Dr. Edwin Bingham Copeland, an American botanist who was mustered out of the United States Army of Occupation in the Philippines and elected to serve in the new government there, started the COLLEGE OF AGRICULTURE at LOS BAÑOS, Laguna, Luzon, on June 14, 1909; the first day classes were held in pitched tents. Copeland had served as a botanist with the Bureau of Science and then as a teacher at the Philippine Normal School—the highest government institution of learning. In 1907 he was asked by the Acting Director of the Bureau of Education to find a site for a proposed agricultural college. The government was aware that the great need of the country, after years of revolution and war, was to rebuild its agricultural base.

Copeland finally chose a site near the flourishing town of LOS BAÑOS on Laguna de Bay, a large shallow inland lake. The site offered convenience of access for staff and students since there was boat transportation between LOS BAÑOS and Manila, and had suitable terrain, climate and altitude for growing almost all tropical plants. Covering 72.63 hectares and dissected by the Molawin Creek, the land lay at the base of Mt. Makiling, an extinct volcano. It consisted of farmland that had been allowed to return to scrub and secondary forest, and which the Bureau had an option to buy. The following year Governor General W. Cameron Forbes proclaimed 3,767 hectares of land on the mountain adjacent to the COLLEGE as the Makiling Forest Reserve and made it available to the school—which now owns it.

The campus itself was expanded over the years and by 1929 extended to 397 hectares. This included 140 hectares expropriated for agronomy, experimental fields and animal husbandry, and land purchased for the LOS BAÑOS Limnological School—an extension of the COLLEGE to study the physical and biological features of fresh bodies of water. The lands acquired consisted of small coconut groves, cogon (tall, coarse grass) pastures, second class forest and thick forests further up the mountain slope. Today the COLLEGE OF AGRICULTURE is an 825-hectare expanse of buildings, laboratories, fields, orchards, pastures, parks and faculty houses.

Copeland, three other faculty members lured from the Philippine Normal School, and 12 students did most of the ground clearing and construction of the new school themselves. In the meantime they lived and studied in tents borrowed from the Bureau of Education and pitched at the American military base of Camp Eldridge. Later both faculty and students found temporary lodging in town, but classes continued in tents until the first college building—even then known as the Temporary Building—was completed in October 1909. Classes were conducted in the mornings. In the afternoons students and faculty alike hiked or rode bullock carts three kilometers along a "hunters' trail" to the COLLEGE grounds to clear brush, grub stumps, dig ditches and broaden the path into a road to connect the campus with the nearest village and public thoroughfare. After completion of the classroom and road, the students and professors built nipa (thatched) huts for their own living quarters. They dammed Molawin Creek and channeled it to the proposed plant nursery, piping it later into laboratories. The tough field work was considered part of the learning experience and all 12 students stayed the course.

The Temporary Building was inaugurated in late 1910 and the new Main Building on May 21, 1911. The ceremonies for the latter were attended by numerous high government officials who rode from Manila to LOS BAÑOS on the newly opened railroad.

Copeland was dean of the COLLEGE OF AGRICULTURE from its founding in 1909 until 1917 when he returned to the States. He left behind a collegiate community of some 500 people, seven buildings, the nucleus of a herd of cattle, 2,000 cultures, and plantings of every important crop in the Philippines and of many introduced plants. Interestingly, in this early period two years of German—the language of science—were required. German was dropped in 1917 perhaps as a backlash of World War I, and agricultural economics, farm accounting, farm practice, blacksmithing and carpentry were offered in its place. Plant pathology and military science were also introduced that year.

Research results were published in the Philippine Agriculturist and Forester (later called Philippine Agriculturist) which was first issued in 1911 as a student publication but which quickly became the official COLLEGE journal. In March 1911 the school graduated its first three students: Manuel Luz Roxas, who stayed on to augment the faculty, and two others who returned to their family farms to put into practice what they had learned. Roxas was subsequently sent by the COLLEGE to the United States for further studies and became the first Filipino to obtain a Ph.D. It was he who later instituted the Sugar Technology Curriculum. The COLLEGE itself awarded its first Master Of Science in Agriculture in 1913.

One requirement of the school during the Copeland years was at least one ascent of Mt. Makiling and nearby Mt. Banahaw to collect plants for the herbarium. Leeches, slippery trails and the need to cut rattan vines to supplement their water supply tested the young men's stamina and "our vitality for our future hard work," as one of the first graduates said. Each student was also required to write a thesis based on original research.

The policies established by the COLLEGE in these early years remain unchanged: to teach scientific tropical agriculture (and at that time there was none to speak of); to engage actively in research; to build up a compendium of modern farming knowledge; and to develop both a strong research and practice oriented faculty, primarily from within the school itself.

While the COLLEGE was developing a Philippine faculty by recruiting from within and by sending the new recruits abroad on scholarships, most of the teaching staff were Americans. Outstanding among them was Charles Fuller Baker who became dean when Copeland left. Baker was a distinguished botanist and also one of the greatest American educators to come to the Philippines. Under his administration (1917-1927) LOS BAÑOS grew in size and stature. He worked incessantly for government support and continuously expounded upon the need for scientific investigation of tropical agriculture; he also tried to change the ideas prevalent in the Philippines that manual work was degrading and that a farmer had no use for a college education.

During his years at the helm, the legislature created an agricultural experiment station (1918) on the campus, thereby institutionalizing research, and the COLLEGE began to cooperate with foreign private agricultural and scientific institutions, making the experiment station facilities available to them for specialized projects. In consequence of this collaboration an entomologist sent out by the Sugar Planters Association of Hawaii succeeded in identifying a parasitic wasp that could effectively control the white grubs that were attacking the roots of Hawaii's sugar cane. In appreciation the Association gave the COLLEGE funds to set up an insect laboratory.

The team spirit which enabled LOS BAÑOS to be built has been evident throughout the school's history. On October 10, 1918, when a call for volunteers to enlist in the Philippine National Guard was made, the entire student body signed up. The day became known as Loyalty Day and COLLEGE reunions have been celebrated on that date ever since. It is an occasion that commemorates loyalty to school and country and which typifies the LOS BAÑOS spirit, described as a "compound of loyalty, fellowship, scholarship, sportsmanship and clean living."

In 1921 the first woman student enrolled at LOS BAÑOS. Although she did not stay, others slowly followed. The women who came were so popular that in 1926 the students, who had organized themselves into a self-governing body in 1911, elected a woman student body president. The Home Technology curriculum which was developed after World War II has drawn women in larger numbers.

By the time Baker died in 1927—many feel of overwork—the COLLEGE had 88 faculty members and 822 students, including 18 women, and a total of 369 hectares of land and 61 buildings. It offered 130 courses, boasted a library of 7,325 volumes and had published 789 contributions to the literature of scientific and practical agriculture. Its physical plant included dormitories; faculty homes; electric, telephone and water systems; a cooperative store, and 10 kilometers of surfaced road. The COLLEGE OF AGRICULTURE had become a community, a force in the economic development of the Philippines, and a clearing house with a growing international reputation in tropical agriculture. An official survey team sent out from the University of Illinois in 1923 had given the "curricula, staff qualifications, finances, and academic standing" of the COLLEGE an "A"—the only college of the University of the Philippines to be so rated.

The third—and first Filipino—dean was Bienvenido Maria Gonzalez. Demanding excellence in all things, "whether the product was a student, a plant, an animal or a scientific paper," he "coaxed the COLLEGE to spread deep roots" during his years in office (1927-1939).

Gonzalez had received his B.S. from LOS BAÑOS and had gone to the U.S. to earn his Master of Arts at the University of Wisconsin and his Ph.D. at Johns Hopkins. Although he came from a wealthy landed family which had the usual prejudice against working with one's hands, Gonzalez had chosen animal husbandry as his field of specialization. As former head of that department he recognized the need to import animals to cross scientifically with local breeds in order to create new strains, adaptable to the tropics, yet with the superior qualities of the imports. Under his watchful eye the COLLEGE developed the Berkjala Swine, a cross between the Berkshire and the native Jala-Jala; the Los BAÑOS-Cantonese Chicken—such a successful cross that it was exported back to Canton; and the Philamin Cattle, a three-way cross between the American Hereford, the Indian Nellore and the Philippine native. During his tenure as dean similar fine work was done on feeds, fertilizer needs of plants in varying soils, production of better strains of crops, and research on nutrition and on the control of pests and diseases.

In 1929 the curriculum was revamped. The first two and a half years of the four year undergraduate course were restructured to offer sciences basic to agriculture and other subjects of broad agricultural application; the last year and a half were given over to specialization. The Rural High School was established to serve primarily as a teaching lab for the Department of Agricultural Education which had been formed in 1928 to prepare students to teach in lower agricultural schools.

The COLLEGE also expanded its contact with its farm constituency. The campus continued to be used for conferences, farmers' days and fairs; the Biweekly Bulletin, which discussed practical farm matters, was published for alumni, and superior livestock and plant materials were distributed to farmers to help them in upgrading their herds and crops.

By 1934, as a result of policies laid down when the COLLEGE was founded, all technical positions at LOS BAÑOS were held by Filipinos, most of them alumni. Of the 50 Filipinos in the 1933 edition of American Men of Science, 23 were COLLEGE OF AGRICULTURE graduates, and four of the Americans listed therein were, or had been, on the COLLEGE faculty.

Gonzalez left LOS BAÑOS in 1939 to become president of the University of the Philippines (located at Diliman, near Manila), with which the COLLEGE was affiliated. He was the first scientist and the first alumnus of the university to be so honored.

Leopoldo B. Uichanco followed Gonzalez as dean. A student of Copeland and Baker, with a Harvard Ph.D., Uichanco was the most outstanding entomologist in the country when he assumed office. He was to serve during the institution's most difficult years—World War II and the years of postwar reconstruction.

The COLLEGE was bombed by Japanese planes on Christmas Day 1941 and was shortly thereafter occupied by Japanese troops. It was closed and not allowed to reopen until September 1942. At the same time it became a recuperative camp for Filipino prisoners of war, an internment camp for Allied nationals and a headquarters for the Japanese army. Not too surprisingly an active guerrilla movement developed within the COLLEGE community. Uichanco himself was arrested and sentenced to death on charges of hiding Americans and aiding the guerrillas. He was pardoned at the behest of high Philippine government officials, but was dismissed from office. The COLLEGE was closed and when it was allowed to reopen in September 1943, Francisco O. Santos was Acting Dean.

In February 1945, as the war turned against the Japanese, college students who had become guerrillas, and other pro-Allied units, surrounded the campus until it was liberated by the American military. However, when the Americans proceeded on to Manila, the Japanese returned and "demolished in two days what had taken 36 years to build." When Uichanco returned he found the campus gutted. Of the library's 20,000 volumes, 180 remained; equipment was burned or looted, specimen collections were gone, buildings had been demolished and records and notes destroyed. Most of the livestock had already been killed for food by either the Japanese or the Filipinos, and the orchards raided for food and fuel.

Nevertheless the COLLEGE reopened on July 25, 1945, the first unit of the university so to do. As in the beginning, teaching and construction went hand in hand. The faculty of 19 and the student body of 119 used the three buildings that were still standing and set about to rebuild the campus. A trickle of money began coming in from the United States, and sister institutions and private and commercial sources began donating specimens and literature. The COLLEGE quickly began publishing the Philippine Agriculturist and Biweekly Bulletin to give farmers advice in rebuilding their herds and war-devastated lands. In five years, with the help of "war damage funds" from the U.S., 80 percent of the physical plant had been restored.

In 1946 the American Agricultural Mission to the Philippines had urged the U.S. to support the COLLEGE’s experiment station and in 1950 the U.S. Economic Survey Mission to the Philippines reechoed that recommendation. A program was set up on the basis of these mission reports which had two goals: to strengthen the COLLEGE so that it could produce the agricultural leaders needed by the country, and to reinvigorate the experiment station so that it could "coordinate all Philippine agricultural research." The program also called for a contract for technical assistance with Cornell University, a major U.S. agricultural institution.

The first contract with Cornell was signed in 1952 and three have been signed since then. The 1952 contract brought major financial aid and a building boom to the campus, but the student boom exceeded both—with the COLLEGE mushrooming from 315 students in 1946 to 4,000 by 1955. Although the school had never had as much in the way of physical resources, it desperately needed more; classrooms were so full that students stood outside the windows to listen to lectures and take notes.

The Cornell-LOS BAÑOS program is considered the most successful of its kind instituted under the American aid program. Annually 10-14 American professors came and lived on campus, bringing with them fresh ideas and knowledge of gains made in many fields under the impetus of the war; a number of the younger Philippine faculty went to Cornell for graduate study. Because of the excellence of the work being done, the COLLEGE received major grants from internationally oriented organizations such as the Rockefeller Foundation, Council on Economic and Cultural Affairs, Committee for Free Asia and the Colombo Plan; and from Philippine private and governmental sources, e.g. Victorias Milling Co., Central Cooperative Exchange, Mathieson Chemical Corporation-Menzi, Presidential Assistance for Community Development (PACD) and National Rice and Corn Administration (NARIC).

In 1958 the COLLEGE developed an extension training program for nationals of other Southeast Asian states, and in 1959 the Rockefeller Foundation provided funds to build "International House" to serve as living quarters and a meeting ground for foreign and Philippine students. By 1960 there were 40 students on campus from Asian nations ranging from Pakistan on the west to Micronesia in the east.

Dioscoro L. Umali, a 1939 alumnus, succeeded Uichanco as dean in 1959. Umali firmly believed that a country must modernize its agriculture before it attempts to industrialize. The agricultural sector, he pointed out, can provide the capital—and later a market—for industrialization. Export crops can earn the foreign exchange needed for capital acquisitions, and a modernized agriculture will train and supply the skilled labor force needed by industry.

In reemphasizing the role of the COLLEGE OF AGRICULTURE in the development of the country's economy Umali reiterated its three functions: teaching, research and extension. Its role as teacher, he said, is to train agricultural leaders by providing them, not only with the latest technology, but with the scientific bases for that technology: to enable them to understand not only how, but why. And it is equally important, he stated, to prepare students to fit into their own society—to understand the political, cultural and social forces that forge it; the COLLEGE must expose students to other disciplines to help them become good and productive citizens.

Research, Umali noted, is essential to the welfare of the country since during the last half century "most of the improved farm practices on Philippine farms are the products of scientific investigations at LOS BAÑOS." For example, research at LOS BAÑOS led to the control of three diseases that threatened major export crops: coconut bud rot, abaca mosaic and Fiji disease of sugar cane. After the war, and in cooperation with the government Department of Agriculture, COLLEGE laboratories developed 14 improved varieties of rice and 4 double cross corn hybrids that were approved for mass distribution to farmers and contributed much to the increased productivity of the late 1950s. By 1960 ninety percent of the agricultural research going on in the Philippines was being conducted by the COLLEGE OF AGRICULTURE AT LOS BAÑOS.

The findings of research, of course, must be communicated to the user and the college is constantly seeking ways to reach farmers, both directly and indirectly. It sought to reach them directly through its Extension and Publications Office, established in 1954, which disseminated information for use by the mass media—radio, newspapers and magazines. Proof of the effectiveness of that mode, Umali said in a speech in 1960, was the response to a 1959 press release on the availability of a publication showing the latest findings on rice and corn; 500 letters were received from farmers throughout the islands asking for the publication. Information supplied by the COLLEGE was being used during the mid-1960s by over 87 radio stations and 50 newspapers and magazines throughout the islands. The campus radio station also broadcast farm information to the surrounding area.

The COLLEGE research staff was encouraged to set up experiments on private farms in various parts of the country where farmers could see the effects of a study in a field situation, and farmers were invited on campus during field days when the latest techniques were demonstrated and improved seed and stock were displayed and available for purchase.

The COLLEGE has reached the farmers indirectly by training extension workers, particularly the personnel of the government Bureau of Agriculture Extension. It has done this through inservice training schools, short courses and seminars.

Although the institution has long been engaged in training other Asians on its campus, it made a new, stronger commitment to help train agriculturalists from outside the Philippines when it agreed in 1960 to help the Rockefeller and Ford foundations establish the International Rice Research Institute (Ramon Magsaysay Awardee in 1969 for "innovative, interdisciplinary teamwork by Asian and Western scientists, unprecedented in scope, that is achieving radical, rapid advances in rice culture"). Set up on COLLEGE grounds, the International Rice Research Institute has brought together scientists from all over the world to work on developing heavier, more nutritious and pest-disease-and-weather-resistant strains of rice in order to feed the ever increasing populations of Asia.

In other areas the COLLEGE continued to cooperate with foreign nations, particularly those of non-communist Southeast Asia. Through its Agricultural Credit and Cooperatives Institute (1962) it undertook to teach Southeast Asian workers, by means of regional seminars and workshops, how to establish and maintain cooperative credit unions for farmers. In collaboration with the United Fruit Company of America it created a worldwide collection of bananas and developed a center for the study of this tropical fruit in order to upgrade banana production. It also established an Advisory Council, composed of selected COLLEGE staff and leaders in government and industry, "to analyze and seek solutions to the immediate problems of the COLLEGE in discharging its responsibilities to the community and to the outside world."

By 1965 the school had trained more than 260 persons from 15 Asian nations, most of whom were on Rockefeller or U.S. Agency for International Development scholarships. Many of these graduates are now leaders in their own countries; so many Thai graduated from LOS BAÑOS that the Thai Ministry of Agriculture became known as the Los BAÑOS Ministry.

The COLLEGE in the 1960s had 11 departments, several of which grew so large that they later became separate departments or institutes. The Department of Agricultural Botany—which later gave rise to Department of Horticulture—was particularly interested in studying the effects of fertilizers and minerals on rice planted in the typical clay loam soils of the Philippine lowlands, where yields per hectare were some of the lowest in the world. The Agricultural Chemistry Department was engaged in the study of sugar technology, a program which it resumed after the war at the request of the Philippine Sugar Institute, as well as in such diverse studies as industrial uses for coconut byproducts, the biochemistry of the abaca mosaic virus, and the nutritional level of Filipinos.

The Department of Agricultural Economics included in its curricula farm management, agricultural geography, consumer economics, elementary statistics and accounting, and public policy problems relating to agriculture. Studies were being done on the effect of production incentives and technical guidance on farm practices and yields and incomes of rice tenant-farmers; consumers' practices; government lending operations, and how to reduce produce-loss during transport from field to market.

The Department of Agricultural Education had increased its activities under the Cornell Program, assisted by a grant from the Council on Economic and Cultural Affairs to write manuals for farmers on livestock and crop production. It conducted summer institutes for agriculture teachers and extension workers and operated the Rural High School.

The Department of Agricultural Engineering (later to become a separate Institute of Agricultural Engineering and Technology) was studying irrigation techniques, design of new farm implements and such advanced ideas as the practicality of using alcohol and alcohol-gasoline blends for farm engines. The Department of Agronomy taught the principles and practices of crop production and plant breeding, e.g. hybridization and crop rotation, with an emphasis on basic food crops such as corn, soybeans and cassava; the department's work on rice, and its collection of rice varieties from around the world, were largely turned over to the International Rice Research Institute.

In the Department of Animal Husbandry, cross breeding of animals had begun again; prewar crosses had been destroyed during the occupation and it was necessary to start afresh. The department also studied feeds and pasturage to determine the optimum for Philippine breeding conditions, and assisted the government in its program of artificial insemination.

The Entomology Department was investigating the possibility of chemical and biological control of pests, particularly borers which were major threats to rice and corn crops, and Home Technology was keyed to the needs of wives-to-be of farmers, teaching them to manage their households wisely, and a farm itself if need be. Required courses ranged from mathematics and physics to rice substitutes and basic nutrition.

The Plant Pathology Department, which from the days of Baker had researched rice and corn fungi, continued to study a vast range of crop diseases and possible controls, and the newest department, Soils, founded in 1930, devoted research to soil-water-plant correlation under field conditions as well as in laboratory tests. Grants from several major agricultural companies enabled it to study the effect of fertilizers on crops in order to determine optimum applications.

Generous grants were made during the decade by international public organizations to assist in setting up new divisions within the COLLEGE. The Dairy Training and Research Institute was established in 1962 with the help of the United Nations Development Program. Now independent, it is the locale of the Regional Dairy Development and Training Center for Asia and the Pacific.

By Presidential Proclamation of May 28, 1964 a Research and Training Station was established at La Granja, Negros Occidental, under COLLEGE auspices. Located on 288 hectares, it is devoted to research, training and extension work involving the production, processing and utilization of sugarcane and related crops, and to ecological testing of crop varieties and production practices. It is also a practice farm for undergraduates in agricultural science. The same year by Executive Proclamation the COLLEGE was granted 3,000 hectares in Paete, Laguna, to be used for research and training. Research was to be directed toward seeking ways for industry to utilize agricultural wastes and toward conservation of natural resources. Both projects are still under COLLEGE administration.

In 1963, to enable it to meet the needs "not only of the Philippines but also of the newly emerging nations of Asia," the COLLEGE drew up a Five Year Development Plan and successfully negotiated an extended contract with Cornell University. The Philippine Congress approved a US$4.2 million counterpart to a loan of US$6 million from the World Bank to expand the COLLEGE’s ability to offer research and extension services. This was the first educational loan given by the World Bank; it proved so effective that the bank has since made underwriting educational development a major bank program. The government-bank funds were used primarily for the construction of 18 new buildings.

At the same time Cornell was asked to help develop a graduate school. The Rockefeller Foundation agreed to provide housing for the Cornell resident staff and to continue fellowships for the COLLEGE faculty and for Asian students; the Ford Foundation offered to provide funds to upgrade the library—from 30,000 to 100,000 volumes, with emphasis on economics, technology and Asian cultures, finance the Cornell contract, provide graduate scholarships, and pay for the service of a firm of campus planners. The Asia Foundation, U.S. aid program and Colombo Plan also gave meaningful assistance.

The Graduate School opened in 1963 and offered degrees in five fields: natural resources, animal science, plant science, food science and nutrition, and socioeconomics and communications. An interchange between faculty and students of LOS BAÑOS and Cornell was established. Under the plan some of the Filipino and other Asian graduate assistants who had already obtained a Master of Science at LOS BAÑOS were sent to Cornell where they completed all course work for a doctorate but the thesis. The latter they researched and wrote on their return; they then could elect to receive their Ph.D.s from either institution. Cornell graduate students in the program did their course work before coming to LOS BAÑOS, spending their two years in the Philippines doing research for their theses and assisting the eight Cornell professors at LOS Baños with their teaching loads. Through this program and other staff development schemes the COLLEGE raised the number of Ph.D.s on the faculty from 15 percent to 42 percent by 1977. There was also provision in the program for visiting professors from Asia and other countries.

In order to attract and retain qualified staff the COLLEGE upgraded its salary scales by 50 percent between 1963 and 1966, provided 200 faculty housing units and increased travel opportunities and funds to attend conferences and undertake study tours abroad.

Although there was an ever-increasing demand for graduates of the COLLEGE from agriculture, agricultural manufacturing, government and the some 75 agricultural schools and colleges around the country, the number of students at LOS BAÑOS was stabilized during these years at about 2,000 by means of strict entrance requirements. Foreign students were admitted on the same basis as Filipino, but both had to pass the National College Entrance Examination and have a weighted average of 90 percent or better in their final year in secondary school. They also had to be proficient in English.

In other respects, however, COLLEGE output steadily increased: some 200 research projects were completed annually and 85 percent of published agricultural research emanated from the institution.

In 1970 Umali retired from LOS BAÑOS and became Assistant Director General for Asia and the Far East of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization. He was succeeded as dean by Faustino T. Orillo who had graduated from the school in 1944. During Orillo's term (1970-1973) the COLLEGE underwent a fundamental change. By Presidential Decree 58 of November 20, 1972 the COLLEGE OF AGRICULTURE AT LOS BAÑOS became part of the new University of the Philippines at LOS BAÑOS (UPLB), an autonomous unit of the newly established University of the Philippines System. Until this time the COLLEGE OF AGRICULTURE and the other colleges and institutes were part of the University of the Philippines at Diliman.

When Orillo left to become Dean of the Graduate School of UPLB in 1973 another alumnus, Fernando A. Bernardo (Class of 1955), succeeded to the deanship of the COLLEGE. After a year he was appointed President of the Visayas State College of Agriculture in Baybay, Leyte. His successor in 1974, Cledualdo B. Perez, Jr., the present holder of that office, is also an alumnus (Class of 1956).

During the decade of the 1970s four other units formerly within the COLLEGE have become autonomous within the UPLB: the College of Sciences and Humanities (1973); the Institute of Human Ecology (1974); the Institute of Agricultural Development and Administration (1975) and the Institute of Agricultural Engineering and Technology (1976).

However, three research and development institutes were added to the COLLEGE by presidential decrees: the Institute of Plant Breeding (1975), to help develop high yield, disease and pest resistant, high quality crops; the National Crop Protection Center (1976), to "undertake research, manpower training and extension in support of integrated crop protection systems against pests of major economic crops"; and the Postharvest Horticulture Training and Research Center (1977) which is dedicated to serving the needs of the five states which make up the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN)—the Philippines, Thailand, Singapore, Indonesia and Malaysia.

Nine departments remained in the COLLEGE in 1977: 1) Agricultural Education, including the Rural High School; 2) Agronomy, 3) Animal Science, 4) Development Communication, 5) Entomology, 6) Food Science and Technology, 7) Horticulture, 8) Plant Pathology and 9) Soil Science. The COLLEGE OF AGRICULTURE, through the Graduate School, offers an M.S. in all nine fields, plus Agricultural Extension, Community Development, Plant Breeding and Rural Sociology. It also offers a Ph.D. in all but Development Communication and Rural Sociology.

Although it has lost a number of its components over the years, the COLLEGE, as of the academic year 1976-77, had a faculty of 235, of whom 101 had the degree of Ph.D., 84 an M.S. and 50 a B.S. The school had 1,808 undergraduates and, in collaboration with the Graduate School, 696 students in graduate studies, including 126 in the doctoral program. In spite of the fact that it has assisted other agricultural schools around the nation to upgrade their teaching and research, the COLLEGE OF AGRICULTURE AT LOS BAÑOS still produces three-fourths of the total agricultural research in the country.

The extension work of the COLLEGE includes publication of Agriculture at Los Baños, a quarterly which gives technical support to extension workers, and the more specialized newsletters for the educated layman: Crops and Soil Newsletter, Livestock and Poultry Research News, Pasture Newsletter and others.

By the end of 1976 the COLLEGE OF AGRICULTURE had graduated (since its first graduating class in 1911) 440 foreign students: 204 from Thailand, 40 from South Vietnam, 37 each from Taiwan and Indonesia, and 25 from Pakistan. The rest came from some 15 to 20 other countries worldwide. Although the COLLEGE took pride in this record, it pledged itself to work harder to extend its efforts throughout Asia, particularly in ASEAN countries, and reiterated its commitment to "turn out leaders in agriculture who can think critically, learn effectively, and make a major contribution to economic and social progress" in whatever land they work.

September 1977
Manila

REFERENCES:

College of Agriculture. Booklet. Los Baños: College of Agriculture. 1977.

College of Agriculture. Pamphlet. Los Baños: University of the Philippines. N.d.

The College of Agriculture Today. Booklet. Los Baños: College of Agriculture. August 1965.

"Distinguished Alumni UPCAAA, Inc." 1976. (Typewritten list.)

50 Years of Scientific Agriculture, 1909-1959. Souvenir Program. Los Baños: College of Agriculture. 1959.

58th Loyalty Day and UPCA Alumni Homecoming '76. Booklet. Los Baños: University of the Philippines. October 10, 1976.

"Golden Jubilee UP College of Agriculture." The Philippine Agriculturist. Vol. 43, no. 1, June 1959.

Hollnsteiner, Susanna. "Tabulation of Foreign Students from 1911 to the School Year Ending 1976." July 19, 1977. (Typewritten.)

Lyon, E. Wilson. The History of Pomona College: 1887-1969. Claremont, Calif.: Pomona College. 1977, p. 140.

The Making of a University. Los Baños: University of the Philippines Public Information Program. June 1977.

Marcos, Ferdinand E. Presidential Decree No. 58. Manila: Govt. of the Philippines. November 20, 1972.

Umali, Dioscoro L. "The Role and Functions of the U.P. College of Agriculture." Speech delivered before the Manila Rotary Club on January 28, 1960. (Mimeographed.)

______. "The U.P. College of Agriculture and Some University Issues." May 11, 1961. (Mimeographed.)