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Undergraduate Training for Specialists in Poultry Science
Undergraduate Training for Specialists in Poultry Science F. B. HUTT Department of Poultry Husbandry, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York (Presented at annual meeting June, 1940; received for publication June 18, 1940)
I
I have been asked to discuss the requirements in a curriculum for students specializing in poultry husbandry, who expect to qualify for research and teaching in some phase of poultry science. I should make it clear at the outset that the major premise underlying whatever I have to suggest is that no one is likely to be employed in our field solely to do teaching. We may be sure that in the future, as at the present, many persons in college poultry departments will be overloaded with teaching. At the same time, neither the deans of their colleges nor the directors of the experiment stations to which they are attached will view them with a kindly eye unless they are able to make some contribution in research in addition to their work as teachers. If a man is to do worth-while
research he will be the rare exception rather than the rule if he can accomplish much without having had some post-graduate training. I hold no brief for those administrators who proudly declare that any new permanent appointee to their staffs must have a Ph.D. degree. Some of them have found to their sorrow that the title of the book gives little clue to its content. Nevertheless, the chances are that the man with post-graduate specialization in one of the sciences underlying the art of poultry husbandry will make a more successful research man than he who has gone no further than the usual four-year undergraduate course. It seems reasonable to conclude, therefore, that what I am really asked to discuss is a curriculum for the first four years' training of a man who expects to spend seven or eight years in becoming a specialist in some field of science related to poultry husbandry. Let no one entertain the mistaken idea that all of this training is merely for research and that the teaching is incidental. It seems both probable and desirable that in the future, as at present, most college workers in our profession will have both of these duties. However, while training solely for teaching would inevitably incapacitate any man for biological research, the converse is not true, and the knowledge of fundamental science gained in post-graduate training makes the research man a better teacher than he could ever be without having acquired that knowledge.
[42]
As we proceed to lay out a four-year
Downloaded from http://ps.oxfordjournals.org/ at UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA on April 11, 2015
T IS fitting that we members of the Poultry Science Association assembled here for the thirty-second annual meeting of our society should devote a little time to the consideration of the next generation. It is probable that 20 years from now more than half our membership will be made up by persons who are now in high schools or at still earlier stages in the long process of learning. In the next few years these boys will be entrusting to us their college education. What kind of training shall we recommend to them? Let us hope that we may profit by the mistakes of the past, that we may see ahead only a little way in the future, and that we may be able to turn out men who will be a credit to themselves, to their institutions, and to our profession.
UNDERGRADUATE TRAINING FOR SPECIALISTS IN POULTRY SCIENCE
It seems unnecessary to lay out any rigid curriculum for these students. The most important part is that they should have a sound knowledge of chemistry, physics, botany, zoology, bacteriology, animal physiology, genetics, and geology, regardless of whatever else they may elect. A sound knowledge of any of these subjects is not likely to be acquired by taking merely a three-hour course for one-quarter of the year or for a semester. A full year of study in each of these subjects would not be too much. Nor should a single course suffice. Organic chemistry is sound stuff. The usual freshman zoology should be supplemented by work in entomology and a thorough course in the comparative anatomy of vertebrates. This latter subject is mentioned specifically because, though it is conspicuously absent in the transcripts of most applicants for graduate assistantships, it is much more to be desired than the inevitable "Poultry problems—2 credits" and "Poultry house construction—3 credits" with which those documents are all too frequently loaded. It is self-evident that the specialist in nutrition, the geneticist, and, above all, the pathologist, should be fa-
miliar with the normal anatomy of the species in which they study deviations from normality induced by deficient diets, by genes, by neoplasms, parasites, or bacteria. Courses in the anatomy of the fowl are available in very few institutions. A course in the comparative anatomy of vertebrates will prove almost as useful and it has the advantage of broadening the student's viewpoint. Let us have no mistaken idea that it is a waste of time for a poultryman to take a thorough course in botany, protozoology, plant pathology, or physics, or that his knowledge of geology should be limited to a study of those parts of the earth which we put in diets for chickens. Nor is his time wasted if the student is given an adequate exposure to English on the college level, to economics, and to history. Training in foreign languages is desirable in the university, especially for those who did not have such training in high school. This is not merely because nearly every graduate school requires the candidate to demonstate a reading knowledge of French and German before he can get his Ph.D. Many valuable contributions in the sciences related to poultry husbandry are in foreign languages. The man to whom the discoveries of his fellow workers in other countries are closed cannot be as well prepared, either for teaching or for research, as is the man who keeps up with research in other lands. From what has been said, it is evident that the object of the undergraduate training should be to turn out a man who is at the same time a scholar and biologist. If the undergraduate can decide upon his field of specialization by the beginning of his third year, he can then devote more time to histology, embryology, and anatomy if he is to be a geneticist or physiologist. If he expects to specialize in nutrition he will undoubtedly wish to take in his junior
Downloaded from http://ps.oxfordjournals.org/ at UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA on April 11, 2015
course of general study preliminary to three or four years of specialized postgraduate study, we must consider the lines of specialization most likely to be followed. Some years ago (1935) it was suggested by the writer that these are animal breeding, animal nutrition, animal pathology and parasitology, and agricultural economics. For the first three of these the undergraduate training could be much the same except possibly for some specialization in the third and fourth years. It is probable that even the agricultural economist would not suffer if his undergraduate training were to include much the same courses in fundamental sciences as are necessary for those specializing in the biological sciences mentioned above.
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F. B. HUTT
Fifteen years ago Professor W. A. Lippincott (1925) said to this society, "I would be remiss if I left the impression that for students majoring in poultry husbandry, the poultry courses were the most important in the curriculum. Whether we like it or not, this is far from the fact. As we strengthen them, I hope that they will reach the dignity of being on a par with courses in basic sciences in educational efficiency and therefore in importance. It is a worthy goal." With this statement I am in complete agreement. If Professor Lippincott were alive today he might concede that we have travelled quite a way toward that goal, even though we have not yet quite reached it.
In the poultry department at Cornell University we offer undergraduate courses in poultry husbandry, incubation, nutrition, disease, breeds and selection, marketing, genetics, and physiology. These amount to 20 credit hours. I always hope that those preparing for college work in poultry science will not take every single one of these courses. If they did, it would mean that our department is responsible for one-sixth of their entire college training. In these days, when there is so much to be learned in so many fields of science, that is quite a responsibility for any poultry department. The statements in the preceding paragraph apply only to the very few students whom we are training for research and teaching in some field of poultry science. For the man who expects upon graduation to operate a poultry farm or to go into commercial poultry work, it is probably worth while to take all the poultry courses offered. These students constitute the great majority of our undergraduate students majoring in poultry husbandry, and that is why we are justified in offering so many courses in that field. At this stage some of you are thinking that the course of study I have suggested may turn out a good biochemist, a geneticist, or a physiologist, but that something more is needed if that person is to appreciate the application of his science to the art of poultry husbandry, and if he is to be qualified for teaching in our field. Of this there can be no doubt whatever. However, the education of the man who is to do our teaching and research must not be limited to what he learns in the laboratory and classroom. As in other fields of science, he should serve an apprenticeship in the art. In engineering this is done by working in factories, machine shops, and engineering works during the summer months between college terms. In medicine the same end is accomplished by a year of internship af-
Downloaded from http://ps.oxfordjournals.org/ at UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA on April 11, 2015
and senior years such courses as quantitative and qualitative analysis, and perhaps physical chemistry as well. But what of the courses in the department of poultry husbandry? In the early days of collegiate instruction in poultry husbandry our courses were concerned primarily with the arts and crafts of the poultryman rather than with the sciences underlying those arts. That was inevitable, and none of the pioneers in our field can be criticized because of the practical nature of the courses offered in the early days. However, those days have passed, and we now have in every state poultrymen who have never been to college but who are better qualified than some college professors to take an apprentice and train him in the arts and crafts of the poultry industry. Are we to compete with that man? Should we continue to teach courses in judging fowls for exhibition according to the whims of the fancier, or would it be more to the point so to qualify ourselves that we could teach the detailed anatomy and physiology of the fowl to those hoping to solve problems in nutrition, in physiology, in pathology, and in genetics?
UNDERGRADUATE TRAINING FOR SPECIALISTS IN POULTRY SCIENCE
Finally, it should be recognized that the
course of study outlined above is not likely to appeal to the boy who comes to college bursting with enthusiasm for poultry and determined to make a place for himself in professional agriculture. It will be difficult for him to understand that he needs training in the sciences more than training in poultry husbandry. One can hardly expect the entering freshman to agree with that viewpoint. Nevertheless, there are reasons for hoping that the professor of poultry science so trained that he can hold his own with the geneticists, biochemists, or other scientists of his age, and who at the same time knows the arts and crafts of poultry husbandry, may, in his riper years, look kindly down the decades to the instructor who shaped his career and pay him his just tribute by saying, "Well, the old boy was right after all!" REFERENCES
Hutt, t . B., 193S. Post-graduate training for specialists in poultry husbandry. Poult. Sci. 14:307. Lippincott, W. A., 1925. The present trend of collegiate instruction in poultry husbandry. Poult. Sci. 5:53-58.
Downloaded from http://ps.oxfordjournals.org/ at UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA on April 11, 2015
ter graduation. It is only reasonable to expect that anyone undertaking to teach in a poultry department should know how to run incubators, to operate brooder stoves, to feed and manage laying hens, to help build a poultry house, and to do the hundred and one odd jobs around any poultry farm. He must learn how fowls behave and how they react to changes in environment and in management. That boy is cheated who has never learned just how difficult it is in the gathering dusk to chase into a colony house a 10-weeks-old cockerel that would rather sleep under the house than in it. These arts can be learned by serving an apprenticeship on any successful poultry farm or, as is often done, by working around the college poultry department in the summer time and in spare hours while the student is going through college. Knowledge of these things is as desirable as any other part of the education, but it seems no more necessary to give college credit for learning these arts than to give three credits for learning to plough or to operate a hay rake.
45
I
I have been asked to discuss the requirements in a curriculum for students specializing in poultry husbandry, who expect to qualify for research and teaching in some phase of poultry science. I should make it clear at the outset that the major premise underlying whatever I have to suggest is that no one is likely to be employed in our field solely to do teaching. We may be sure that in the future, as at the present, many persons in college poultry departments will be overloaded with teaching. At the same time, neither the deans of their colleges nor the directors of the experiment stations to which they are attached will view them with a kindly eye unless they are able to make some contribution in research in addition to their work as teachers. If a man is to do worth-while
research he will be the rare exception rather than the rule if he can accomplish much without having had some post-graduate training. I hold no brief for those administrators who proudly declare that any new permanent appointee to their staffs must have a Ph.D. degree. Some of them have found to their sorrow that the title of the book gives little clue to its content. Nevertheless, the chances are that the man with post-graduate specialization in one of the sciences underlying the art of poultry husbandry will make a more successful research man than he who has gone no further than the usual four-year undergraduate course. It seems reasonable to conclude, therefore, that what I am really asked to discuss is a curriculum for the first four years' training of a man who expects to spend seven or eight years in becoming a specialist in some field of science related to poultry husbandry. Let no one entertain the mistaken idea that all of this training is merely for research and that the teaching is incidental. It seems both probable and desirable that in the future, as at present, most college workers in our profession will have both of these duties. However, while training solely for teaching would inevitably incapacitate any man for biological research, the converse is not true, and the knowledge of fundamental science gained in post-graduate training makes the research man a better teacher than he could ever be without having acquired that knowledge.
[42]
As we proceed to lay out a four-year
Downloaded from http://ps.oxfordjournals.org/ at UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA on April 11, 2015
T IS fitting that we members of the Poultry Science Association assembled here for the thirty-second annual meeting of our society should devote a little time to the consideration of the next generation. It is probable that 20 years from now more than half our membership will be made up by persons who are now in high schools or at still earlier stages in the long process of learning. In the next few years these boys will be entrusting to us their college education. What kind of training shall we recommend to them? Let us hope that we may profit by the mistakes of the past, that we may see ahead only a little way in the future, and that we may be able to turn out men who will be a credit to themselves, to their institutions, and to our profession.
UNDERGRADUATE TRAINING FOR SPECIALISTS IN POULTRY SCIENCE
It seems unnecessary to lay out any rigid curriculum for these students. The most important part is that they should have a sound knowledge of chemistry, physics, botany, zoology, bacteriology, animal physiology, genetics, and geology, regardless of whatever else they may elect. A sound knowledge of any of these subjects is not likely to be acquired by taking merely a three-hour course for one-quarter of the year or for a semester. A full year of study in each of these subjects would not be too much. Nor should a single course suffice. Organic chemistry is sound stuff. The usual freshman zoology should be supplemented by work in entomology and a thorough course in the comparative anatomy of vertebrates. This latter subject is mentioned specifically because, though it is conspicuously absent in the transcripts of most applicants for graduate assistantships, it is much more to be desired than the inevitable "Poultry problems—2 credits" and "Poultry house construction—3 credits" with which those documents are all too frequently loaded. It is self-evident that the specialist in nutrition, the geneticist, and, above all, the pathologist, should be fa-
miliar with the normal anatomy of the species in which they study deviations from normality induced by deficient diets, by genes, by neoplasms, parasites, or bacteria. Courses in the anatomy of the fowl are available in very few institutions. A course in the comparative anatomy of vertebrates will prove almost as useful and it has the advantage of broadening the student's viewpoint. Let us have no mistaken idea that it is a waste of time for a poultryman to take a thorough course in botany, protozoology, plant pathology, or physics, or that his knowledge of geology should be limited to a study of those parts of the earth which we put in diets for chickens. Nor is his time wasted if the student is given an adequate exposure to English on the college level, to economics, and to history. Training in foreign languages is desirable in the university, especially for those who did not have such training in high school. This is not merely because nearly every graduate school requires the candidate to demonstate a reading knowledge of French and German before he can get his Ph.D. Many valuable contributions in the sciences related to poultry husbandry are in foreign languages. The man to whom the discoveries of his fellow workers in other countries are closed cannot be as well prepared, either for teaching or for research, as is the man who keeps up with research in other lands. From what has been said, it is evident that the object of the undergraduate training should be to turn out a man who is at the same time a scholar and biologist. If the undergraduate can decide upon his field of specialization by the beginning of his third year, he can then devote more time to histology, embryology, and anatomy if he is to be a geneticist or physiologist. If he expects to specialize in nutrition he will undoubtedly wish to take in his junior
Downloaded from http://ps.oxfordjournals.org/ at UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA on April 11, 2015
course of general study preliminary to three or four years of specialized postgraduate study, we must consider the lines of specialization most likely to be followed. Some years ago (1935) it was suggested by the writer that these are animal breeding, animal nutrition, animal pathology and parasitology, and agricultural economics. For the first three of these the undergraduate training could be much the same except possibly for some specialization in the third and fourth years. It is probable that even the agricultural economist would not suffer if his undergraduate training were to include much the same courses in fundamental sciences as are necessary for those specializing in the biological sciences mentioned above.
43
44
F. B. HUTT
Fifteen years ago Professor W. A. Lippincott (1925) said to this society, "I would be remiss if I left the impression that for students majoring in poultry husbandry, the poultry courses were the most important in the curriculum. Whether we like it or not, this is far from the fact. As we strengthen them, I hope that they will reach the dignity of being on a par with courses in basic sciences in educational efficiency and therefore in importance. It is a worthy goal." With this statement I am in complete agreement. If Professor Lippincott were alive today he might concede that we have travelled quite a way toward that goal, even though we have not yet quite reached it.
In the poultry department at Cornell University we offer undergraduate courses in poultry husbandry, incubation, nutrition, disease, breeds and selection, marketing, genetics, and physiology. These amount to 20 credit hours. I always hope that those preparing for college work in poultry science will not take every single one of these courses. If they did, it would mean that our department is responsible for one-sixth of their entire college training. In these days, when there is so much to be learned in so many fields of science, that is quite a responsibility for any poultry department. The statements in the preceding paragraph apply only to the very few students whom we are training for research and teaching in some field of poultry science. For the man who expects upon graduation to operate a poultry farm or to go into commercial poultry work, it is probably worth while to take all the poultry courses offered. These students constitute the great majority of our undergraduate students majoring in poultry husbandry, and that is why we are justified in offering so many courses in that field. At this stage some of you are thinking that the course of study I have suggested may turn out a good biochemist, a geneticist, or a physiologist, but that something more is needed if that person is to appreciate the application of his science to the art of poultry husbandry, and if he is to be qualified for teaching in our field. Of this there can be no doubt whatever. However, the education of the man who is to do our teaching and research must not be limited to what he learns in the laboratory and classroom. As in other fields of science, he should serve an apprenticeship in the art. In engineering this is done by working in factories, machine shops, and engineering works during the summer months between college terms. In medicine the same end is accomplished by a year of internship af-
Downloaded from http://ps.oxfordjournals.org/ at UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA on April 11, 2015
and senior years such courses as quantitative and qualitative analysis, and perhaps physical chemistry as well. But what of the courses in the department of poultry husbandry? In the early days of collegiate instruction in poultry husbandry our courses were concerned primarily with the arts and crafts of the poultryman rather than with the sciences underlying those arts. That was inevitable, and none of the pioneers in our field can be criticized because of the practical nature of the courses offered in the early days. However, those days have passed, and we now have in every state poultrymen who have never been to college but who are better qualified than some college professors to take an apprentice and train him in the arts and crafts of the poultry industry. Are we to compete with that man? Should we continue to teach courses in judging fowls for exhibition according to the whims of the fancier, or would it be more to the point so to qualify ourselves that we could teach the detailed anatomy and physiology of the fowl to those hoping to solve problems in nutrition, in physiology, in pathology, and in genetics?
UNDERGRADUATE TRAINING FOR SPECIALISTS IN POULTRY SCIENCE
Finally, it should be recognized that the
course of study outlined above is not likely to appeal to the boy who comes to college bursting with enthusiasm for poultry and determined to make a place for himself in professional agriculture. It will be difficult for him to understand that he needs training in the sciences more than training in poultry husbandry. One can hardly expect the entering freshman to agree with that viewpoint. Nevertheless, there are reasons for hoping that the professor of poultry science so trained that he can hold his own with the geneticists, biochemists, or other scientists of his age, and who at the same time knows the arts and crafts of poultry husbandry, may, in his riper years, look kindly down the decades to the instructor who shaped his career and pay him his just tribute by saying, "Well, the old boy was right after all!" REFERENCES
Hutt, t . B., 193S. Post-graduate training for specialists in poultry husbandry. Poult. Sci. 14:307. Lippincott, W. A., 1925. The present trend of collegiate instruction in poultry husbandry. Poult. Sci. 5:53-58.
Downloaded from http://ps.oxfordjournals.org/ at UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA on April 11, 2015
ter graduation. It is only reasonable to expect that anyone undertaking to teach in a poultry department should know how to run incubators, to operate brooder stoves, to feed and manage laying hens, to help build a poultry house, and to do the hundred and one odd jobs around any poultry farm. He must learn how fowls behave and how they react to changes in environment and in management. That boy is cheated who has never learned just how difficult it is in the gathering dusk to chase into a colony house a 10-weeks-old cockerel that would rather sleep under the house than in it. These arts can be learned by serving an apprenticeship on any successful poultry farm or, as is often done, by working around the college poultry department in the summer time and in spare hours while the student is going through college. Knowledge of these things is as desirable as any other part of the education, but it seems no more necessary to give college credit for learning these arts than to give three credits for learning to plough or to operate a hay rake.
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