Leading wildlife academic programs into the new millennium

There is an old joke that goes, "How many university faculty does it take t o change a light bulb?" The answer: "Change, you say?" But change in wildli fe academic programs is inevitable. The exponential growth of the United St ates and world human populations and their concomitant impacts of urban spr awl, deforestation, overfishing of the seas, pollution, and possibly even g lobal warming place increasingly greater burdens on natural resources, incl uding wildlife resources. Coupled with this, in a positive sense, is the ex plosion in information and information technology and the need to find mean s of organizing and handling this information so that it can be put to use in resource management decision-making. We are faced with questions of how to best educate undergraduate and graduate students to face this new world and how to promote basic and applied research during times of declining fun ding. Likewise, extension faculty are facing an ever-changing clientele, wi th new and different interests, values, needs, and questions about resource management. A variety of recent analyses of public universities have calle d for a "return to our roots," reemphasizing undergraduate teaching, lifeti me learning, and mission-oriented research. Coupled with these concerns are the specters of more oversight and control of academic institutions by fed eral and state legislative bodies and the need for academic administrators to mentor young faculty through the maze of tenure and promotion requiremen ts in a changing world. The question, then, is not whether to change but ho w? We hereby propose those changes.