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Native
American Studies
Nematology
Neurobiology, Physiology, and Behavior
Neurological Surgery
Neurology
Nutrition
Native American Studies
The Department of Native American Studies
began as a program at UC Davis in 1969 under the direction of David
Risling (Hoopa) and Jack Forties (Powhatan). By 1970 Carl Gorman
(Navajo) and Kenneth Martin (Assiniboine) joined the faculty, and
Sarah Hutchison (Cherokee) joined soon after. All were also active
in the founding of D-Q University, a local Native American community
college.
The focus of Native American Studies is on the
indigenous peoples of the Americas, those peoples, nations, tribes,
and communities whose ancestors have lived in North, Central, and
South America from earliest times. Interdisciplinary in its scholarly
approach, the department offers a comprehensive and comparative
perspective, including attention to the increasing dislocation and
diaspora of indigenous peoples throughout the Americas.
Native American Studies gained departmental status
in 1993, the only such department in the UC system. In 1998 the
graduate program was approved, making UC Davis only the second university
in the nation to offer a Ph.D. in Native American Studies. As of
the year 2000, the department has two active emeriti faculty, Risling
and Forties, and seven regular faculty: George Longfish (Mohawk),
artist; Stefano Varese, anthropologist; Ines Hernandez Avila (Nez
Perce), creative writer and specialist in Native American religions;
Steven Crum (Shoshone), historian; Martha Macri (Cherokee), linguist;
Victor Montejo (Maya), anthropologist and creative writer; and Zoila
Mendoza, ethnomusicologist. A recently endowed chair promises to
enhance scholarly productivity and the national academic prestige
of the department.
The C. N. Gorman Museum (now Carl Gorman Museum)
was established in 1973 in honor of Carl Nelson Gorman, Navajo artist,
advocate, and former faculty member. Under the direction of George
Longfish the museum has achieved national prominence, hosting four
exhibits each year by contemporary Native American and other artists.
The department is actively involved in research.
To date, the department has hosted four UC Office of the President
postdoctoral fellows. The Maya Hieroglyphic Database Project has
brought three postdoctoral fellows to campus. The Indigenous Research
Center of the Americas, directed by Varese, was awarded a four-year
grant from the Rockefeller Foundation to sponsor the studies of
12 scholars from North, Central, and South America in language and
literature, performance, and political issues. The Sarah Hutchison
Library contains books, periodicals, and pamphlets on Native American
topics, and, as of 1999, serves as the graduate students' computer
lab. The Native American Language Center encourages linguistic research
on American Indian languages. The aim of the center is to develop
a sustained and productive relationship between American Indian
linguistic scholarship and the needs and aspirations of Native American
people. It encourages the active participation of scholars and students,
both native and non-native, in the task of language preservation
and revitalization. source
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Nematology
Beginning about 1915, research on plant parasitic nematodes was
conducted intermittently by staff members from the USDA, the California
Department of Agriculture, and the California Agricultural Experiment
Station. Accumulation of evidence of the importance of nematodes
as pests of agricultural crops led in 1943 to the appointment of
a nematologist in the Department of Entomology and Parasitology
at UC Berkeley. In 1947 a nematologist was hired in the Department
of Plant Pathology at UC Riverside, and in 1948 an additional nematologist
was appointed at Berkeley.
The success in controlling nematodes with chemicals in California
and elsewhere from the late 1940s to the early 1950s focused the
attention of the agricultural industry and the university on the
need for expanding research on nematodes and nematode-induced plant
diseases. In 1953 the state legislature, in response to industry
requests, provided the university with funds for substantially increasing
nematological research. Thus the University of California became
the first academic institution to recognize nematology as a field
of science distinct from plant pathology, entomology, or parasitology.
A statewide Department of Plant Nematology was established in 1954
with staff located at Berkeley, Davis, and Riverside. In 1959 the
transfer of staff to the Davis campus closed nematological research
at UC Berkeley. By 1962 the research competency of the staff had
broadened sufficiently for the university to approve of a name change
to the Department of Nematology because research had moved beyond
plant nematodes. In 1965 the statewide Department of Nematology
separated into individual departments at Riverside and Davis and,
from 1965 onward, the two departments evolved independently.
On July 1, 1976, the Davis Department of Nematology was reorganized
into a research unit (the Division of Nematology) with a chairman,
and the teaching component was transferred to the Department of
Entomology. In 1987 the research unit reverted back to departmental
status. Since then, the department has been restructured through
retirements and the addition of new faculty members. The direction
of research has moved toward greater emphasis on integrating non-chemical
approaches to nematode suppression. Current faculty members study
nematodes in most habitats (except marine) and across a range of
levels of biological organization, from molecular to community.
Nematology faculty have earned national and international recognition
for their research and contributions to the discipline. The Society
of Nematologists selected Merlin Allen (1970) and Dewey Raski (1988)
as honorary members and D. Raski (1981), Armand Maggenti (1990),
and Howard Ferris (1995) as fellows. The CIBA-Geigy Award was given
to D. Raski (1980), H. Ferris (1984), and Becky Westerdahl (1995).
D. Raski has been honored by the Indian Society of Nematologists.
In 1998 Harry Kaya received the C.W. Woodworth Award from the Pacific
Branch of the Entomological Society of America and was the Founders'
Lecturer for the Society of Invertebrate Pathology in 1999.
Although the department does not offer a major or graduate program,
faculty members teach undergraduate courses in nematology and other
disciplines, and mentor many students. Many Davis graduates have
become national and international leaders in the field. source
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Neurobiology, Physiology, and Behavior
The Section of Neurobiology, Physiology
and Behavior (NPB) was formed in 1993 with the reorganization of
the Division of Biological Sciences under the leadership of Dean
Robert Grey. Key players in the early life of NPB were Peter Marler
and Barbara Horwitz. Marler, a member of the National Academy of
Sciences, envisioned a section that would break new ground with
a program centered on how physiological processes at the molecular,
cellular, and multicellular levels bear on the ways that animals
operate and behave as complete, integrative entities. Horwitz, the
1991 winner of the UC Davis Prize for Teaching and Scholarly Achievement
and a member of the Council of the American Physiological Society,
was the first chair. She shared Marler's vision and worked to implement
the plan, notably by overseeing the design of a single major for
undergraduates that integrated neurobiology, physiology, and behavior.
This integrative biology major, unique in the nation, has proved
very attractive to students, earning a reputation as a demanding
yet well-taught major.
NPB brought together faculty from several departments,
most notably animal physiology and zoology, units that were dissolved
when NPB was formed. Eleven faculty, M. Barkley, E. Carstens, C.
Fuller, J. Goldberg, J. Horowitz, B. Horwitz, A. Ishida, P. Pappone,
A. Sillman, J. Weidner, and D. Woolley, came from animal physiology,
a department whose history and relationship to other physiology
programs at UC Davis has been well documented. Three faculty, P.
Marler, B. Mulloney, and M. Wilson, were drawn from the Department
of Zoology. In addition, J. Keizer, a mathematical biologist from
Chemistry, L. Chalupa, a neuroscientist from Psychology, and E.
Chang from Animal Science joined the section. With this core, NPB
underwent a phase of rapid expansion over the next several years.
Five new faculty, K. Britten, B. Chapman, C. Gray, G. Recanzone,
and M. Sutter, were added to the section as the new Center for Neuroscience
was formed. Two scientists working on animal behavior, N. Clayton
and G. Nevitt, and a molecular endocrinologist, J. Furlow, were
also recruited. Together, section faculty taught an undergraduate
major and actively engaged in research spanning two and in some
cases all three areas of the discipline.
Leo Chalupa, chair of the committee that drafted
the plan for the Center for Neuroscience and a former director of
the center, became the second chair of NPB in 1998. Sillman, winner
of the 1996 Academic Senate Citation for Distinguished Teaching,
became vice chair for teaching. Chalupa implemented a two-pronged
strategy for strengthening NPB programs, first by building bridges
to biological research programs across the campus, and second by
developing clusters of research excellence. As an example of this
strategy, Chalupa is the principal investigator of an NIH grant
on visual research, which bridges several departments and includes
NPB faculty A. Ishida and M. Wilson.
In summary, NPB has developed an outstanding
major, its excellence recognized by Academic Senate/Federation Teaching
Awards received by T. Adamson, J. Horowitz, B. Horwitz, and A. Sillman;
and an extremely strong research program, supported in 1998 by 52
extramural grants totaling $23 million. source
See also Division
of Biological Sciences.
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Neurological Surgery
There is no history currently available
for this department. See School
of Medicine.
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Neurology
There is no history currently available
for this department. See School
of Medicine.
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Nutrition
The Department of Nutrition was first established
as a freestanding department in 1967, although the process was set
in motion earlier. Before 1966, the unit was a part of the Department
of Home Economics, which had moved from Berkeley to the Davis campus.
Key to its transition from a component of Home Economics to the
current departmental structure were the efforts of Glenn Hawkes,
then associate dean of Family and Consumer Sciences, and Fredric
Hill, who served as an interim dean in the transition and later
as chair of the department. Hill also served as editor of the Journal
of Nutrition, which gave the department considerable external visibility
through the 1970s.
Several faculty members helped establish the department
as an important center of research in areas such as developmental
nutrition and teratology. Gladys Everson contributed in this area
in the 1960s, and Lucille Hurley and Francis Zeman sustained the
effort through the 1970s and 1980s. Particularly important were
the creation of an independent animal unit for research and linkage
of the department to activities in the School of Medicine.
William Weir and Robert Rucker served as chairs
of the department from the mid-1970s through 1987. During this period
the department nearly tripled in size. Originally housed in Everson
Hall, the department was moved to Meyer Hall in 1987. Further ties
were developed with the School of Medicine through the Division
of Clinical Nutrition (now a part of Endocrinology) in the Department
of Internal Medicine. The Department of Nutrition also became the
administrative home for the Food Intake Laboratory and the Program
in International Nutrition.
From 1987 through the 1990s, Barbara Schneeman
and Carl Keen served as chairs of the department. Further growth,
external visibility, and maturation characterize this period. Four
faculty members have served as presidents of the American Society
for Nutritional Science and three as presidents of the American
Society for Clinical Nutrition. Three members, current and past,
are members of the NAS Institute of Medicine. The faculty is also
distinguished by its service on numerous NIH, USDA, NAS, WHO, and
UNICEF committees and by receipt of numerous research awards.
The Department of Nutrition is currently home
for two professional journals, the American Journal of Clinical
Nutrition and the Journal of Lactation. In 1994, the state's Expanded
Food and Nutrition Education Program and Food Stamp Nutrition Education
Program were moved to the department from Berkeley. In 1997/98,
the USDA Western Human Nutrition Research Laboratory was moved from
San Francisco to the Davis campus, where its academic administrative
home is the Department of Nutrition. The department currently supports
approximately 50 graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, and visiting
scholars, while there are about 250 students associated with the
undergraduate programs. source
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