Environmental Science and Technology was officially launched July 1. The new department, a consolidation of all the college's environmental science programs, aims to promote the conscientious management of natural, agricultural, and urban ecosystems. Staff will comprise personnel from two former departments, Biological Resources Engineering and Natural Resource Sciences and Landscape Architecture (NRSL). Meanwhile, NRSL has been renamed Plant Science and Landscape Architecture.

According to Dean Cheng-i Wei, "These two new departments are more focused in their missions, and the expertise of their faculty is better coordinated. Therefore, they will better serve the needs of our students and, indeed, all Marylanders.� Frank Coale, former NRSL chair, will head the new environmental department; William Kenworthy has been appointed acting chair of Plant Science and Landscape Architecture.

...graduate study at the University of Maryland in the college's Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics (AREC). The first seven reasons detail AREC's high international ranking. The next 29 list accomplishments of the award-winning faculty, which include a former assistant secretary of agriculture and five former senior staff economists on the President�s Council of Economic Advisors. Check 61 reasons... to find out about the remaining 25. Included is a list of the 44 major areas of faculty expertise.

For the second year running, a college Gemstone team has placed at the top. The PhARM Team, aka Phosphorus Agricultural Runoff Management, recently won the university's 2006 award for Outstanding Gemstone Team Thesis. The research behind PhARM's paper on water protection focused on selected industrial and municipal by-products and their ability to keep the nutrient phosphorus in agricultural soil. Acting as soil amendments, the by-products could find use in keeping phosphorus from polluting rivers and streams. PhARM Team mentor, Frank Coale, professor and chair of Environmental Science and Technology (ENST), was named 2006 Outstanding Gemstone Mentor.

In 2005 Team SWAMP (Sustainable Wetlands and Marsh Promotion) won first place for a thesis based on research of man-made wetlands and their effectiveness in controlling erosion. Associate professor Andy Baldwin, who headed the former Biological Resources Engineering department in 2005, mentored Team SWAMP. Baldwin currently works in the new ENST.

Gemstone, a four-year, university honors program, explores the interdependence of science and technology.

Budget-crunched cities like Baltimore long ago gave up landscaping their public parks. Even Federal Hill Park--which overlooks the downtown and Inner Harbor and served as a lookout during the Civil War--depends on volunteer gardeners. They do everything but cut the grass and prune the trees. Which is why programs like the Maryland Master Gardeners, run by University of Maryland Cooperative Extension under the coordination of senior Extension agent Jon Traunfeld, are invaluable. "Masters Gardeners," says Traunfeld, "are volunteer representatives of the university and spend between 40 and 50 hours in training and, to be certified, another 40 hours volunteering during their first year."

In Baltimore, Master Gardeners spent 3.2 man years developing community gardens. They also trained 110 community gardeners, introduced the community garden concept to 150 school students, and supplied the city with almost $138,000 worth of labor. All in 2005.

And in Howard County, the Master Gardener's Schools and Streams Program is now incorporated into the fifth grade public school curriculum. As part of the program 2,700 fifth graders--aided by the county's Department of Recreation and Parks--helped create a riparian forest buffer by planting 1,300 trees along a stream in the Patuxent River watershed.

Always wanted a water garden in your backyard? Delmarva Gardens offers a streaming video episode that shows you how to create one. University of Maryland Cooperative Extension educator Ginny Rosenkranz and Public Access Channel 14 in Salisbury and Wicomico Counties produce monthly episodes on gardens and landscaping. Episodes run 25 minutes on average. Rosenkranz, a commercial horticulture specialist, can lead you on a tour of the Salisbury Herb Garden, show you how to make compost, and teach you how to plant a butterfly garden. Episodes on these topics and more are available at Delmarva Gardens.

This summer marks the opening of our new Department of Environmental Science and Technology, which holds the promise of making the university an international leader in environmental science research, teaching, extension education, and outreach to our citizenry. I hope the new department will motivate the university's environmental faculty to reach beyond specific areas of expertise and not only learn about each other's research programs but engage in collaborative research, which can more effectively lead to solving critical problems.

My congratulations to the Department of Veterinary Medicine for securing more than $10 million in grant funding for the second quarter of this year. Associate Dean Siba Samal notes that this sum represents the highest per capita amount of grant funding secured by any university department for this period.

Congratulations also to:

• research associate Lenwood Hall and senior research scientist Dennis Burton, both with the Wye Research and Education Center in Queenstown. The Society for Risk Analysis has awarded their research paper, "An Integrated Case Study for Evaluating the Impacts of an Oil Refinery Effluent on Aquatic Biota in the Delaware River," the Ecological Risk Assessment Paper of the Year for 2005.
• David Lei, professor, nutrition and food science; Ellen Varley, senior agent emerita; Brad Paleg, distance learning specialist; Judy Quigley, conference and communications coordinator, Joint Institute for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition; and other members of the Food Safety Risk Analysis Team who received the Food and Drug Administration Leveraging/Collaboration Award for their use of outside competitive funds to develop four on-line professional development courses in food safety risk analysis.
• Jinhee Kim, associate professor, family studies, and Extension specialist, family and consumer sciences, for winning the university's Outstanding Woman of Color Award for 2006.