The University of California Regents on Thursday approved a newly reconstituted College of Biological Sciences at UC Davis, marking a significant milestone in the campus's history.

The transformation of the 35-year-old Division of Biological Sciences to a newly named college will make UC Davis one of the few universities in the nation to organize faculty engaged in basic biology research and teaching into a single college. UC Davis is one of the nation's leading universities in biological sciences, awarding more undergraduate and doctoral degrees in biological sciences than any other university, according to statistics compiled by the National Science Foundation. In 2002, UC Davis as a whole was ranked seventh in the nation in research funding for biological sciences, with $118 million.

"It clearly recognizes the critical role that core biological disciplines play in the progress we make in medicine, veterinary medicine, agriculture and the environment," said Phyllis Wise, dean of the Division of Biological Sciences and founding dean of the new college. "We are living at the beginning of a new age in life sciences, when the pace of discovery and understanding of biological concepts is accelerating, and the College of Biological Sciences is positioned to be a leader in this new era."

UC Davis Chancellor Larry Vanderhoef noted that UC Davis is known for the depth and breadth of biological sciences on campus.

"The division's size and the scope of its activities are those of a college, and those were important considerations in this change, to be sure," said Vanderhoef, himself a plant biologist with a faculty appointment in the division. "But the telling, selling argument was the collective quality of the faculty and the students they teach -- they're both nothing less than outstanding."

Establishment of the new college will bring a number of administrative changes, giving college faculty a stronger voice in governance and greater control over the biology curriculum. The Division of Biological Sciences was established in 1970 as a framework for biology programs distributed between the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences and the College of Letters and Science.

Future students will receive their degrees from the College of Biological Sciences rather than one of the other two colleges, as at present. The division currently administers nine major programs, some of which are offered as both a Bachelor of Arts and a Bachelor of Sciences degree, making a total of thirteen different degrees taught through the division. The division currently has more than 5,000 enrolled students, and the major in Biological Sciences is the single largest on the UC Davis campus with 1,839 students enrolled in Fall 2004.

The transition also coincides with major revisions to the biological sciences curriculum designed to make it more relevant to modern biology. In November 2004, Martin Wilson, professor of neurobiology, physiology and behavior, was awarded a $436,000, five-year "Roadmap" grant from the National Institutes of Health to develop new classes and materials for biology teaching. The changes are intended to introduce students to the quantitative and interdisciplinary approaches that are becoming increasingly important in biology, such as bioinformatics, mathematics and computer modeling.

Undergraduate teaching in biological sciences is an important pipeline for producing new doctors, nurses and other healthcare professionals. A recent survey of alumni from the Division of Biological Sciences found that almost half were working in the general area of health sciences. Three-quarters had completed or were working towards a postgraduate degree or credential, with one-third taking a doctorate in health sciences.

Following Thursday's approval by the Regents, the UC Davis Academic Senate will begin the formal process of populating the new college with existing faculty from the Division of Biological Sciences. The college faculty will then be responsible for defining the college curriculum and adopting a set of by-laws. In most cases these will be based on existing procedures developed by the division.

The Division of Biological Sciences currently has 139 faculty, 400 staff, 5,015 undergraduate students, 444 graduate students and more than 24,000 alumni. It has an annual budget of $68 million (2003-04), including $31 million in funding from the state of California and $37 million from other sources including federal grants and private donations. Division researchers currently hold about $110 million in grant awards, including multi-year grants.

The Division has five sections, equivalent to departments, which will remain in the new college: Evolution and Ecology; Microbiology; Molecular and Cellular Biology; Neurobiology, Physiology and Behavior; and Plant Biology. Division faculty members are also located in research units such as the Center for Neuroscience, the Center for Population Biology, the Genome Center and the Bodega Marine Laboratory. Many hold joint appointments in other academic units including the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences and the School of Medicine.