Explore our points of pride, purpose, and passion that fuel our work and make us unique.

Old Main with Mount Nittany in the background.

Old Main with Mount Nittany in the background.

Points of Pride

We are proud to be a robust academic, educational, and practical hub advancing agricultural sciences, natural resource management, and community and human health. Our unique contributions emanate from synergies among our college’s critical inputs, capabilities, impacts, and shared philosophy. These include:

Inputs

  • Our top-notch faculty, students, and staff
  • Our cutting-edge research facilities and farms
  • Extramural support

Capabilities

  • Our diversity of research expertise, which offers capacity to address complex issues that require interdisciplinary problem-solving
  • A commitment to interdisciplinary research and graduate education
  • The capacity of our multidisciplinary teams to holistically address complex agricultural, health, and environmental challenges
  • Our ability to combine expertise in ways other institutions can not
  • Our relationships with, and the capacity of, an outstanding alumni network

Impacts

  • Our highly sought-after graduates
  • Our comprehensive contributions of innovative solutions to agricultural, health, and environmental issues
  • Our societal impacts, reaching from Pennsylvania across the country and the world
  • Our excellent national and international reputation

Shared Philosophy

  • A shared recognition that diversity among students, faculty, and staff is essential to our success
  • Our initiative and willingness to address complex challenges through teams and teamwork
  • Our commitment to mentoring and support for graduate students and junior faculty
  • Our “culture of recognizing opportunity” and open-mindedness
  • An enduring commitment to bridging the gap between discovery and impact

Distinctive Characteristics

Strategic priorities emerge from an organization’s strength and perspective. “Distinctive characteristics” become important to the process of recognizing opportunity. For research and graduate education (RGE) in Penn State’s CAS, strength and perspective emerge from the following distinctive characteristics and frame the Strategic Priorities outlined in the plan.

Purpose and Mission

Pennsylvania’s Land-Grant University

Penn State serves Pennsylvania as its only land-grant institution and one of the nation’s first following the Morrill Land Grant Act of 1862’s passage. As one of the nation’s most important pieces of legislation, this history’s significance is fundamental, including:

  • Agricultural and engineering education and research form the core disciplines advanced by the Morrill Act.
  • CAS’s rich heritage means it began prominently and remains a pivot point for Penn State’s land-grant mission, including established, special relationships with federal, state, and local government.
  • Research constitutes a central part of CAS’s mission with substantial public funding and legitimacy committed for serving the “public good.”
  • Extending unbiased, scientific knowledge to the public and agricultural producers is an essential purpose of the research mission and Penn State Extension.
  • Public trust plus CAS’s passion for place serves end users in upholding the land-grant mission.
  • Broad public recognition and buy-in exists for CAS’s significant economic value and capacity in serving Pennsylvania.

Passion

CAS Passion

CAS’s legacy of work and achievements, as well as its current faculty, staff, and students, all represent a deep, abiding passion for its land-grant mission. This passion takes many forms, a few of which include:

  • Our passion to advance agricultural sciences in the context of animal–human–plant–environment ecosystems for the betterment of the human condition and as a source of unbiased, scientific knowledge.
  • Our passion for team science, merging expertise in the social and technical sciences, and bringing multidisciplinary and transdisciplinary perspectives to complex problems in natural and managed ecosystems.
  • Our passion to develop knowledge about resilience and sustaining natural resources for future generations.
  • Our passion to advance knowledge and prepare future generations of scientists, educators, and practitioners for work in agriculture.
  • Our passion for applying and extending knowledge to end users in real places with relevant problems in Pennsylvania and beyond.
  • Our passion for knowing and engaging Pennsylvania’s communities, people, and agricultural industry.

Place

Geographic Character and Proximity

Agriculture occurs in place. Pennsylvania’s geography and climate offer numerous place-based advantages for regional, national, and global leadership. Among them are:

  • Sitting at the edge of the urban-rural interface, Pennsylvania represents a large agricultural economy with substantial diversity in its population, communities, climate, and growing conditions, each of which serves as a microcosm for much of the U.S.
  • Pennsylvania’s agricultural economy is characterized by diverse commodities, small- and medium-size farms, and many types of end users offering a broad array of interests and needs to serve.
  • Pristine field sites—including terrestrial and aquatic resources—strong seasonality, invasive species, climate impacts, climate-smart agriculture, and other prevailing conditions and practices support excellent multi- and transdisciplinary research conditions (e.g., the Chesapeake Bay watershed offers a research nexus for water quality and agricultural production, etc.).
  • Two-thirds of the nation’s population is within a seven-hour drive of Pennsylvania, providing a readily accessible market for our commodities.
  • Pennsylvania’s geography, climate, and economy are proximate to the nation’s federal government and mass media centers; thus, CAS is positioned to showcase cutting-edge research activities through research demonstration, dissemination, and leadership influencing Pennsylvania and beyond.

CAS Excellence

Research Excellence

CAS faculty and graduate students excel at bringing transdisciplinary and stakeholder perspectives to complex issues. This work leads to lauded societal impacts and global brand recognition, as well as driving the CAS resource engine. This strength is founded upon CAS’s:

  • top-notch faculty, students, and staff competing successfully for grants and contracts
  • strong culture of collaborating with others across disciplines and sectors (cross-college, cross-institution, cross-scientific community, cross-sector, etc.)
  • track record of partnering with stakeholders within and beyond an extensive alumni community, which infuses relevance in CAS research and curricula
  • role and history in connecting all Penn State colleges as a pivot point for Penn State’s land-grant mission

Capacity and Scale

CAS is a large college with at least “one of everything.” This scale includes:

  • Statewide reach through Penn State Extension and Commonwealth Campuses
  • Agricultural research and extension centers
  • Specialized facilities (e.g., Poultry Center, Animal Diagnostic Lab, etc.)
  • Affiliated applied research labs
  • A large, productive faculty
  • A broad array of academic departments and disciplinary expertise
  • Relationships with Penn State’s medical school and UPenn’s vet school

Capability

CAS’s faculty, graduate students, staff, and facilities combine to build program strengths in:

  • Entomology and vector-borne diseases
  • Pollination biology
  • Invasive species
  • Food systems, food security, and food safety
  • Infectious diseases
  • Plant science
  • Root biology
  • Metabolomics
  • Microbiomes
  • Animal reproduction and nutrition
  • Forest ecosystems analysis, including climate change
  • Intersections of social sciences (ag economics, rural sociology, etc.) and technical sciences
  • Workforce development through Ag Extension’s noncredit, online offerings
  • International programs
  • Balancing social science, production agriculture, and extension

Penn State Interdisciplinary Institutes

CAS RGE maintains strong partnerships with Penn State’s cross-functional institutes, which:

  • Offer access to shared analytical instrumentation and facilities
  • Offer additional mechanisms for team science and thematic connections across Penn State

Penn State Extension

CAS RGE maintains strong partnerships with Penn State Extension, which:

  • Operates as a research amplifier by communicating important scientific findings across Pennsylvania’s agricultural stakeholders
  • Helps industry address problems (e.g., avian influenza) to maintain profitability and viability, thereby retaining jobs and critical agricultural products
  • Offers extensive online, noncredit courses as a national workforce leader to stakeholders across Pennsylvania and beyond with growing interest from industry
  • Spans both rural and urban extension objectives with notable urban programs in urban agriculture, racial justice, social exclusion, and others

Office for Research and Graduate Education

Address

217 Agricultural Administration Building
University Park, PA 16802-2600

Office for Research and Graduate Education

Address

217 Agricultural Administration Building
University Park, PA 16802-2600