E&G) cost per FTE for Years 1 and 5 (Total E&G divided by FTE). Projected Implementation Projected Program Costs Enrollment Timeframe (From Table 2) (From Table 1) Contract & E&G Cost E&G Auxiliary HC FTE Grants Total Cost per FTE Funds Funds Funds Year 1 5 3.5 $34,473 $120,657 $33,278 $0 $273,935 Year 2 10 7.25 Year 3 15 11 Year 4 20 14.5 Year 5 20 14.5 $23,174 $336,027 $210,063 $0 $1,026,091 Note: This outline and the questions pertaining to each section must be reproduced within the body of the proposal to ensure that all sections have been satisfactorily addressed. Tables 1 through 4 are to be included as Appendix A and not reproduced within the body of the proposals because this often causes errors in the automatic calculations. 1
Revised December 8, 2016 INTRODUCTION I. Program Description and Relationship to System-Level Goals A. Briefly describe within a few paragraphs the degree program under consideration, including (a) level; (b) emphases, including majors, concentrations, tracks, or specializations; (c) total number of credit hours; and (d) overall purpose, including examples of employment or education opportunities that may be available to program graduates. The University of Florida is one of the most active and innovative land-grant universities in plant breeding and variety licensing in the country. The university employs 27 faculty positions, breeding 50 plant species in four academic departments (Agronomy, Horticultural Sciences, Environmental Horticulture, and the School of Forest Resources and Conservation - SFRC) within the Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences (UF/IFAS). However, we are the largest land-grant university in the country without a formal plant breeding graduate education program. Furthermore, a plant breeding graduate degree program is currently not offered in the state of Florida. The interdisciplinary Ph.D. degree in Plant Breeding is proposed to fill the demand for breeding research and for educating new plant breeding graduates. The program will create a framework and administrative structure to leverage resources, faculty, courses, and student recruitment, which will attract federal and private funding and increase the number of graduate STEM degrees awarded at UF. It will be administered by the UF/IFAS College of Agricultural and Life Sciences (CALS) to provide a comprehensive plant breeding education. Our integrated curriculum will equip students with traditional and contemporary breeding methodologies, including molecular techniques (e.g. genomic prediction and genome editing), quantitative genetics, and analysis of breeding trials. Our curriculum was developed upon consultation with industry, non-profit, and academic sectors. The CALS plant breeding graduate program will prepare breeders proficient to work in both academia and industry, and thus supply the large demand that exists for plant breeders. The proposed Ph.D. degree will require a minimum of 90 credit hours beyond the bachelor’s degree. To graduate in the program, students are required to have a minimum of 40 credits of coursework toward their major. This coursework will include required courses (20 credits) which will provide a strong foundation in experimentation, data analysis and plant breeding; followed by a minimum of 20 additional credits selected from an array of electives. Approved elective courses will be drawn both from within CALS as well as existing UF areas of expertise outside of CALS in genetics, statistics, biology, molecular biology, bioinformatics, and genomics. Over the past 30 years, 113 alumni have graduated from CALS graduate degree programs offered by the four departments mentioned above; however, none of them graduated with a formal plant breeding degree even though they all worked in plant breeding projects. Many of these graduates are now leading or employed in productive and innovative plant breeding programs in the public and private sector in the USA and internationally. Appendix F lists numerous examples of plant breeding graduates successfully employed in academia, industry, government and research institutions nationally and globally. We expect extensive student interest in this interdisciplinary STEM program. Dozens of inquiries from prospective students are received by each of the 27 UF plant breeders every year, and there 1
Revised December 8, 2016 is an extraordinary demand from the private sector for highly-qualified, specialized plant breeders (see Appendix E). B. Please provide the date when the pre-proposal was presented to CAVP (Council of Academic Vice Presidents) Academic Program Coordination review group. Identify any concerns that the CAVP review group raised with the pre-proposed program and provide a brief narrative explaining how each of these concerns has been or is being addressed. The pre-proposal was presented to the CAVP Academic Program Coordination review group on February 22, 2019. No concerns were raised. C. If this is a doctoral level program please include the external consultant’s report at the end of the proposal as Appendix D. Please provide a few highlights from the report and describe ways in which the report affected the approval process at the university. In the fall of 2019, four external reviewers who are highly recognized in the discipline of plant breeding were asked by Dr. Elaine Turner, Dean of the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences (CALS), to provide feedback on the Plant Breeding Ph.D. program full proposal. These were: Reviewer 1: Dr. William Tracy , Professor of Agronomy at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, former Department Chair. Dr. Tracy is a member of the graduate faculty of the interdepartmental graduate training program in Plant Breeding and Genetics, which is very similar in design and objectives to our proposed program. Reviewer 2: Dr. Wayne Smith , Professor of Cotton Breeding and Associate Department Head, Department of Soil and Crop Sciences at Texas A&M University, and Vice-Chair of the Plant Breeding Coordinating Committee (PBCC) Executive Committee. Reviewer 3: Dr. B. Todd Campbell , Research Geneticist, USDA-ARS, Coastal Plains Soil, Water, and Plant Research Center and former President of the National Association of Plant Breeders (NAPB). Reviewer 4: Dr. Rex Bernardo , Professor and Endowed Chair of corn breeding at the University of Minnesota, and former Associate Director of Graduate Studies and former Director of Graduate Studies in Applied Plant Sciences at the University of Minnesota. The four external reviewer reports are in Appendix D. All reviewers were positive and supportive, strongly endorsing the proposed University of Florida Ph.D. program. Regarding the overall merit of the proposed program, the reviewers emphasized that UF has, perhaps, the strongest public cultivar development program in the US, with a very strong faculty. Mobilizing this group toward a unified graduate curriculum and program will quickly move UF plant breeding into the top five programs if not the top three in the nation. The reviewers noted that the present lack of a plant breeding graduate program has been a missed opportunity for UF to become one of the leading Ph.D. plant breeding programs at present. Regarding the demand for Ph.D. plant breeders in the Southeast region, the United States and the world, the reviewers emphasized that “Demand for PhD plant breeders has been strong since the 1970 PVP act (Plant Variety Protection Act) and especially since the 1994 PVP act and 2
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