Welcome to the New Department of Community, Agriculture, Recreation, and Resource Studies (CARRS) at Michigan State University!
By Dr. Scott G. Witter, Acting Chairperson

Introduction

As you may already be aware, the Michigan State University Board of Trustees established the Department of Community, Agriculture, Recreation, and Resource Studies (CARRS) in the College of Agriculture and Natural Resources (CANR) in November of 2003.  At the same meeting, the Board dissolved the Departments of Agriculture and Natural Resources Education and Communications Systems (ANRECS), Resource Development (RD), and Park, Recreation, and Tourism Resources (PRTR).  This restructuring has helped to sustain and enhance existing faculty scholarship, Extension/outreach, and undergraduate and graduate student programs

The mission of the new department will be to conduct excellent, scholarly outreach, research, and teaching programs in (1) leadership, education, and communication, (2) community, food, and agriculture, (3) natural resources, land use, and the environment, and (4) recreation and tourism that assist the development of sustainable communities. 

The role of CARRS is to function as an interdisciplinary department within the College addressing the challenging interfaces of agriculture, natural resources, recreation, and community issues.  CARRS supports the mission and values of CANR and the land-grant mission of the University.  CARRS will work to integrate agriculture and natural resources and complement programs in CANR and other units of the university (e.g., Agricultural Economics, Environmental Sciences and Policy Programs). 

Focusing

CARRS is currently in the process of inviting two national scholars in each of our four thematic areas to write a white paper.  The papers will clearly lay out the opportunities and challenges for the field within a land-grant university. 

Once the white papers are completed, the faculty will retreat to discuss each of them separately.  Comments will be shared with the authors for their response.  The next step will be to bring in key stakeholders and a new External Advisory Board for a series of meetings to discuss their reactions and needs over the next 5-10 years.  Following that meeting, we will invite the external scholars to campus to meet with the faculty and our stakeholders to discuss their papers and how we can best use them to define our core and future.  An open public seminar will be held to publicly “Set the Cornerstones of CARRS.” 

We will invite our sister departments from across campus and our stakeholders to participate in a two hour seminar.  The white papers will be presented, our stakeholders will describe their needs, and members of the faculty will present how we will address the needs and opportunities from within and through strategic partnerships in the College, across colleges, and with external partners.

Input from the seminar will be used to refine the papers.  Once all of them have been completed (February 2005), we will retreat to discuss how to integrate the findings into a definition of our new core.  From that time forward the core will define and guide the development of CARRS across our mission.  CARRS faculty will only seek new faculty and Departmental opportunities that fit and move the core forward.

The authors for the white paper on Recreation and Tourism Systems will be Dr. Daniel R. Fesenmaier, Professor and Director of the National Laboratory for Tourism and E-Commerce at Temple University; and Dr. Joseph T. O’Leary, Chairperson of the Department of Recreation, Park and Tourism Sciences at Texas A&M University.  

Please watch future issues of Michigan Tourism Business for an invitation to participate in focus groups and in the open seminar.

If you have any questions about this new academic department, feel free to contact me at witter@msu.edu or 517-353-5190 x:104.