CFANS | U of M College of Food, Agricultural and Natural Resource Sciences

With a legacy of bringing discoveries to life through science, CFANS educates the next generation of leaders to anticipate and adapt to a changing state and world and solves the real challenges of nourishing people while enriching the environments in which we live. Created in 2006 via the merger of two colleges and a department, today the college consists of 12 academic departments and 10 research and outreach centers across Minnesota, plus the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum, the Bell Museum + Planetarium, and dozens of interdisciplinary centers that span the college, the university, and the globe. The college offers degrees in 13 undergraduate and 13 graduate majors plus more than 25 minors. CFANS students are well-prepared for the workforce through the college’s emphasis on experiential learning, internships and global perspectives. Almost 93 percent of students who earn undergraduate degrees in CFANS find jobs in their fields or enter graduate school within six months of graduation. With a long history of innovation – both the Honeycrisp apple and the process of artificially inseminating dairy cows were born here – CFANS research has made a difference in many lives, in both big and small ways. The college partners with a variety of stakeholders and offers a wealth of resources to citizens as well as industry partners. Research, education, and outreach in agricultural and natural resource sciences at land-grant universities traditionally have rested on the values of productivity and efficiency. But growing environmental concerns, a declining natural resource base, and rising societal commitment to sustainability require that we integrate those longstanding values with strategies that are ecologically sustainable to meet the potentially competitive food, fuel, feed, fiber, and other needs of 21st-century society.