The College of Agriculture and Life Sciences: A History from 1980 - 2010

This is the second history written for the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. The first, College of Agriculture: A Century of Discovery, was published in 1985, coinciding with the celebration of the University of Arizona Centennial (Haney, Gonzalez, & Paylore, 1985). The first history provided an excellent series of activities that occurred at various time periods during that first 100 years and included a number of photographs showing the contrast over the years. This second history provides major contrasts from the first University of Arizona employee in 1890 (in the Agricultural Experiment Station) to a college with agriculture at its core but expanded to address natural resources, environment, families, youth, and consumer interests. When this first history was written, the Phoenix area experimental farms had just been sold, the World Wide Web did not exist, and cell phones as we now know them were just becoming available. In 1984 the Arizona population had just passed the 3 million mark and in 2005, it passed the 6 million mark – a doubling in only 26 years.