declare constant as date

[Divya Gehlot]

Hi,
In Spark 1.5.2
Do we have any utiility which converts a constant value as shown below
orcan we declare a date variable like val start_date :Date = "2015-03-02"

val start_date = "2015-03-02" toDate
like how we convert to toInt ,toString
I searched for it but  couldnt find it


Thanks,
Divya