Under pressure of initiatives by the College of Agriculture and Environmental Sciences to eliminate small departments, faculty of the Department of Nematology voted to amalgamate with the Department of Entomology. Also by vote of the faculty, the Department of Entomology accepted the amalgamation. Faculty of the new department structure voted to use the name Department of Entomology and Nematology.
In fact, some ten years earlier, the former Department of Nematology had reduced costs by combining its administrative services with those of the co-located Department of Plant Pathology. However, it remained a small academic department which was not considered compatible with reorganization activities within the college. The Department of Entomology and Nematology, and the Department of Plant Pathology will share combined administrative services.
Historical Perspective
The nematology program at UC Davis was initiated in 1954 with the transfer of Dr. Dewey Raski from U.C. Berkeley to U.C. Davis to head the newly-formed Department of Plant Nematology. Formation of the department resulted from a recognition of the need to increase research, teaching and outreach in the state, as documented in 1952 in a report to the Statewide Agriculture Committee of the California State Chamber of Commerce by a Nematode Study Committee consisting of James E. Armstrong (Chair, and a cotton grower from Tulare County), Prof. Harry S. Smith, an Entomologist at U.C. Riverside, D.G. Milbrath, California Department of Agriculture, and Ralph H. Taylor, (affiliation unknown). The committee urged recognition of Nematology as a separate and distinct science with major additions to funding, faculty positions, staff support personnel, equipment and facilities. The requested funding was provided by the state legislature in campus budgets for 1954-55.
In 1962, the department name was changed from Plant Nematology to Nematology to better reflect the breadth and nature of the discipline.
In a "history precedes itself" scenario, a 1975 elimination-of-small-departments initiative merged the Department of Nematology with the Department of Entomology, retaining its disciplinary identity as the Division of Nematology within Entomology. That arrangement existed until 1987 when the U.C. Regents approved the proposal that the Division of Nematology be granted departmental status and it was reinstituted as the Department of Nematology.
Reference:
Raski, D., I. Thomason, J Chitambar and H. Ferris. 2002. A History of Nematology in California (120 p). (http://plpnemweb.ucdavis.edu/nemaplex/histnemcalif.htm)
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