DISCUSSION - AFTERNOON SESSION Department ...

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words: namely, that entomologists are, using Dr. Mason's terminology again, "necessary" and yet not in ..... Gooding - Edmonton - I am not looking for a job, Bob, but I would love to know where ... what you are calling economic entomology.
DISCUSSION - AFTERNOON SESSION Leader - D. H. Kavanaugh Department of Entomology University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta First of all I would like to thank our speakers on behalf of all of us. I would especially thank Dr. Mason for discriminating between the terms "need," "demand," "luxury" and "necessity." It is clear from what has been said that our profession today is diseased. The outstanding symptom of the affliction has been repeatedly described today in graphs and words: namely, that entomologists are, using Dr. Mason's terminology again, "necessary" and yet not in demand. We are confronted today then with the job of diagnosing the disease. Once we have succeeded in doing this we should begin to formulate some treatment for it. If we succeed in this, then perhaps we'll have something which will assist entomology departments in Canada and the U. S., and particularly our department here, in understanding the present situation and possibly even in planning for the future. The papers presented today covered a great variety of points all, I believe, very relevant to the problems at hand. Numerous suggestions have been put forth which should stimulate discussion. In my attempts to relate the various topics discussed to one another, I felt the same frustration that others have mentioned throughout the week. I found it useful to jot the main points down on a flow chart (Fig. I) and I would like to use this to outline what I think we are facing. I realize that all of you would probably organize your thoughts a little differently but I hope that this approach will promote rather than stifle the discussion to follow. Roman numeral I is the Entomology Department, the focal point for this symposium. Roman numeral I1 is financial support. I think we will include in this category our s y m p toms - the fact that we have lots of entomologists coming along, that we have a need for them but no place for them to go. Related to this topic under Roman numeral I1 we have the sources of support. Under support I would include not only funds but jobs. We have three sources of these: the public, government and industry which narrow down to one, the public at large. Dr. Mason has aptly presented the position of some of us with regard to job support. The other speakers today have provided us with a good deal of insight into what kind of support we can expect and into what we will have to do if we want to get more. Under Roman numeral 111, I have listed what I consider to be three goals of an entomology department. Their first responsibility is to educate professionals. Here, a big problem seems to be relevance - I use that term in the Madison Avenue sense - getting the background knowledge necessary to engage in interdisciplinary research. Dr. Cooper's talk had surprises for me since I was given a little indication of what he was to say beforehand. He changed much of it - for the better I think. A lot of what he had to say is directly applicable to this responsibility of educating professionals. The second goal of an entomology department is to educate teachers - not only university educators but primary and secondary school teachers too. Special attention was paid to this topic by Mr. Jantzie and especially by Dr. Gittins. I hope we will hit the topic hard in our discussion because it is related to many of our problems. Lastly, we have a responsibility to educate the general public. I would suggest that we have two problems here. First, we have to educate young people. We can do this by taking care of some of our other goals, namely by getting some good teachers into the school system at all levels. Secondly and perhaps most difficult, will be to reach the people who control the money; I call them the "post-schoolers."

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Flow chart to and from a department of entomology.

Roman numeral IV I have headed Programs and Curricula. The goals I indicated for an entomology department are only achieved through some sort of plan - through specific programs and curricula as emphasized by Dr. Freitag and Dr. Gittins. The distinction made by Dr. Gittins between the goals of graduate and undergraduate programs is very important. My fifth point doesn't fit into my scheme very well. It involves channelling students into different specialties during their educational process. Here, I include the screening of students to find out whether or not they are really dedicated and to learn to what they are dedicated. We may have to resort to these procedures to handle the imbalance now existing between students available and jobs available. Next, I would like to consider faculty, a topic pretty well skirted in this symposium so far. In this context I would like to pose a few questions. First, what sort of staff should an entomology department have in light of its goals? At present faculty members must be teachers, researchers, and administrators. Have we left room for our best teachers? We certainly have left lots of room for our best researchers! Can an individual whose forte is teaching keep a job in a university today? The system requires that he carry out research at the same time that he is teaching. What does this drain on his time do to his teaching

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potential? Dr. Cooper suggested that there are other aspects of teaching that could be better investigated, i.e. that there are activities outside the classroom just as or more important than those going on inside. Finally, is the public really getting the education it needs from the entomology department? Here I mean the public; not industry nor government. To link this all together, and I have indicated this on my chart by dotted arrows, we have to communicate. Communication is a problem in any group situation. Looking at the different parts of my scheme, and we all know this from our own experience, we can see the problem: there is little communication between sections. Perhaps this is really the disease I referred to earlier. This lack of communication is the disease we have to cure. All day we have been hearing about this lack of communication between entomology departments, and entomologists, and the public, government and industry but this communication must be a two-way street. Hopefully, this symposium has been a step in the right direction. Intrauniversity and interdepartmental communication needs to be increased and encouraged as well. Before opening the floor for discussion, I would like to say a few things about the public as a separate entity. The most challenging problem we face as scientists and educators is communicating effectively with the public. Those who supply the funds and jobs for entomologists are not available to educators as students; you can't get them into a classroom to have at them. They are not likely to pick up our point of view from television either, since, even if we had presentations on T.V., they would be watching "All in the Family" instead. Maybe, as Dr. Mason suggested, we will have to adopt Madison Avenue techniques to sell ourselves to the public. For is it not pathetic that Madison Avenue can sell luxuries . . . as necessities when we can't even sell necessities as necessities? Until Dr. Cooper did so, no one had mentioned one additional barrier to our communicating with the public. I refer here to the increasing problem of entornophobia. Entomophobia isn't just squeamishness, it's a real psychiatric problem and I'm sorry to see that our resident psychiatrist, Dr. Schwab has left for the day. Entornophobia is an irrational fear of insects. I was an extension entomologist for five minutes a few days ago when Bruce Stewart, our extension expert, was out somewhere. A woman came in with a tiny little insect which she insisted was infesting her bed. She had broken out in a rash and was itching all over the place. The insect she showed me was a collernbolan, yet I could not convince her that it was harmless. I'm afraid that the problem of entomophobia will not be solved by education alone. It will require the integrated efforts of psychologists, sociologists, psychiatrists and maybe even advertising agencies. I would now like to open the floor to a general discussion. Dr. Cooper made some stiff accusations. Let's answer them. Craig - Edmonton - Dr. Holmes indicated the need for research on cold-hardiness and household pests. Who's going to provide the funds? Holmes - Lethbridge - This problem of obtaining support should be considered clearly. We can talk all we like about communicating with the public; but the public does not provide us with funds, at least not directly. In the federal government money is first apportioned to the various agencies. From there it is passed down through various levels of authority. Eventually, we have to compete with people in other disciplines for a certain amount of the money. In other words priorities are established. We are not, as entomologists, able to increase the total amount of money coming to the government; but we can increase the p¢age of this amount that comes to us. You have to sell your research proposal to the individuals controlling the purse strings. Gittins - Moscow - There are ways of getting funds without involving the government at all. In California there are many organizations called commodity groups. Many of these

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organizations have funds available for research on the commodity of their concern. I am sure, for example, that Gord Hobbs a't Lethbridge has received money from the alfalfa seed association. The sugar beet industry in southern Alberta, 1 am sure, has such a fund. Many of these agencies provide money for research in insect control. Very often the results can be lucrative for all concerned. I would like t o support Dr. Cooper's plea for entomologists to work together. We have gone through periods when "squirt gun" entomologists were considered to be at the bottom of the totem pole. Let's get away from this - all of us will profit. One positive result of the student activism of the last few years is this word "relevance." In many of our universities this is the call we hear now. "Publish or perish" is being replaced by "teach or travel". I think this is great. Cooper - Rexdale - About five years ago we at Cyanamid had money available for research on household insects - but no one was interested - there was no demand for research of this type. There is more misuse of pesticides in the household than anywhere else. No one tells the housewife that a vacuum cleaner is often more useful in controlling insects than the flit gun. If more people were aware of the problems resulting from the misuse of household sprays, funds could be made available t o investigate alternate methods for controlling household pests. If I go to a university with some suggestions for research o n household insects, pray tell me where do I g o ? If I d o find a university that wishes to d o the work, I am then told that I am not allowed to put any strings upon the work which is t o be done even though my company is providing the money. In addition, it has been my experience that university personnel seem t o think that a student being supported o n an industrial grant will become contaminated if he undertakes a project which involves pesticide evaluation o r a study of termite habits. Why have ths universities stigmatized the student interested in applied entomology? Pengelly - Guelph - Having had our academic tails twisted slightly, 1, as a representative of academe, would like to clarify our position. Dr. Cooper referred to the poor calibre of student he is getting. If he thinks the students graduating now are mediocre, he should wait a couple of years. They have just introduced a system at the University of Guelph called "Pass by Course." If you take 50 courses while at university, and pass 40 of them, then you get your degree. There is nothing that says you have t o pass Chem 100 before taking Chem 200 or 400. Why? Our all-wise Senate is composed primarily of "Arts" types because Wellington College (our Faculty of Arts a i d Science) has the largest student body o n campus. These are the people swinging the cat - and their current educational fad is "doing your own thing." Dr. Cooper mentioned sources of support for students doing research in integrated control. In our Department of Environmental Biology we have a staff member who is interested in integrated control. He was quietly told that research in integrated control of apple pests is now the province of the CDA lab at Vineland. Since he has no money he can't take on a student in integrated control. At one time it was not academically respectable in most universities for a student t o submit a thesis on the use of pesticides. In fact there were graduate schools that refused to accept students with this interest. We have tried to get students to work in applied research but they just said, "Pooh." Dr. Cooper mentioned that when he wanted an applied entomologist, he couldn't get one. Well, I am sympathetic because I would like to have one or two as graduate students. Our educational program here at Alberta was a sensible one and, at one time we did have a sensible one at Guelph. If you came into the department o r into~'the faculty of agriculture you at least got one course called introductory o r general entomology. One or two people took o n the challenge introduced by this course

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and eventualiy became entomologists. Well, at Guelph, through judicious maneuvering of "zoologists" we ended up with entomology being required by no one. Now how in the world can we interest anyone in entomology when we never get a chance t o talk to him? At Guelph, if you are enrolled in animal husbandry, you don't have t o take a course in livestock insects. The same is true of students in crop science, and so on. A student must have an "Introduction to Microbiology," and an "Introduction to Zoology" but he doesn't have to have an "Introduction t o Entomology." Heming - Edmonton - Bob Dixon, with the Alberta Department of Agriculture was wondering why it was we didn't have a speaker from the provincial government presenting the point of view of the extension entomologist. His point is well taken. We probably would not have had time to put him on but something that has come through loud and clear throughout this symposium is the need t o communicate - and an extension expert's job is communication. We are forewarned next time. Dixon - Edmontoiz - 1 created 13 jobs this year for students. Five students are working o n mosquito biology for the city of Edmonton; one at Fort Saskatchewan; four in Calgary and two o n blackflies for the provincial government. Three students were turned down. In 1957 there was only one entomologist on staff in the Department of Agriculture. By 1962 there were two and by 1971 three full-time entomologists with the department. In addition, one entomologist transferred t o the Department of the Environment. This June I am creating another position for an entomologist to bring our total t o four. I suspect that by 1973 there will be need of an additional entomologist in the Department of the Environment. I am not an Albertan. I received my training in Manitoba. Alberta entomology graduates right now are in trouble. The Department of Entomology at the University of Alberta does not have any applied entomology so that their graduates are competing for jobs with people from outside the province who do. I have had t o reduce the level of one position in the hope of getting an Alberta graduate to fill it. Freitag - Thunder Bay - Mr. Dixon, are the entomologists you refer t o M.Sc.'s, Ph.D.'s o r undergraduates? Dixon - The students I placed were undergraduates. In this province not one Alberta entomology student got any of these positions. There were none o r they did not apply. Where are they? The other positions are for M.Sc.'s and possibly Ph.D.'s if they have an applied bent. Otherwise we don't want them since we can't afford t o train them. Gooding - Edmonton - I am not looking for a job, Bob, but I would love t o know where these jobs are being advertised. Dixon - I phoned your department twice, Ron. I got n o response from the Faculty of Agriculture. I did get responses from Physical Education, Zoology, and Education. The professional jobs were and are advertised in the papers. All you have t o d o is read the classified ads. Gooding - We have only one undergraduate majoring in entomology and he is employed elsewhere for the summer. Another is working with mosquitoes for the summer but I'm not sure if he is one of your 13. He has four assistants. Surely there are lots of undergraduates who have had some entomology. There is a girl working for the city of Edmonton at $600.00 a month who took one of our courses. The student you have working at Fort Saskatchewan took a course in medical and veterinary entomology. Most of the students you have with you have had some entomology. We have few students majoring in entomology when undergraduates. Dixon - This'is the point I am trying t o make. There is no requirement in the Faculty of Agriculture that students take entomology, even though all agriculture graduates should have at least an introduction t o the subject. We have 6 0 district agriculturalists on our

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staff, few of whom have any entomological background. I credit you people with teaching the ones that do. This is true too of the students from other faculties who we have employed. Nevertheless, where are the entomologists? We can create jobs but we have to have entomologists to fill them. Gooding - During his talk Dr. Cooper referred to certain aspects of our entomology curriculum that he did not like. What doesn't he like and what would he like to see added or substituted? Cooper - Too many of your courses are specialized and too few cover introductory and applied entomology. When I was a student, everybody in agriculture had to take some entomology. What good are agriculture graduates to us if they have had no entomology? All of our chemical salesmen are agriculture graduates but we cannot find enough of them that have had any entomological exposure. We have agriculture graduates that specialize in engineering, crop science, animal husbandry . . . but not entomology. In looking over your number of professors, students and grad students, there are few in what I would call the economic field. I would, therefore, probably have to take a very broad interpretation of what you are calling economic entomology. Kavanaugh - Dr. Cooper, you have just told us what you would like to see in an agriculture graduate with a Bachelor's degree. What do you want in a postgraduate? Cooper - We want a student who has had enough general and applied entomology to be flexible. If you talk to a man who has taken nothing but taxonomy, that is the only field he is interested in. All I ask is that he have a good general background upon which he can build. If he has only taxonomy and physiology he is of no use to us. A student should have at least two years exposure to general entomology no matter what his specialty. We have nothing against taxonomists; we have nothing against physiologists; but we do have something against the taxonomist who has so little general background that we must re-train him. Hocking - Edmonton - The curriculum of the Faculty of Agriculture is decided by democratic process. Many years ago most courses required of all students were eliminated and with them entomology. There was nothing we could or would do about this because we do not believe in teaching entomology to students who are in class only because they have to be. I would like to list the applied courses we offer, since there seems to be some ignorance of this. There are three courses in medical and veterinary entomology, two in forest entomology, one in general agricultural entomology; one in toxicology, and a project course which can be used to cover aspects of applied entomology not included in the courses I have mentioned. We have six research projects in progress on applied aspects, all of these involving at least one graduate student as well as faculty. During the last 10 to 15 years, one quarter of the theses produced were in applied fields. I would like to thank Dr. Holmes for repeating what I have been saying to graduate students for years about the writing of theses. I have also said it to the chairman of the Department of English here, and on more than one occasion in the hope, so far vain, of getting his department to do something about this. All I have been able to persuade them t o d o is to intensify their instruction in such fields as the appreciation of the writings of Geoffery Chaucer. Most students in entomology, however, already have a reasonable appreciation of some of his works. However, we have had a real problem, especially with graduate students who have never had to write anything other than the yes's and no's required in high school examination papers, in getting these people to the position where they can write a well written paper. This problem we have tried to solve ourselves by offering, on Saturday mornings in the fall term, a course in scientific writing. I think this is improving the situation, but it takes time. Dr. Mason showed a graph illustrating Ph.D. production and job openings in science and

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technology in Canada. It did not show this information for entomology and for the whole world. It has always been my belief that entomology is international and should be treated as such. If a similar pair of curves were drawn for the life sciences and especially for entomology and on a world-wide basis, the picture would be a different one. It certainly was in the past and I predict that it will be in the future. Shemanchuk - Lethbridge - Dr. Hocking emphasized that the curriculum of the Faculty of Agriculture here had been derived through democratic process. I would suggest that the curriculum has also become too liberal; that the student is allowed too much freedom t o choose to take only what he feels like taking, not, necessarily, what he needs. Everybody knows that a little entomological knowledge is of use to all agriculturalists. Surely none of us would go to a surgeon for surgery if we knew that he had not taken surgical procedure because he did not have to take it when in medical school. Therefore, I refuse to endorse the idea that a student need not take a course because he doesn't want to do so. If he has committed himself to a program in agriculture, or animal science etc., an entomology course should be mandatory. Evans - Edmonton - Dr. Hocking listed the applied courses that we offer. Ecology is basic science. The textbook I use in this course is by Andrewartha and Birch, two well known economic entomologists. The whole book is a review of the applied entomological literature. Morphology is often considered basic. Our extension entomologist, Bruce Stewart, studied the sense organs of the red turnip beetle as a project in this course. Projects in physiology often involve the use of mosquitos, grain beetles and cockroaches. Thus, a course appearing basic from its description in the calendar is not necessarily so. Nelson - Lethbridge - I would like to support Dr. Gittins and Dr. Corbet in their emphasis on leaving specialization in entomology until the graduate level. I did this myself and found it very helpful. At our last meeting of the Entomological Society of Alberta a motion wasmade that we attempt to hold a joint meeting with the Canadian Society of Zoologists. It was defeated. This was a shame for reasons which are obvious. Mason - Ottawa - Dr. Hocking, in answer to your statements on my graph, I did not have figures available on life scientists or entomologists, and your remarks about internationalism are to the point. In scientific research, nationality is irrelevant; in employment it surely is not. People who hire entomologists do look at your citizenship. Therefore, the fact that there are entomological jobs in France or Brazil does not help Canadians one bit. These people demand French or Brazilian citizenship of the people they employ. Dolinsky - Edmonton - I am the latest asset of the Alberta Department of Agriculture a newly-hired supervisor of entomology. I would suggest that the reason we are not getting the type of people we need out of our universities is because the people who are teaching there are not teachers but researchers. When they graduated with their Ph.D.'s, they knew nothing about teaching. Thus, it's not surprising that they teach only their own little field. They know nothing of cutworms, flea beetles, red turnip beetles or clover mites; in other words, they have no background in general entomology. I would like to see a course in entomology offered at a university that a person could take to learn about pest problems in his own country. What insects are forest pests? What do these insects look like? What are their life cycles? I have gone to university. I have taken all kinds of introductory courses. Yet, when I graduated a couple of months ago I knew nothing about the behaviour of grasshoppers, about flea beetles, about Bertha armyworms. I came here with a background in grain pests. I knew a little about grain pests and household pests. But when you get into a field like extension you are expected to be a G. P. Every time you get up t o talk you shakce because

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you are aware of your limitations. Nobody can know everything about everything. The CDA in the next five years is going to retire a large number of researchers. Yet, there is no one coming up through the ranks with experience of Canadian pest problems. Last year we had an outbreak of Bertha armyworm on rape but, because for years there had been no problem with this insect, no one knew what t o do. In a few years we are not going to have any grasshopper experts in western Canada. Who is going t o control the outbreaks to come? Heming - Mike, you mentioned earlier that we in the universities are researchers not teachers. Since coming here four years ago I have had about 10 students in my two introductory courses who were majoring in education. Seven of them told me that the quality of the teaching in that faculty was lower than in any other they had experience of. Where are we supposed to learn to teach - probably not in the faculty of education. Henri GouIet - Edmonton - Taxonomists are always the ones singled out as narrowminded. I have been a student both here and at Macdonald College. I would like t o work in applied entomology when I graduate. Students in entomology here do get a broad background. Dr. Ball insists that his students know all aspects of entomology and much in other fields as well. I have had courses in basic and applied entomology and in botany, zoology, anthropology, and geology among others. I will agree with you that there are narrowminded entomologists, but few of them graduate from this department. Dr. Hocking would not allow it. Mike Dolinsky complained about the lack of courses on specifically Canadian pests. I advise him t o get in touch with Macdonald College. They offer a superb course of this type. O'Keefe - Moscow - We are talking quite frankly to each other today and this is good, but we are also polarizing people in this room who should not be polarized. I came into entomology after having received my B.Sc. degree in agriculture; I was not an amateur entomologist as a five-year-old as many of you seem to have been. This doesn't necessarily mean that I can't be a good entomologist. I also have five years experience in extension entomology fireline, talk-to-the-people type of entomology. Until about 1965 if you asked an entomologist a question you got an answer, right o r wrong. Since then this has ceased t o be true. Entomologists won't answer a question now unless they know the answer. Yet, there are tasks to be done that don't require a lot of detailed knowledge. In university we should be learning how to pose questions and how t o look for answers. If you learn to d o this properly you should have no problem fitting yourself into a new job o r situation. Although I have been working in entomology for five years I have never had a course in applied entomology. I have had a commitment to agriculture and, more recently, one to entomology and biology. I am having n o trouble in my job. Dr. Mason mentioned that we had t o adopt Madison Avenue techniques if we were t o sell entomology. This isn't necessary. If you talk to someone who is having trouble with insects he wants t o listen to you. This is why Edmonton is having trouble allocating the right amount of money for mosquito control - because we entomologists are afraid t o go down and talk t o them not knowing all the answers. If we had the answers we would be more than willing t o talk t o them and they would be willing to pay us t o listen. I talk t o people about insects. As a result, both my applied entomology and my insect physiology suffer, but I still take the time t o talk. As a result, it helps other entomologists because I am considered t o be typical of other entomologists and since I take the time t o talk t o people, others probably d o as well. If a person comes to you with an insect problem you have a chance to sell the subject of entomology to him.