Message from Vice President and Dean Eugene G. Sander

Welcome to the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences (CALS) at the University of Arizona. Our vision is to provide valuable learning experiences for our students and stimulate a richer and sustainable quality of life for people in Arizona, the nation and the world. Our mission is to develop, integrate, extend, and apply knowledge. If we succeed in fulfilling our mission, we will enhance agriculture, other bio-based industries, the environment, our natural resources, family and youth well-being, and the development of local communities. As dean of your College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, I want you to know we are working hard to achieve these goals. It is all about one value: excellence.

We are living in a period when we need to carefully navigate our way to the future. There are challenges ahead that will cause us to make some changes. One approach to dealing with these challenges and changes is to communicate better with all of our constitutes but especially with our faculty, staff and students. As part of this effort in communication, following the revision of our 2006-2009 Strategic Plan, we prepared a four page Report to our Faculty, Staff, and Students that explains in more depth how we will approach the future.

If you are a prospective student, we want you to know about the first-class education you can receive here! Visit our department pages, explore the college, the university, and the surrounding area. Want to be a food editor, urban forester, zoologist, naturalist, marketing manager, agricultural biotechnologist, or are you just intrigued by bugs and want to be an entomologist? We can prepare you for these and over 140 other exciting careers.

From the pine forests in Coconino County to the desert lands of Yuma—Arizona is a diverse state. Our Extension programs reach nearly 500,000 people each year. We have 4-H programs in every county. Want to be a Master Gardener, learn how to be a better parent, or how to manage your money? Extension personnel and volunteers (we’ve trained over 12,000 through the years) can help answer your questions.

And if it is cutting-edge research you want to learn about—we’re doing it! Our faculty are involved with methods of reducing insecticide for growers, evaluating the impact of cholesterol in eggs, looking for cancer cures from desert plants, and finding ways to extend our water supply. Visit the web pages of our academic departments and the Agricultural Experiment Station to find out about the vast array of research carried out in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences.

Thank you for visiting our website. Please contact us if you need more information.

Dean's Office
College of Agriculture & Life Sciences
The University of Arizona
Forbes Building, Room 306
(520) 621-7621
Email: dean@cals.arizona.edu