As of July 1, the departments of genetics, botany and zoology no longer exist at Iowa State.

The three departments were reorganized into two all-inclusive majors. The department of genetics, development and cell biology (GDCB) and the department of ecology, evolution and organismal biology (EEOB) will now be co-administered by the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and the College of Agriculture.

Jonathan Wendel, professor and chair of the new EEOB department, said the changes have been “grand and sweeping.”

The merger has made him very busy, he said. “I’m spending less time with my graduate students than I would like.”

The demand for new departments was due in part to changes in the field of science, he said.

“What we’re doing is bringing science of all disciplines together,” Wendel said. “I’m learning a lot more about my colleagues and their perspectives.”

The collaboration and interaction between the department’s personnel will also yield new ideas and phase out some of the redundancy that happen when studies of similar areas are spread out, he added.

Martin Spalding, professor and chair of GDCB, said the change is positive, despite a couple minor glitches.

“The reason we did this was to increase quality in both our research and our teaching,” he said.

“The questions the different departments were asking are very similar, but based on different organisms. Now that we’ve brought them together, we’re benefiting.”

Dividing the old departments’ budgets has been one of the complications of the merger, he said.

Lynn Clark, professor of EEOB, said the change has been “complex,” but the end result has been positive.

“From the viewpoint of a new member of EEOB, it’s a really exciting opportunity,” she said. “We’ve got a great group of people and I’m actually very pleased with the way things have been happening.”

James Colbert, associate professor of EEOB, said the change in programming provides more reasonable organization.

“What we’re trying to do is organize the discipline of biology on this campus in a way that is consistent with what we know about how the biological world is organized,” Colbert said.

Wendel said the new organization will also aid graduate students in securing funding for research because of the “critical mass phenomenon.” Given an intellectually stimulating environment produced by bringing groups of scientists together, the potential for funding is increased, he explained.

However, Wendel said the changes in the department may not be apparent to students.

Colbert, who is working with the department to implement changes in the curriculum, agreed no change will be evident for undergraduate students until the next Iowa State course catalog is distributed in 2005.