Macdonald Campus Building a Healthier and More Prosperous World
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z Macdonald Campus Building a Healthier and More Prosperous World { CASE FOR SUPPORT } October 2007 E 200 Building a Healthier and More Prosperous World When Sir William Macdonald founded McGill’s Macdonald College in 1907, he aimed to revolutionize education in what he called the three pillars of society: home, farm and school. One hundred years later, our focus has changed, but Sir William’s vision and passion live on. The massive changes taking place in our world today – climate change, pathogens tainting our food and water, political conflicts caused by water and resource scarcity, the decimation or extinction of species, obesity in the developed world and famine in the developing world – are adding increased urgency to the agricultural and environmental sciences. Researchers and practitioners are in a race against time to discover solutions to maintain clean air, soil and water, to protect biodiversity in ecosystems and to find green alternatives for fossil fuels and CO2- producing crops. With its tradition of pioneering, interdisciplinary work in applied biosciences, food and nutrition and the environment, McGill’s Faculty of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences (FAES) on the Macdonald Campus is finding solutions to some of the most urgent problems shaping the 21st century. Agriculture programs in the past focused on basic production: getting the maximum yield from plants or animals. Now, leading faculties such as FAES are focusing on research and training at the cellular and molecular levels to develop: Value-added products such as foods that provide enhanced nutrition as well as substances that can lead to improved health (functional foods); Plants that can sequester carbon or provide biofuels; Crops that can tolerate droughts require less fertilizer and self-protect against agricultural pests. The goal is to make it possible to undertake economic crop and animal production without causing soil, air and water pollution, while at the same time producing safe food products that meet the nutrition requirements necessary for healthy populations. A Century of Making History From the College’s beginnings in 1907, researchers at Macdonald have made their mark, breeding new, resilient crop varieties that made agriculture more efficient and less risky. In the 1960s, soil scientists Angus MacKenzie and Gerard Millette substantially increased crop yields in Quebec by training farmers to use a scientific approach to land management. 1 300 Around the same time, pioneering animal scientist John Moxley examined both genetic and environmental factors in cattle to dramatically increase milk production in Quebec. The Dairy Herd Analysis Service that he started evolved into Valacta, a Quebec Dairy Production Centre of Expertise that transfers the latest research findings to the province’s dairy producers. From its inception, Mac was producing more than 50 per cent of the country’s PhDs in agricultural studies. Plant pathologist Margaret Newton, BAS’18, one of the first women to graduate from Mac in agriculture, became a national hero when she led the effort to vanquish stem rust, a fungus that attacked wheat and threatened the livelihoods of farmers across the country. John Todd, BSc(Agr)’61, MSc’63, is widely recognized as the inventor of “living machines,” which use plants, bacteria, fish, snails and microbes to clean up waste water in treatment facilities throughout the world. Mac graduates have prospered in sectors outside agriculture as well: in business (scores of executives, including former Suncor Oil CEO Ross Hennigar, BSc(Agr)’51); in academe (Robert Newton, BSA’12, the president of the University of Alberta for almost a decade); and even in literature (one of Canada’s greatest poets, Irving Layton, BSc(Agr)’39, MA’46). Key Strengths in Teaching and Research The Faculty, located on the green jewel of the Macdonald Campus, exemplifies McGill’s strengths in multidisciplinary studies and international diversity, while bringing its own unique advantages to the problems facing the developing and developed world. Factors that set Macdonald apart Hands-on learning, whether in labs or local/remote field sites, has been a fundamental element of teaching programs at Macdonald for a century. The Faculty’s dedicated financial support for undergraduate research programs allows students to design real-life experiments in a laboratory, field site, clinic or local community, building critical thinking skills and promoting interest in research careers. Interdisciplinary collaboration has long been a defining characteristic of McGill’s academic culture, and FAES is a leader in multidisciplinary research and education, addressing issues that benefit from a wide range of expertise. The McGill School of Environment, a partnership between three faculties including FAES, broadens students’ perspectives on some of the most important problems facing the planet. FAES is also designing new multidisciplinary graduate programs to prepare students to work across disciplinary and national boundaries, in order to find environmental and water management solutions. The “living laboratories” of FAES – protected ecosystems such as the R. Howard Webster Farm Centre, the Morgan Arboretum, the Stoneycroft Wildlife Area and the Molson Reserve – lie in the heart of Montreal’s urban environment. The Faculty’s FACULTY OF AGRICULTURAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES 2 0.000 professors and students need only walk out the door to study the impact of climate change, human traffic and urbanization on sensitive terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems. Mac’s location near daycares, schools and a veterans hospital also provides researchers at the School of Dietetics and Human Nutrition with enhanced access to study the human population from cradle to grave. State-of-the-art laboratories, equipment and farm operations, including the newly renovated large- and small-animal research units; the R.H. Webster Centre with specialized research facilities and commercial-based dairy, swine and poultry operations; and the Mary Emily Clinical Nutrition Research Unit. Benchmarks of Success The impact of Macdonald’s 92 professors, more than 1,300 students and$12.5-million (2005/06) in annual research funding can be readily quantified: International Research Impact: FAES professors conduct almost $9- million worth of research per year with international partners, including the World Health Organization, the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) (Macdonald was designated a UNEP Collaborating Centre in Environmental Impact Assessment in 2003) and the UN Food and Agriculture Organization. Strong and growing demand from prospective students: In contrast to the experience of peer institutions across Canada, undergraduate enrolment at the Macdonald Campus increased by 11 per cent in 2006-2007, a demonstration of the quality and relevance of its curriculum. About 20 per cent of undergraduate and more than 45 per cent of graduate students come from outside Canada. Almost 55 per cent of undergraduates claim a mother tongue other than English, including almost 35 per cent who cite French as their first language. Highly accomplished professors: The quality and intensity of research is reflected in the high number of chairs and distinctions at Mac: nine Canada Research Chairs, one NSERC Northern Chair, six James McGill Professors and four William Dawson Scholars. The McGill and Dawson awards are the highest honour McGill bestows on its faculty members. Innovative research centres, laboratories and networks We live in a time in which complex problems require complex thinking across many disciplines – and that reaches out beyond the campus to involve partners throughout the economy and around the world. Macdonald’s networks of expertise reach across both McGill’s campuses, throughout McGill’s health sciences network, into the broader community and around the world. The Brace Centre for Water Resources Management undertakes research, teaching and specialized training in water resources management in Quebec, Canada and internationally. Dean Chandra Madramootoo was the Centre’s founding director; The Green Crop Network, led by plant scientist Don Smith, brings Canada’s top plant researchers together with the federal government and industry partners to come up with new ways to use crops to reduce greenhouse gases, provide alternative energy sources and mitigate climate change; 3 100 The Centre for Host-Parasite Interactions studies the mechanisms of parasitic pathogenesis and host defence and the molecular basis of drug resistance. Dr. Roger Prichard and his team of graduate students published a study in June 2007 showing that a 20-year effort to control the spread of river blindness in Africa is threatened by the development of drug resistance in the parasite that causes the disease; The Centre for Indigenous Peoples’ Nutrition and Environment develops research and education programs to address concerns about traditional food systems of Aboriginal peoples around the world; in a project for International Polar Year (IPY), Grace Egeland’s work concentrates on how the Inuit will adapt to changes including climate, globalization and Westernization; The Sustainable Forest Management Network, directed by Tomlinson Professor of Forest Ecology Jim Fyles, brings together government, industry, academia, Aboriginal groups and NGOs to develop integrated sustainable forest management practices; The Collaborating Centre in Environmental Assessment – North America’s only university member in the United