Continued Growth and Expansion
', 'Image Copyright University of Alberta Archives<br />Accession Number: 77-72-106d', 'images/uofadbimages/77-72-106d_det.jpg', 2); "A.G. McCalla")
With the opening of the 1945–1946 academic term, the Faculty of Agriculture entered its thirty-first year with highest enrollment ever in its first-year class. A total of 100 students registered in the first year of the four-year course. The majority of these were ex-servicemen entering the University under the Post-Discharge Rehabilitation plan, following the end of World War II.
The second Alberta graduate to become dean of the Faculty of Agriculture, Arthur Gilbert McCalla, was noted for his capacity to drive straight to the heart of a problem.
The Faculty of Agriculture's first PhD was conferred in 1953 to Clayton Person who studied cytogenetics in the Department of Plant Science. Shortly thereafter, the Faculty witnessed the official opening of the Agriculture Building on October 30, 1954 as part of Fall Convocation. Around that same time, approval was given or a whole new array of greenhouses to be built between the North Laboratory and the Agriculture Building. The project included a brick headhouse and about 18,000 square feet under glass. The Department of Botany was to use some of the space and the Department of Animal Science got a new swine barn specifically designed to permit research.
When the Faculty celebrated its fiftieth anniversary in 1965, a list was made of some of the significant research that had directly benefited Alberta agriculture. The list included research on the grade of Alberta pigs, increase in beef production from sire progeny testing work, improved swine rations and management, savings to feedlot operators from information on cattle feeding and management, and savings of chemicals and labour by immersion cleaning of milking equipment. Highlighted was the fact that the usefulness of synthetic riboflavin in poultry rations—it results in feed savings and improves the hatchability of eggs—was an original University of Alberta discovery.