Amid the recognition that basketball has brought the University of Connecticut, as the women's team, then the men's, then the women again won a national championship, it is easy to forget that at its core, UConn is an agricultural school: cows, pigs, chickens, sheep, the whole barnyard.
The University, founded in 1881 as an agricultural school for men, has stuck to its farming roots, even as a modern liberal arts university has grown up around it and despite the decline in enrollment and of the number of farmers in general. In 1998, enrollment in the College of Agriculture and Natural Resources was 581, its lowest since it peaked in 1997 at 1,596 students. In 1999, the program had 863 students.
But the school's mission is no longer training young men and sending them back to the family farm. Environmental concerns and production demands fueled by population increases have forced dramatic changes in the science of agriculture. Scientists had to figure out how to produce more food and fiber on less land. They had to improve the quality of their product and lower the price. So now the college's goal is research.
It is that research, and recent breakthroughs in such fields as cloning, nutrition and satellite-aided mapping, that has gotten the university national recognition. "They are certainly a top-tier school because of their faculty and commitment to doing cutting edge research," said Henry Bahn, director of higher education programs for the United States Department of Agriculture. "Over all their programs are quite good." Mr. Bahn said UConn agriculture professors are frequently tapped to help develop teaching materials for colleges nationwide and their research is often used by Congress when debating issues related to agriculture.
Victor Budnick, president and executive director of Connecticut Innovations, a quasi- public venture capital firm in Rocky Hill, said there is great promise that the agricultural research done at UConn will lead to new, valuable pharmaceutical, animal and plant products. "UConn has the field pretty much to itself in the state," he said. "The breakthroughs are significant in keeping our agricultural businesses on the leading edge."
University researchers used new genetic technologies to develop disease-resistant rhododendrons, beef cattle with better quality meat, dairy cattle that produce higher quantities of milk, and sweet corn that tastes better. An UConn researchers are at work on a wide range of issues that affect everything from health to crop yields.
At the Storrs Agricultural Experiment Station, researchers are studying the causes of the West Nile virus and the disease killing lobsters in Long Island Sound. Nutrition experts study such things as how certain fatty acid foods may ensure healthy central nervous systems in newborns.
Other breakthroughs include:"We are really doing cutting edge research that relates to the environment and health and safety of people and sustainability of our agriculture," said Carol J. Lammi-Keefe, head of the nutritional sciences department within the college. "Agriculture today is something different from when the land grant university was established, but we are still addressing the issues at hand."
The agricultural college truly is not your father's college. UConn get its start in 1881, when brothers Augustus and Charles Storrs, two Connecticut businessmen, gave the state money to establish the school.
Russell Gray, a Voluntown farmer and president of the Connecticut State Grange, said the UConn was the premier place for farmers to learn about advanced agricultural practices. Its graduates often returned to the family farm.
Agriculture remained the focus of the university until 1940, when schools of education, engineering, home economics and social work were created and arts, sciences, and agriculture became colleges.
These days, few of the 200 or so graduates every year return to the family farm. Instead, they go on to become agricultural insurance agents or artificial insemination specialists if they are animal science majors, or food scientists if they are nutritional sciences majors.
Former natural resources majors are now firefighters for the United States Forest Service of fisheries research assistant for the state Department of Environmental Protection. One former resource economics major is a director of government relations for the Connecticut Farm Bureau and another is an economist for the United States Department of Commerce. "Students are coming out of there with a really good, practical handle on agriculture economics and marketing," said Shirley Ferris, commissioner of the State Department of Agriculture.
Ms. Ferris said the college recently opened a $14 million Agriculture Biotechnology Laboratory building, the first phase of a $20 million agriculture construction project.
Students in the center will join professors in studying genetic changes in plants and animals.
"I think the biotech center will be pivotal for the agriculture industry in this part of the country," Ms. Ferris said. "It will give students the skills and techniques that they need as we move into trying to feed an expanding world population."
Erin Sepe, a 21-year-old senior, is majoring in agriculture and resource economics. The Sandy Hook resident is paying her way through college, helped by the 50 sheep she raises on her family's three-acre lot. She sells the sheep, sells the wool and sometimes wins cash prized by showing them at livestock competitions.
Ms. Sepe, who grew up on a farm in New York, decided she needed a college education to improve her chance for success in the industry.
"I realized that it was great to have that practical, hands-on background, but that business skills would make me more valuable as an employee and as a business person," Ms. Sepe said. "I've had three offers and I haven't looked for a job yet."
Kirklyn M. Kerr, dean of the college of agriculture, said ana estimated 4,000 agriculture- related jobs go unfulfilled each year. College advisers tell Ms. Sepe she can expect her starting salary to be between $35,000 - $50,000. Ms. Sepe is leaning toward a job in a credit bureau for farmers in Connecticut, but she has also received offers from a retail and clothing shop in New York State that runs a sheep farm on site and from a retail garden center and bakery shop in Massachusetts.
The American Farm Bureau Federation said agriculture is the nation's largest employer with more than 22 million people working in some phase of the industry, from growing food to selling it at the supermarket. The bureau reported that the value of United States agricultural products sold in 1999 reached $208.2 billion. Meanwhile, Mr. Yang insisted that research at the college is the real reason UConn is gaining stature nationwide.
"We put UConn on the map," said Mr. Yang, as if oblivious to the men's and women's basketball teams.
That recognition has lead to an increase in grant money. When Mr. Kerr became dean of the college of agriculture in 1993, the college received $2.3 million in private and government grants. But in the past three years, the college has averaged more than $10 million a year in grants, an increase Mr. Kerr attributes to more aggressive grants campaigns and new faculty who attract investments.
Mr. Yang, who came to UConn from Cornell University in New York in 1996, perhaps is chief among them. In April, Connecticut Innovations Inc. awarded Mr. Yang $289,744 for research on cloning cows. The company hopes Mr. Yang's work will lead to high milk- producing cows and eventually cattle cloning businesses in the state.
Mr. Yang also recently received a $228,532 grant from the Biotechnology, Research and Development Corporation in Illinois and $294,660 from Connecticut Innovations for research on cloning pigs with modified organs for transfer to humans who need new livers, hearts or kidneys.
Mr. Gray and other farming experts acknowledge that public interest in agriculture has dramatically dropped in the past century.
That's primarily because about 100 years ago, nearly half of the country's population was required to produce its own food, according to UConn experts. Today just 2 to 3 percent of the nation's people are involved in farming.
"People continuously underestimate the vital importance of agriculture," said Bob Smith, dean of graduate affairs at UConn. It's critically important to the developing world. It's only a percent of the national economy, but it's a critical percent of the nation's economy."