Undergraduate Soil Science Education At Selected Land Grant Universities.

Soil science as an undergraduate discipline has been the axis of discussion by many educators and authors. Only within the past decade have articles surfaced focused solely on soil science education and reform. Halvin (2010) focused more on both undergraduate and graduate education to learn how the departments and employers view the discipline today and for future prominence.  Requests to reform soil science education have been made by authors (Lal, 2007; Hopmans, 2007) with very few studies published that suggest that the discipline is changing with the needs of society today.  A few articles (Savin et al, 2005; Barker et al, 2004; Thompson, 2003; Jungst, 2003) make suggestions on how institutions can and have changed their curriculum through evaluations, suggestions from students/faculty, and from employers with some success. Collins (2008) published an article in which she describe suggestions to increase the awareness of the discipline using enrollment data from UF’s Soil and Water Science classes and College of Agricultural and Life Sciences.  Therefore, the objectives of this study were to i) establish the status of undergraduate soil science programs at selected land grant universities  ii) explore how these selected land grant universities have persevered or perished in offering soil science degrees, and iii) offer solutions for increasing enrollment and awareness in soil science.