Activities in Western Europe
Multiple Nations | Denmark | Germany | Greece | Netherlands | Norway | Portugal | Sweden | Switzerland | United Kingdom/European Union
The following summarizes experience and expertise in western Europe at Penn State's College of Agricultural Sciences. For further information, please e-mail Deanna Behring, director of international programs, or call 814-863-0249.
Multiple Nations
U.S., Belgium, Germany, Netherlands, France, Czech Republic
In 2003 and 2004, the College received funding from the U.S. Department of Education's Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education (FIPSE) to develop innovative projects designed to prepare agricultural students for work in a global market economy.
The first project, the Sustainable Crop Protection in Agriculture (SUSPROT) program, provides students with the opportunity to study abroad while participating in international sustainable agriculture. SUSPROT brings together students and faculty in agricultural and ecological sciences to develop a new curriculum in sustainable agriculture, emphasizing crop protection. Partners in the SUSPROT project are the University of California, Davis; the University of Illinois, Urbana; Gembloux Agricultural University, Belgium; Hohenheim University, Germany; Wageningen University and Research Center, the Netherlands; and Institut National Agronomique Paris-Grignon, France.
The second project, Managing Global Value Chains, is a consortium for curriculum development between Penn State's College of Agricultural Sciences, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Morrison School of Agribusiness, Arizona State University, and Agrocampus Rennes (France), Kiel University (Germany), Czech University of Agriculture in Prague (Czech Republic). The project develops sustainable models for new curriculum development and regular exchange of upper-level undergraduate and graduate students. The project chooses the food system as a focal point that provides a rich setting to develop an understanding of the motivation for the global scope of value chains and networks. Visit the Managing Global Value Chains Web site to learn more about the project.
Denmark
New for spring 2005, this program is designed for Penn State students majoring in Agribusiness, Applied Economics, Business, and related fields. The Copenhagen Business School (CBS) offers highly regarded courses that complement and extend Penn State course work. For more information, click on CBS. To enroll, speak with the staff in the Penn State Office of Education Abroad or watch the following site for upcoming information: http://agribusiness.aers.psu.edu/IntOpps.htm. Click Study Abroad in Denmark to download the flyer.
Germany
Several departments have close ties with institutions in Germany. The School of Forest Resources signed an agreement with the Albert-Ludwigs-Universitat in Freiburg in 1997. Every other year, students from our college have the opportunity to participate in a one-week, faculty-led field study in Freiburg.The Department of Dairy and Animal Science has an agreement with the Institute of Physiology in Freising, Germany, for access to the bovine oviductal cDNA library, signed in 1998.
Greece
Spiro Stefanou (Ag Economics and Rural Sociology) is an annual lecturer in microeconomics in the postgraduate program in Economics and Management Science and the Center for Management at the Mediterranean Agronomic Institute (Chania, Greece).
Netherlands
Sjoerd Duiker (Crop and Soil Sciences)has extensive experience working in the Netherlands, as well as in Spain and parts of Africa. His interests are no-till, soil compaction, soil erosion, and soil quality. In addition to English and Dutch, Dr. Duiker speaks Spanish, French, and German.
The college's Department of Agricultural Economics and Rural Sociology has had faculty and student exchanges with Wageningen University since 1994. Dr. David Blandford, former head of the Trade Division of the Food, Agriculture, and Fisheries Directorate of the OECD, teaches a course each year at Wageningen called "European Agricultural Policy in Transition." Several other departments--dairy and animal science, crop and soil sciences, and plant pathology--have informal relations with Wageningen as well.
Dr. Stefanou has a long-standing working relationship in the Netherlands with Wageningen University's Agricultural Economics and Policy Group and the Business Economics Group. He has taught graduate courses on topics related to productivity, efficiency, and innovation; serves as an external opponent on doctoral committees; and continues collaborative research activities on productivity, efficiency, and innovation applied to Dutch agriculture.
Norway
Victoria Braithwaite (School of Forest Resources) is involved in two joint research projects with Bergen University Norway focusing on (a) trade-offs between immune function and brain development in fish (2007-2010) and (b) prenatal stress in farmed salmon: consequences for emotional and cognitive function in offspring (2006-2009). Dr. Braithwaite is also involved in two joint research projects with the Institute of Marine Research in Norway focusing on (a) motivational state and coping ability as operational indicators of welfare in farmed fish (2006-2009) and (b) using learning ability and cognition as tools to measure welfare of farmed fish (2007-2010).
Portugal
In July 2001, a generous gift to the college established the Don and Sandy McCreight Endowment in Dairy and Animal Science to enrich the educational experience and provide support for collaborative programs between the Department of Dairy and Animal Science at Penn State and the Animal Agricultural Programs at the University of the Azores, located in the city of Angra, Island of Terceira, Azores, Portugal. The two sides look forward to joint research, faculty development programs, and student exchanges.
Marc McDill (School of Forest Resources) is conducting a collaborative research on spatially explicit forest management planning model at the Technical University of Lisbon.
Sweden
Dr. Constance Flanagan, Professor of Agricultural and Extension Education, was recently awarded an honorary doctorate in Humanities and Social Sciences from Örebro University in Sweden. She was nominated by faculty in political science, psychology, and media/communications who have formed a unit at the university called YeS - Youth Engaged in Society. Please click here for more information.
Switzerland
A Penn State research and graduate education project is being conducted John M. Skelly (Plant Pathology) in close cooperation with the Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow, and Landscape Research [also referred to as The Institut fuer Wald, Schnee, und Landschrift (WSL)] at a forest nursery site in Canton Ticino of southern Switzerland. Research and demonstrations are being conducted to determine the effects of ozone air pollution on the health and productivity of plants in southern Switzerland; many species are common to the northeastern United States as well. Studies and air-quality monitoring at this site above Chiasso, Switzerland, and Como, Italy, have been conducted since 1995. The site has developed into one of the premier research sites for determining the effects of ozone air pollution on forest trees and native plants in all of southern Europe. Over the past five years, three multinational European training courses have been held at our Penn State-WSL site for the recognition and evaluation of ozone injuries to many native plant species. Colleagues from The University of Florence, Italy, have also made use of the site for ultrastructural investigations of foliar injury and have initiated a second site with Penn State chambers and technical assistance near Cuorno in northern Italy for comparison purposes at a lower elevation but more intensive ozone exposures. Plans for cooperative studies between the three institutions continue for the foreseeable future.
United Kingdom and Other Members of the European Union
In 2001, David Blandford (Ag Economics and Rural Sociology) undertook a series of activities in collaboration with Imperial College, London (Professor Berkeley Hill) under contracts funded by USDA. In 2002, an international workshop was held at Imperial College that focused on the analysis of adaptation and adjustment to change by farm households, particularly the change resulting from reforms in agricultural and trade policies (see http://household.aers.psu.edu/). Another ongoing project centers on a broader analysis of the impact of policy reform on the agricultural sectors of the European Union and the United States, and the design of programs to facilitate the adjustment process with a second workshop held at Imperial College in 2003 (see http://agadjust.aers.psu.edu/). In June 2004, an international symposium on agricultural adjustment in industrial countries was held in Philadelphia. Blandford and Hill are co-editing a book derived from this work. Briefings on the work will be held for policy analysts and advisers in Brussels and Washington, D.C.
During the 2007-2008 academic year, Matthew Kaplan (Ag and Extension Education) has worked closely with Beth Johnson Foundation and intergenerational specialists affiliated with the foundation's United Kingdom Centre for Intergenerational Practice to conduct a study of how select intergenerational practices contribute to community participation and active citizenship, social cohesion, and various dimensions of community change. This study, conducted while Dr. Kaplan is on sabbatical, aims to contribute to an increased understanding of how intergenerational intervention strategies can assist in the creation of intergenerational, caring communities and in facilitating civic involvement and renewal.
Victoria Braithwaite (School of Forest Resources) was an invited member of a United Kingdom government advisory panel on humane endpoints for fish used in research (2007).
