Perspectives | Summer2010

Perspectives

T H E M A G A Z I N E O F T H E C O L L E G E O F A G R I C U LT U R E A N D L I F E S C I E N C E S Summer 2010 NC STATE UNIVERSITY

A Land-grant Gem

Agricultural Institute celebrates 50 years

Dynamic partnership

Dean Johnny Wynne meets with leaders and producers representing North Carolina’s diverse agricultural commodities.

(Story, page 9)

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ne of our College goals for 2010 is to foster economic vitality by generating and applying science and technology that support robust agricultural and life sciences industries.

It is part of our land-grant mandate to conduct programs that undergird the agricultural industry in North Carolina.

The pursuit of those efforts is also the College’s role in its ongoing partnership with the producers, leadership and organizations representing the state’s diverse agricultural commodities. In turn, the commodities have done much to support the College and N.C. State University. Commodity and agriculture-related organizations have provided millions of dollars in annual support of research, teaching and extension activities, funding faculty members’ programs, facility improvements and endowments in the College.

As N.C. State Chancellor Randy Woodson told more than 250 state commodity leaders at their annual meeting May 7, “That’s a tremendous contribution.”

In this issue of Perspectives we bring you a feature overview and news updates about this dynamic partnership that has enabled us to create excellent programs that have impact for the agribusiness that accounts for $70.1 billion of value-added production in the state.

We are also celebrating two important milestones in the College. The Agricultural Institute, CALS’ two-year associate of applied science degree program, is celebrating 50 years as a defining part of the university’s land-grant mission. With nine academic programs and an average enrollment of 400, the Ag Institute is now one of the nation’s largest associate’sdegree-granting programs at a four-year institution offering agricultural degrees.

And as our Department of Biological and Agricultural Engineering turns 75 this year, several of its faculty members have offered insights about the department and the dif-

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ference it has made in areas ranging from labor-saving and safer farming methods to bioenergy, environmental engineering and water quality.

Our College Profile features Dr. Rob Dunn, CALS assistant professor of biology, who studies the interactions among species and the diverse consequences of those interactions.

In his research he seeks to find the locations of most of the Earth’s undiscovered species, the patterns that determine the kinds and prevalence of human diseases around the world and the ways global warming may affect living things.

In 2009, he published the book Every Living Thing: Man’s Obsessive Quest to Catalog Life, from Nanobacteria to New Monkeys.

Don’t miss our reports on outstanding students, important faculty honors and awards, alumni achievements and advancement updates. As always, the College has a lot of fascinating news to share.

Johnny Wynne, Dean College of Agriculture and Life Sciences

Perspectives NC STATE UNIVERSITY

On the Web: http://www.cals.ncsu.edu/perspectives

The Magazine of the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences Summer 2010 Vol. 12, No. 2 Managing Editor: Terri Leith Design and Layout: Karl E. Larson Staff Photographers: Becky Kirkland, Mark Dearmon, Marc Hall Staff Writers: Dave Caldwell, Natalie E. Hampton, Terri Leith, Dee Shore, Suzanne Stanard Contributors: Erin McCrary, Rhonda Green, William Taylor, NCSU News Services

Printed by TCG Graphics Inc., Garner, N.C.

38,500 copies of this public document were printed at a cost of $19,932 or $.52 per copy.

Printed on recycled paper.

Perspectives is published quarterly by the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at North Carolina State University.

Third Class Postage paid at Raleigh, NC 27611.

Correspondence and requests for change of address should be addressed to Perspectives Editor, Box 7603, N.C. State University, Raleigh, NC 27695-7603.

William R. “Randy” Woodson, Chancellor Johnny C. Wynne, Dean and Executive Director for Agricultural Programs Kenneth L. Esbenshade, Associate Dean and Director, Academic Programs Joe Zublena, Interim Associate Dean and Director, North Carolina Cooperative Extension Service David Smith, Associate Dean and Director, North Carolina Agricultural Research Service Sylvia Blankenship, Associate Dean for Administration Keith D. Oakley, Executive Director, Advancement 919.515.2000 W. Scott Troutman, Executive Director, Alumni and Friends Society

contents

FEATURES 2 A Land-Grant Gem

The College’s Agricultural Institute celebrates 50 years as a defining part of the university’s mission — and the ‘perfect fit’ for thousands of students.

6 Growing New Farmers

College programs help novices get started in production agriculture.

9 Ties That Bind

Partnerships forged between the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences and commodity groups benefit both.

12 Sibling Excellence

CALS graduate students Nirada and Phanin Leksrisompong take top honors at international research competition.

16 College Profile

Dr. Rob Dunn helps others grasp the complexity of the living world and of the people who study it.

N O T E W O R T H Y 20 N E W S Faculty voices recall BAE’s 75-year impact • VetPAC is the go-to guide for pre-veterinary students • CALS landscape design students bring ‘Fantasy Croquet’ to Wilson Botanical Gardens • New pink hydrangea is Invincibelle® • Webinar series brings agritourism education • Agricultural law course makes students firsthand witnesses to the law in action • Grad student’s grafting research creates an ideal tomato • Getting enough calcium in early life could be key for optimal lifelong bone health • N.C. State scientist searches the world for plants that help human health • CEFS launches 10% Campaign and releases guide on local foods • Work continues on managing the weed Palmer amaranth • Commodity leaders, growers train in food-safety crisis communication • Trudy Mackay elected to National Academy of Sciences

33 A L U M N I Helping veterinarians match medical excellence with business excellence • ‘Scientists in the Classroom’ brings science to elementary school • Agriculture teacher Jodi Riedel named N.C. Environmental Educator of the Year

36 G I V I N G ‘All in the golden afternoon’ at the 2010 Arb Gala • A Family Affair: How a young couple’s bequests create a legacy of giving for their children • Peanut Growers, Hudsons make substantial gifts to 4-H Museum and History Center • Sweet potato campaign charges toward $1.3 million goal • Jones professorship at Kannapolis established with $1 million endowment in College • New foundation launched at jointExtension foundations event

The Cover: Agricultural Institute student Stephen Shepard and fellow AGI students, alumni and faculty members are celebrating the 50th anniversary of the College’s two-year associate’s-degree program. (Story, page 2) Photo by Marc Hall summer 2010

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n municatio CALS Com

Services

A Land-Grant Gem

The College’s Agricultural Institute celebrates 50 years as a defining part of the university’s mission

CALS Communication Services

— and the ‘perfect fit’ for thousands of students.

I

By Terri Leith n

2001, when the Rick Smith Agricultural Institute

Scholarship was created in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, Rick Smith, Ag Institute alumnus, owner of the Inde-

pendent Leaf Tobacco Co. and board member of the N.C. Tobacco Trust Fund Commission, offered a simple reason for his supporting the endowment to fund the scholarship. “I’m repaying a debt,” Smith said. “Everything I’ve accomplished in my life is because of the Agricultural Institute.”

Smith’s gratitude to the program resonates with AGI graduates, including those named as its 2009 Outstanding Alumni — Brenda Penny and Brad West.

Penny, who graduated from AGI in general agriculture in 1979 and is now a research assistant in the CALS Department of Crop Science, said in AGI’s alumni newsletter that her AGI attendance was a culmination of her “early appreciation for research, extension and teaching” and that she really appreciates “the education I received from the Ag Institute.”

Meanwhile, West, who received his 1998 AGI associate’s degrees in agricultural business management, 2 perspectives

field crops technology and livestock management, is a business partner in his family’s West Family Farms.

“The Agricultural Institute was the perfect fit for me,” West told the newsletter. “It provided me with the skills that I needed to go home and expand my family’s agribusiness.”

The Agricultural Institute (AGI) in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at N.C. State University offers nine academic programs leading to an associate of applied science degree, ranging from agribusiness management to landscape technology. Its programs are designed to prepare students for careers in agriculture and related industries, with a focus on hands-

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Archival images show (from top, left) the first class of Ag Institute students at N.C. State, a news article heralding the September 1960 launch of AGI, a 1970s AGI crop science class and red-robed 2010 AGI graduates.

on technical training. In fact, AGI is now one of the United States’ largest associate-degree-granting programs at a four-year institution offering agriculture degrees.

And together, Smith, Penny and West represent the kind of possibilities for success that the creators of AGI had in mind in 1959 when the program was created.

“The way it came about was that a lot of young men in the late 1950s were finishing high school and planning to pursue careers in agriculture,” said the late Edmund Aycock, a 1936 CALS agriculture alumnus, in 2008 as he reminisced with AGI newsletter editor Martha Jennette about his service on the

council that advised in the creation of the institute.

“Many planned to work on and/ or manage their family farms, and others wanted to work in agricultural sales or service,” Aycock said.

“They needed to learn more about agriculture, but they didn’t want to get the four-year degree: They wanted the basics, and a two-year ag program seemed to answer this need.”

The Agricultural Institute was thus formed in 1959 by an act of the state legislature in agreement with N.C. State University, as a two-year associate of applied science degree program. It was then and is now designed for students who want a focused curriculum and practical knowledge and have a desire to work in agriculture or a related industry, including the green industry.

And it’s a program that reflects the heart of the land-grant mission to assure the state’s citizens access to the knowledge derived at the university: The Agricultural Institute has an open enrollment policy, meaning that anyone who holds a high-school diploma or GED and applies may enroll.

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ctually, it was as early as 1956 that Dr. Dean W. Colvard, CALS dean from 1953 to 1960, suggested the establishment of the two-year Agricultural Institute for students who preferred not to pursue four-year degrees, according to North Carolina State University: A Narrative History, by Alice E. Reagan.

But it was not till 1959 that the state

General Assembly acted to create the program at N.C. State University to begin operation in the fall of the following year.

As Colvard and his co-author William L. Carpenter recall in their book Knowledge is Power, Dr. Homer Folks, the first head of the program, “visited a number of similar programs at other institutions … to incorporate into the new program the strengths observed in other states and to avoid any weaknesses found.”

Colvard and Carpenter say that “when the first class of 95 arrived on campus in the fall of 1960, there were five programs of instruction: farm equipment sales and service, general agriculture, livestock management and technology, poultry technology and pest control.”

And, as the authors note, enrollment climbed steadily.

Today, the enrollment number averages 400. Faculty members in 11 academic departments provide instruction to institute students. More than 150 degrees were awarded during the 2008-2009 academic year. Its graduates remain in great demand in the state and nation, with typically 95 percent employed in their fields of interest within six months of graduation.

And there are now more than 5,000 AGI alumni who can say they attended a program ranked No. 1 in the nation among two-year associate degree programs in agriculture and related sciences in 2006, according to Community College Week.

As Dr. Barbara Kirby, AGI director, puts it, “From a program organized to address the agricultural training needs for young men, we have grown to become a diversified, comprehensive program preparing young men and women not only

CALS Communication Services

Marc Hall

A student tends livestock (below), and Dr. Jan Spears’ AGI class conducts crop science field work (left). Plant and animal agriculture are among the many career areas for which AGI students are prepared.

for careers in plant and animal agriculture but also in agribusiness, pest management, horticulture and turfgrass management. Students experience hands-on learning, receiving instruction in cutting-edge technology in the most sophisticated facilities NCSU has to offer.”

In fact, a key part of the program’s mission is to provide its students access to the resources of a major land-grant institution as it prepares them to be productive leaders in society with the ability to adapt to an ever-changing agricultural sector.

Degree programs position AGI students for careers in agribusiness management, agribusiness management-horticulture, agricultural pest management, urban pest management, field crops technology, general agriculture, livestock and poultry management, ornamentals and landscape technology and turfgrass management.

Among AGI students currently working toward such careers are Holt Willis, Vinquita Adams, Josh Essick and Stephen Shepard — each

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Holt Willis, a May 2010 AGI graduate in ornamental landscape technology, says the program has positioned him to achieve his career goals.

of whom, like West, found AGI to be a “perfect” educational fit.

Willis, who is from Ridgeway, is completing his second year in AGI and will graduate this May in the Institute’s ornamental landscape technology (OLT) program. His career goals include obtaining a roadside environmental job for the state Department of Transportation, as well as a possible self-business venture into the green industry with landscaping and lawn care. And he is grateful to AGI for positioning him to achieve those goals.

“I believe that the AGI OLT program is a perfect fit for me,” Willis says. “I chose AGI for a more hands-on approach to my education and a more personal feeling within the student-to-faculty relationship. … The hands-on learning approach is very helpful in all courses, by way of labs that actually get you involved in what you are learning.”

Among the highlights of his AGI coursework, Willis says, is the opportunity to work at the JC Raulston Arboretum, where he helped establish new annual beds and relocate select species of shrubs as part of an arboretum renovation. Another highlight is his involvement with the national honor society Delta Tau Alpha and its 2010 national convention in Huntsville, Texas.

“It has been a great experience coming to the AGI and being able to receive, in my opinion, what is the best education anyone can get

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that is interested in agriculture,” Willis says.

“Overall I am very happy that I chose to come to N.C. State AGI to receive my education.”

Adams, a first-year AGI student from Charlotte, is an agricultural business management major who plans to graduate in 2011. A two-year degree track was “the right choice for me,” says Adams, who hopes to open up her own business within the next three years. “The [AGI] program is perfect,” she says.

“It teaches you everything you need to know—and I’m learning!”

Essick, from Arcadia, is a firstyear student in livestock and poultry management.

He chose AGI “because it is the only and the best school of its kind,” he says. “Dr. Kirby told me once, ‘We are the best in the universe.’ It is one of the only schools where you can get a two-year degree in agriculture. And the fact that it’s at N.C. State, one of the top ag schools in the country, [assures] the knowledge you are able to obtain is the best

there is.

“The program is so good because we work with some of the best research in the country in agriculture,” he says. “We have the knowledge of the major university in a more applied method. It is a great thing for N.C. State and agriculture in North Carolina.”

Upon receiving his AGI associate’s degree in 2012, “I hope to work with a poultry company in live production and eventually come back to my family’s farm and build poultry houses and farm,” he says.

“The program is a perfect fit for my needs,” he says. “It is giving me the opportunity to learn about the poultry and livestock industry and get the proper training to be competitive in the industry. I can honestly say I am happy to wake up and go to school every morning.”

Among the highlights of his AGI activities, he says, are the courses and material that “I already use on the farm or can see how I would be able to use it in agriculture. There is no work that you just do to do it. It’s all applied to the things you need to be successful in agriculture.” He also describes meetings and events with other AGI students as “like a big family.”

The AGI program, Essick says, “is a top-notch experiJosh Essick, a first-year AGI student in poultry and livestock management, chose AGI because “the knowledge you are able to obtain is the best there is.”

Marc Hall

A double major in ag business and poultry and livestock management, Stephen Shepard (left) appreciates the small-schoolwithin-a-big-school atmosphere of AGI.

basis,” he says.

“I have enjoyed so much about the class work and labs in AGI. We do so many hands-on activities and are set up to learn so many valuable work-related issues in our degree program. I have done a wide variety of things such as birthing newborn pigs, artificial inseminations, several dissections and ultrasounds.

The opportunities are endless with the AGI labs.”

Upon graduation Shepard hopes

pesticide business ‘Critters Nightmare,’ which exterminates [pests in] poultry houses, is also another goal of mine,” he says.

“I feel like it is such a privilege to be a part of a program that doesn’t just skim the surfaces but prepares you for the job market in every aspect. I would not have done anything different and am only looking forward to what the future holds here at N.C. State.”

What the near future holds for AGI students, alumni and faculty is a fall 2010 celebration of AGI’s 50th anniversary.

The main festivities are planned for Saturday, Oct. 16, with an alumni reunion to be held at the Brownstone Hotel near the N.C. State camInstructor Emily Erickson’s students get hands-on lessons pus in Raleigh. in an AGI turf lab at the Lonnie Poole Golf Course on N.C. (For more inforState’s Centennial Campus. mation, go to “to contribute to NCSU and the the AGI Web site http://harvest.cals. poultry industry, like my father and ncsu.edu/aginstitute, e-mail ag_instigrandfather have. I am looking at tute@ncsu.edu or call 919.515.3248.) opportunities with several different It will be a time, says Kirby, for poultry companies but would love “honoring the past and envisioning to attain a management position in our preferred future.” any poultry company, preferably Mountaire Farms simply because my father, sister-in-law and brother are employees there. Working and helping expand on my brother’s

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ence,” and he describes the time he has spent so far as “the best experience of my life.”

Shepard, from Columbia, S.C., shares both Essick’s and Adams’ curricular choices as a double major in ag business and poultry and livestock management, but he came to AGI from a different route. He started out as four-year N.C. State student majoring in poultry science, “but for different reasons I need to graduate early, and the AGI program is very hands-on and is a great option for me,” he says. “Although you don’t receive a B.S. degree, I still feel that you learn a remarkable amount of information about your major of choice. I need to get out in the work field soon and knew this would be the best option with the best benefits.”

Shepard calls the AGI program “a perfect fit for me, because, even as a first-year student, I have learned so much about the different aspects of poultry management. When I transferred into the institute I felt as though I already knew so much about my major, but every day I am learning something new.”

Shepard has appreciated the small-school-within-the-big-school atmosphere of AGI. “Coming to orientation I had overwhelming thoughts of how big the school was and if I would be able to survive the classes. Needless to say, the professors here at NCSU are unbelievable teachers and exceptionally helpful in every aspect of their job. The classes are very sufficient in size, and students are known on a first-name

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Growing New Farmers College programs help novices get started in production

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agriculture.

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hough

By Natalie Hampton

North Carolina is among the nation’s largest

agricultural states, it is rapidly losing farms and farmers.

According to the 2007 Census of Agriculture, between

1999 and 2006, the state lost 10,000 farms and close to 500,000 acres of farmland. The losses are even greater among African-

Extension initiatives and College of Agriculture and Life Sciences’ education programs are helping to ease new and young farmers into agriculture.

At Cabarrus County’s Elma C. Lomax Incubator Farm, 16 new farmers are learning as they grow crops on half-acre plots they rent 6 perspectives

for $100 a season. The farm, along with an eight-week course for new farmers, is one of the factors driving growth in local farms, says Debbie Bost, Extension director in Cabarrus County.

In Franklin County, part-time farmer Maggie Lawrence recently received a $2,500 grant from the

Courtesy Joe Zublena

American farmers. In response to such statistics, N.C. Cooperative

Incubator farmer Aaron Newton (top photo, right), shows visitors his spring crops. Colleen McDaniel (above) cuts spinach in her Lomax Farm plot.

Becky Kirkland

Extension’s Carl Pless helped farmers build this high-tunnel for growing spring tomatoes.

Franklin County Agriculture Board to help her with equipment and farmers’ market needs. Lawrence is selling her produce for the first time this year at the Wake Forest Farmers’ Market. (See sidebar.)

And this spring, state Agriculture Commissioner Steve Troxler urged College of Agriculture and Life Sciences students to join the state’s farming community, to help bring down the average age of North Carolina’s farmers — currently 58.

When Troxler addressed students in March during one of three lectures and panel discussions he brought to campus in the spring semester, he urged students to consider going into production agriculture. Troxler told students that 83 percent of the state’s farmers are older than 45. “This is an appropriate topic because we don’t have enough young people coming into farming,” he said. “We need the best creative minds in agriculture in order to move forward.”

Troxler told of his own struggles as a young farmer. He first came to N.C. State University as an engineering student, using the income from 25 acres of tobacco to pay his way through school. He later decided that he wanted to farm fulltime. Over the years, his farm grew to 135 acres of tobacco, 40 acres of soybeans and a fruit and vegetable operation.

One of the challenges that young farmers face is finding affordable land to start their operations. Incubator farms like the Lomax farm and

the Breeze farm in Orange County offer new farmers the chance to learn on a small scale before taking the leap into buying or leasing land for a larger operation.

In 2000, Elma C. Lomax died and left her farmland to Cabarrus County, with the condition that some of the land be used for passive recreation, such as hiking trails or farming. Seven years later, 200 citizens and county commissioners gathered to develop a plan to sustain the county’s agricultural industry.

The incubator farm was one of the group’s recommendations.

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he farm first began offering land last summer, and nine farmers leased plots. Before obtaining a land lease, the aspiring farmers take an eight-week course offered

by Cooperative Extension. The training program deals with topics ranging from marketing to soil fertility to food safety and control of insects and plant diseases, according to Carl Pless, Extension agriculture agent in Cabarrus.

Unlike many traditional farmers who grew up on a family farm, most of the Lomax farmers are new to farming, though some have experience with home gardening or working in the landscape industry. A few have limited family ties to a farm, Pless said.

Pless spends a great deal of time on the farm, patiently answering questions. He even helped the farmers build a sturdy high-tunnel for growing early spring tomatoes. “I

try not to be impatient at all because for some of them, it takes more than one time to hear something,” he said.

These new farmers face many challenges, especially learning to grow for local farmers’ markets.

They have to determine when to plant, how much to plant, how much will sell in a week and how much reasonably can be harvested. Determining what to grow and what will sell at a market is also a challenge.

Pless encourages the farmers to ask market goers what they want.

Several farmers who produced for community-supported agriculture (CSA) programs had to learn to plan their production so they had something for shareholders’ boxes every week. CSA is a marketing strategy where shareholders pay a farmer in advance to receive regular deliveries of fresh farm products.

Weed management is another challenge. As a certified organic operation, Lomax restricts the use of chemical herbicides or pesticides to those approved for organic use.

So Pless encourages growers to get ahead of the problem after rain and before weeds take over their fields.

The farmers at Lomax are involved in a variety of enterprises.

Shannon Anderson tried heirloom vegetables last year, but this season, she’s experimenting with a “pick-your-own” flower operation.

She will invite people to cut zinnias, sunflowers and other varieties in her plots on the Lomax farm. It will save her the time required to cut and sell flowers at a market.

Aaron Newton, author, teacher and landscape designer, joined the incubator farm after losing his job 18 months ago. He is among several incubator farmers who recently experienced job loss. A native of Concord, Newton grows for 15 families in a CSA. His spring crops included kohlrabi, Swiss chard, collards, spinach, arugula and potatoes. He’s thinking about starting a “storage

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educational programs.

On a recent afternoon, farmer Colleen McDaniel and a hired helper were cutting the remaining spinach from her field, hoping to steam and freeze it. A bamboo teepee structure will hold gourds this summer for her customers at the nearby Davidson/Harrisonburg market.

McDaniel also provides a CSA to nine shareholders.

A grant seeds Maggie Lawrence’s goal to bring farming back to her family ew farmer Maggie Lawrence was surprised one Tuesday morning in May when two members of the Franklin County Agriculture Board came to her farm to present her with a $2,500 grant to help with some basic needs on her new farm. Lawrence was recipient of the county’s first “Innovative Ideas” grant for small, beginning or part-time farmers.

Lawrence qualifies in all categories.

The grant funds came mainly from a partnership between N.C. Cooperative Extension and Whole Foods of Raleigh. In February, Whole Foods agreed to place collection boxes at all its checkout lines, asking customers to help support small farmers in neighboring Franklin County. Agriculture Agent Martha Mobley of Franklin County and several local farmers came to the store in February to share information about Franklin County farms and the grants project.

Four farmers applied for the grant, and the county’s agriculture board visited them all. Lawrence said she wrote her proposal quickly and wasn’t confident that she would receive anything. So the $2,500 check came as a welcome surprise.

Like many of North Carolina’s newest farmers, Lawrence did not grow up on a farm, though past generations of her family farmed. She wants to be the one to bring farming back into her family. An avid gardener in the past, Lawrence said she always grew more food than she could eat and shared quite a bit with friends.

When Lawrence knew it was time to begin developing her garden in to a farm, she contemplated moving to an area like Chatham County, where small farming is prevalent and well received, but decided that she was not finished with Franklin County. Lawrence lives in Louisburg and works in land conservation while farming in her spare time.

“Franklin County has much potential to become a sustainable farming community,” Lawrence said.

Lawrence grows on approximately one acre and has access to a greenhouse. She decided to start small, though she would like to eventually have more land and develop relationships with chefs who would value her produce.

Her marketing strategy is to offer a variety of produce

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McDaniel has leased a 200-year old Cabarrus farm that comes with its own tractor but no water for irrigation. So she’s thinking about growing crops fall through spring, when there is less need for supplemental water.

McDaniel, who also owns a landscape business, is achieving the ultimate goal of the incubator farm — transitioning to her own land.

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crops” CSA for winter that would offer vegetables that store well, along with some preserved crops from summer.

Newton, co-author of the book A Nation of Farmers, was recently named the Cabarrus County local food system project coordinator. In this new position, he will coordinate efforts of the Cabarrus County Food Policy Council and provide

At Franklin County’s local foods festival in May, Maggie Lawrence serves up a salad made with greens and spring vegetables from her farm.

to consumers. In the spring, she sold mixed salad greens, carrots, sugar snaps, kale, chard, spinach, beets and radishes. In May, she prepared a salad from her spring garden for Franklin County’s Dinner on the Green, a local-foods meal that takes place during the county’s farm and crafts tour weekend. And this summer, Lawrence is offering onions, potatoes, okra, corn, sweet potatoes, cut flowers, green beans, eggplant, cucumbers, and several types of summer squash, peppers and tomatoes.

She also has started shiitake mushroom production and hopes to offer those next year.

One of her challenges is helping her customers understand how to prepare and enjoy the produce she sells. To that end, she recently started a blog — maggiesproduce.blogspot.com — where she shares cooking tips, news, happenings on the farm and more.

She shares the challenges of all farmers: Weather fluctuations, insect pests and consumer demands. Like all new farmers, she wonders about how to balance farming and a salary job, how farmers afford health insurance or prepare for retirement and how to drive a tractor.

Lawrence has a generous neighbor who has shared his tractor, but since she’s still learning, she does much of her work by hand. She hopes the grant will help her obtain basic farming tools and equipment to help her at the market. A new pitchfork will be Lawrence’s first purchase, after breaking her old one after mulching the potatoes. She currently transports products to market in her car, and she can already see the day when she’ll need bigger transportation. For now a car rack will help suit up her car just fine.

She thinks that $2,500 is a pretty good start.

—Natalie Hampton

Ties That Bind

Dr. Tom Monaco (right), CALS commodity relations director, confers with Jeff Mast, president of the N.C. Flower Growers Association, at the 2010 Landscape Color Field Day at JC Raulston Arboretum.

Dave Caldwell

Partnerships forged between the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences and commodity groups

Becky Kirkland

benefit both.

CALS’ Dr. David Smith (left) joins state commodity leaders at their annual meeting in May.

By Dave Caldwell

S

ome

70 organizations that represent either various

agricultural commodities produced in North Carolina or the state’s agriculture generally will hold annual meetings in

2010. College of Agriculture and Life Sciences representatives will attend all of these meetings.

The College devotes considerable time and effort to its connection to what are often known as commodity groups. In addition to annual meetings, College representatives participate in activities such as strategic planning and educational meetings.

“Our interaction with commodity groups highlights our connection to the state,” says Dr. David Smith, director of the North Carolina Agricultural Research Service. “This connection keeps the College grounded and focused within the state and keeps us working on things that are

important to the state’s producers.”

Staying connected in a state as agriculturally diverse as North Carolina can be a challenge, says Dr. Tom Monaco, the College’s director of commodity relations. Monaco has been working part time as commodity relations director since 2003.

He is aided in this endeavor by Dr. David Monks, assistant director of the Agricultural Research Service, and Dr. Ed Jones, associate director of the North Carolina Cooperative Extension Service.

Monaco said there are approxi

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mately 95 North Carolina organizations that represent agriculture. Of that total, 50 to 60 organizations represent growers or producers of specific crops or animals. The remaining groups — such as the North Carolina Farm Bureau — represent agriculture generally.

In addition to participating in commodity group meetings, the College keeps in touch through field days at which faculty members

whose work focuses on a particular commodity discuss their latest research or extension efforts. The College typically sponsors 15 or more field days annually on commodities important to North Carolina.

Monaco adds that the College also provides an annual professional development workshop each fall for commodity group leaders. These workshops typically draw 15 to 20 leaders, usually group executive di-

Chancellor Woodson greets commodity leaders.

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hen North Carolina’s commodity leaders gathered for their annual meeting at N.C. State University on May 7, the event drew more than 250 attendees, their largest meeting ever. Afterward, some noteworthy guests joined the group for a luncheon program and reception, where they all had the opportunity to hear from and meet N.C. State’s new chancellor, Dr. Randy Woodson.

Traveling from Washington, D.C., to take part in the meet-and-greet activities were Rep. Bob Etheridge and Sen. Richard Burr of North Carolina; Sen. Saxby Chambliss of Georgia; and Don Villwock, president of the Indiana Farm Bureau. Villwock, an alumnus of Purdue University who has known and worked with Woodson for years, was invited

by N.C. Farm Bureau President Larry Wooten as a special surprise for the new chancellor. While a main purpose of the meeting was for commodity leaders to meet the chancellor, it was also an opportunity for the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences (CALS) administration to thank the group for their support of College programs and to convey news and status reports.

The morning meeting included an overview from CALS Dean Johnny Wynne and reports from Dr. Ken Esbenshade on CALS Academic Programs, Dr. Ed Jones on CALS Cooperative Extension and Dr. David Smith on the N.C. Agricultural Research Service. Wooten delivered Farm Bureau

10 perspectives

Becky Kirkland

Commodity leaders and elected officials gather for annual CALS updates and to meet Chancellor Woodson

rectors or presidents The College’s partnership with commodity groups is mutually beneficial. The groups provide muchneeded funding for agricultural programs. In return, agricultural producers get new technology and knowledge. In addition to direct funding, commodity groups help leverage funding from other sources, including state and federal sources.

“Our programs wouldn’t exist

updates, and Steve Troxler, state agriculture commissioner, brought news from the NCDA&CS. Wynne reviewed the teaching, research and extension mission of the College and told the group that N.C. State’s status as a land-grant institution is the key to all its activities, because “the land-grants were established to serve the citizens of the state.” He then thanked the commodity leaders for their partnerships and contributions to the College’s efforts in fulfilling the land-grant mission, noting that “commodity groups have provided $5 million annually in support of the College. … These dynamic partnerships have enabled us to create excellent programs that have impact.”

Describing the current economic challenges to the College, Wynne told the commodity leaders, “We’re going to need your help as the legislature deals with our budget in the coming year.”

During a question-and-answer session, commodity leader Debbie Stikeleather of Iron Gates Vineyards and Winery praised the CALS faculty and the Piedmont Research Station for valuable support of her wine-grape production.

She also wanted to make sure the research station would stay in operation and not fall victim to budget-related closure. Smith assured her that “we have no plans to close the station,” and Troxler echoed that assurance, saying he had heard of no such closing and that “we’re committed to maintaining these research stations and making sure agriculture stays strong.”

After presentations by Wooten and Troxler, Wynne closed the meeting, telling the group, “We want to serve your needs in the best way we can. We don’t exist if we don’t serve you.”

Then at the luncheon, Woodson told the commodity group, “I came to N.C. State because of the land-grant tradition” — a tradition, he noted, that has remained vital “largely because you [commodities] have held our feet to the fire.”

Earlier, Etheridge, a CALS alumnus, had told the commodity leaders, “We’ve got to work smart and work together and continue to be creative and use the great resources that no one else in the world has — our great research universities.”

— Terri Leith

$500 grants to Cooperative Extension agents for projects at the county level. Hall sees the funding his organization provides as an investment.

For the North Carolina SweetPotato Commission, partnering with the College is a way to help ensure the long-term viability of the state’s sweet potato industry, says Sue Johnson-Langdon, commission executive director.

The SweetPotato Commission has established the Henry Covington Endowment Fund in the College and has raised approximately $700,000 toward a $1.3 million goal to support research and extension programs in sweet potatoes.

“We established this endowment for the long-term good of our industry,” Johnson-Langdon says.

“Funding from the endowment will address our future needs in research and other areas. Our industry is looking forward.”

For agricultural programs, commodity group funding has become what Monaco calls “survival funding” as the state funding that once supported these programs has dried up. Perhaps Dr. Jim Dunphy, crop science professor and extension soybean specialist, puts it more succinctly when he says commodity groups

Becky Kirkland

without the agricultural industry,” says Monaco. “However, the industry wouldn’t advance as quickly without our programs.”

Funding for agricultural programs has become particularly important in recent years as state funding that previously supported these programs has declined. North Carolina’s commodity associations and agriculture-related groups provide more than $5 million a year in support of the College’s students, faculty, research and extension programs. And over the years, more than 80 organizations have created endowments with a market value in excess of $10 million.

Among those organizations is the North Carolina Soybean Producers, which provided nearly $500,000 in 2009. Like a number of commodity groups, the Soybean Producers raise money with what is known as a “check off” system. Farmers agree to donate a percentage of crop sales or agricultural input purchases such as fertilizer.

“We fund research primarily in crop science, but our funding has spilled over into other departments, such as plant pathology and entomology,” says Charles Hall, chief executive officer of the North Carolina Soybean Producers Association.

“We try to find the people in the university who are doing the type of research that will increase yield or address pest problems.”

In recent years, Hall added, his organization has begun providing

are “a source of the dollars needed to do what we do.”

Dunphy’s work is illustrative of the return that commodity groups can get on their investment in the College. Beginning in 2002, Dunphy began looking at the amount of seed soybean growers plant. More and more growers were switching to what are known as Roundup Ready soybeans, soybeans that are genetically modified to resist Roundup herbicide.

Planting Roundup Ready soybeans simplifies weed control; producers can spray the crop with Roundup, killing weeds without harming the soybean plants. But Roundup Ready seed costs more than twice as much as regular seed.

In field tests, Dunphy showed that growers could decrease seeding rates

considerably and actually get higher yields. Based on crop estimates provided by Extension agents, Dunphy estimates that soybean growers who used lower seeding rates between 2006 and 2009 saw the total value of the crop increase by well over $45 million.

The partnerships the College has built with commodity groups give North Carolina’s agricultural community unusual access and input, producing a two-way stream of communications that benefits both parties.

As Dunphy puts it, “They get the answers to the questions they’ve got.”

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Becky Kirkland

In May, commodity leaders heard from CALS administrators and state agriculture leaders, including Larry Wooten (left), N.C. Farm Bureau president, and Steve Troxler (below), state agriculture commissioner.

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T

his past January in

Atlanta, when the two-day Inter-

Marc Hall

Sibling Excellence ntional Poultry Scientific Forum held its Student Award of

CALS graduate

Excellence competition, two graduate students from N.C.

students Nirada

State’s College of Agriculture and Life Sciences were among the competitors making oral and poster presentations of their research.

In fact, while one of the students was making her poultry science research presentation, in a nearby session the other student simultaneously was presenting her food science research to a team of judges.

As fate would have it, when time came for the winners to be revealed, both N.C. State students’ names were announced — and the last names were the same. In what has to be a kind of first, two sisters, Nirada and Phanin Leksrisompong, had taken the top prizes in the competition.

Nirada, or “Ni,” a doctoral student and research assistant in the CALS Department of Poultry Science, won for her entry, a study of the effect of feeder space during growing and laying periods on the uniformity and livability of broiler 12 perspectives

breeder females. Food science doctoral student Phanin, or “Nin,” won in her session for her research presentation on the effect of heating rate on gelatin properties and water holding capacities of egg white and whey protein isolate gels.

“Our graduate students in poultry science have won a number of awards over recent years, but we have not had many food science students join us at our poultry science meetings,” said Ni’s Ph.D. mentor Dr. John Brake, William Neal Reynolds Professor of poultry science. “I think that everyone at the meeting, not just the N.C. State people, was pleased to see two sisters win.”

Ni and Nin actually are two of four sisters from Bangkok, Thailand, who have studied at N.C. State. The

and Phanin Leksrisompong take top honors at international research competition. oldest, Chanatip, completed her Ph.D. in textiles this spring, while the youngest, Pattarin, is, like Nin, a doctoral student in the CALS Department of Food, Bioprocessing and Nutrition Sciences.

Recently Ni and Nin talked about their award-winning research and how they will use it as they pursue their post-graduate careers.

Nirada Leksrisompong: ‘Already astounding the poultry industry worldwide’

By Terri Leith

hough born in Bangkok, Nirada Leksrisompong has actually spent half of her life in the United States. She arrived at the age of 15 to attend high school in Kentucky (both of her parents were educated in Kentucky and California) and eventually received her bachelor’s degree in animal science from the University of Kentucky. Then she came east to pursue her master’s degree in poultry science at N.C. State, a choice she made, she says, because “N.C. State is one of the foremost schools in agriculture and poultry science. I saw that the most active professors work there. My master’s professor and Ph.D. mentor, Dr. Brake, is a much published researcher who is active internationally as a consultant.”

Moreover, she says, “I wanted to do something to help my family business. My mom works with poultry and swine.”

That “family business” is the agribusiness Charoen Pokphand (CP), one of the leading agriculture companies in the world and the biggest agriculture company in Asia.

“My mom’s dad started the company with his elder brother as a business selling seed,” says Ni. In 1921, the two brothers started the seeds company named “Chia Tai.” After the success of the seeds business, the next generation started the agribusiness in 1953 named Charoen Pokphand (CP). Now CP is a vertical integrated agribusiness, positioned to meet the world’s need for affordable and nutritional highquality food products and consisting of many divisions, such as seeds, animal feed, livestock production, processing, modern trade and telecommunications. It is one of the largest animal feed producers in the world, with local and international feed mills producing food for livestock and aquaculture.

“A lot of people here call us ‘Per-

due Thailand,’” Ni says.

When it came time for her to choose an undergraduate major and potential career, Ni, who had considered aerospace engineering and mechanical engineering (“People my age were choosing business; I wanted to be different”), consulted her father and her mother.

“My mom, CP executive vice president of the Feed Technology Office, is in charge of eight countries in Asia. Our headquarters is in Thailand, but we have branches and feed mills in many countries,” Ni says. “And since we have a family business in the ag area, my mom suggested animal agriculture.”

Then, in graduate school, Ni

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increase. If I can improve the business and production of chicken, I can help my country and the people of the world.”

Ni’s graduate research is already contributing to the improvement of the business and production of chicken.

Says Brake, “Her master’s work caused significant changes in the brooding management of broilers.

She developed a strategy to improve livability and performance by better matching the brooding conditions immediately after hatching to the needs of the chicks.”

In her doctoral work, he says, “she has continued her practical problem-solving research,” referring to her recent award-winning project on feeder space and how it affects the female bird and her progeny.

As Ni explains it, “In the pen

Ni (opposite page, left) and Nin Leksrisompong are two of four sisters from Thailand earning degrees at N.C. State. (Above) Ni, here working in the N.C. State field poultry research facility, conducts problem-solving research that has contributed to the improvement of chicken production.

says, “I wanted to specialize, because poultry is a facet of growing animals for meat consumption. I can go home and help the business, and food is always important: People have to eat regardless of the economy. The world population will

you have round feeders or a trough for the birds to be able to get into the feeder and not have to compete for food. In our pen we have four to six feeders, depending on the number of birds.”

“Feeder space” means number

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of access spaces. Fewer birds equals more space; more birds equals less space.

But Ni has found that a little competition can be good for the birds, as she has studied the effects of changing feeder space from rearing to laying periods.

“What we found is if you keep the space the same, then it benefits performance, livability and progeny.

We were surprised because it’s a paradox to what people think (that increasing the food access would be better for the birds),” says Ni. With too much access to food, it’s still the big birds that will be able to eat more, Ni found. As a result, the increased feeding “builds breasts too much, which can hurt fertility and egg production and make the birds more frail in hot weather,” she says. “Small birds, if they are allowed to eat too much, will catch up, but it will have adverse reproductivesystem effects.

“So now [we know you] need to

keep feeder space the same or watch how you feed.”

And now, she adds, “Dr. Brake is going out in the world to try to explain it to growers.”

Says Brake, “It has long been known that strict control of body weight in broiler breeders was required to maintain the health, welfare and productivity of these birds, of which there are more than 11 million in North Carolina. Maintaining uniform body weight has always been viewed as being of utmost importance. Nirada learned that maintaining a reasonable level of competition during feeding greatly improved the uniformity of feed intake as well as improve livability and productivity.

The most critical moment for this control is around the time of photostimulation, when the bird must decide whether to route nutrition to breast meat and body weight gain or to reproductive tract development.

“These data are already astounding the poultry industry worldwide

and ushering in a new paradigm in broiler breeder management.”

In January the findings won her a plaque, $250 and a place on the winner’s podium next to her sister.

Since January her attention has been primarily on completing her dissertation and her ongoing work at the N.C. State field poultry research facility. “We have to work at the farm a lot, and I like the team work, that it’s not just my work,” she says. “It’s fun, and I get to see and learn a lot.”

Any spare time is spent “hanging out with my sisters. I like to cook Thai food for us,” she says. She also has three dogs, a Yorkie and two mini-pinschers, and she enjoys traveling. Favorite past destinations include Burma and Bangladesh (on business trips with her mom), Sweden (as an exchange student at the age of 12), trips to Chile, Japan… .

But the trip she looks forward to most is a short one: the walk across the stage to receive her Ph.D. in poultry science.

Phanin Leksrisompong ‘Turning academic science into practical solutions’

W

hen Nin Leksrisompong enters the workforce next year, she’ll be something of a doublethreat.

She is a highly accomplished doctoral student studying food science.

But Nin also happens to have a mind for business and is especially interested in management and marketing.

“The biggest reason I came into science was my parents,” Nin says. “They believe that if you’re business-minded, the skills will come naturally. But the knowledge of science requires training.

“I’ve always really been interested in business and management; however, I’ve been in the field of science for so many years, I have grown into liking and appreciating it more and more. It’s neat. … I can do the research and explain it.”

14 perspectives

Nin has spent much of her doctoral career investigating the effect of heating rates on egg white and whey protein isolate gels. Her studies are supported by a prestigious fellowship from the American Egg Board that is given to only one student each year.

Nin says she hopes her work will benefit a sector of the food industry — breakfast products — that she believes is quickly becoming more relevant.

“Eighty-five percent of Americans say that eating breakfast is important,” Nin says. “However, most people don’t have time to sit down to breakfast every morning. Often they find themselves eating on the run. Thus, sales of hand-held, onthe-go products have skyrocketed.”

Nin’s research on how proteins respond to rapid heating will help

Marc Hall

By Suzanne Stanard

Nin hopes to bridge the gap between food science and food marketing.

optimize the processing of the breakfast egg white.

“Breakfast meal products have become a billion dollar industry in the United States,” she says. “Eggs are a traditional component of

Marc Hall

Both Nin (above) and her sister Ni credit their parents’ inspiration in their pursuit of advanced degrees. Their family business, Charoen Pokphand, is one of the leading agriculture companies in the world and the largest in Asia.

“Nin enjoys life and shows it in her daily actions,” Foegeding says.

“She is the type of person that you enjoy being associated with because of her positive attitude and sense of humor.”

This summer Nin will intern at Danisco, a multi-national company that describes itself at a world leader in food ingredients, enzymes and bio-based solutions. She’ll live in China and conduct research on the physical and chemical causes of freeze-thaw stability of the meat protein system.

She plans to continue that research in her final year of doctoral study at N.C. State.

“I see that the food-purchasing trend is moving toward frozen categories both in developed and developing countries, and freezethaw stability is an important factor in determining the quality of these products,” Nin says. “I have a strong desire to turn academic science into practical solutions, and I’m excited to do research that can benefit the industry.”

Nin also will focus next year on landing a job.

“I find consumer behavior fascinating,” she says. “Why do people buy what they buy? Why do the retailers set up the stores the way they do? I enjoy spending time in the grocery store observing people’s

purchasing behavior.

“I feel like scientists sometimes don’t understand what consumers want, and marketing people don’t really understand science, so I can see myself bridging the gap,” she says.

Foegeding supports Nin’s decision, saying, “It will prepare her well for various leadership roles. I strongly believe that Nin can do anything she wants, once she decides that is her goal.”

Ultimately, Nin is committed to her family’s business.

“I’m very passionate about our business,” she says. “The company aims to produce quality food products to meet the demand of the world and improve people’s quality of life.

“Not too many people would have such a great opportunity,” Nin says. “At the end, I want to help people, and I can see this being done through our business. I want to be successful, but there’s really no point in getting without giving to people less fortunate than you are.”

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breakfast, and the functional and nutritional value of the egg makes it one of the key ingredients in this category.

“In any industry, time equals money,” she says.

The 26-year-old earned master’s and bachelor’s degrees in food science from N.C. State in 2006 and 2008, respectively. She also added a minor in business management with a marketing concentration. Nin transferred to the university after two years of study at the University of Kentucky, from which both her sister Ni and mother earned degrees.

“My parents inspired me to pursue advanced degrees,” she says.

“They put a high value on education. I’m really grateful for my parents for everything that they have done for me …, and I’m also grateful for my lovely sisters.”

Dr. E. Allen Foegeding, William Neal Reynolds Professor of food science, is Nin’s adviser. He describes her work ethic as “ideal.”

“Nin is always open to new ideas and willing to do what it takes to get the job done correctly,” says Foegeding. “Also, she critically assesses her data. I am constantly amazed at the amount and quality of data she shows me during our meetings.”

Nin says her experience at N.C. State is preparing her well for her future.

“I’m in one of the best labs and one of the best food science departments in the nation,” she says. “My lab mates and all the faculty and technicians are fabulous. And I’m very fortunate to have Dr. [Tyre C.] Lanier as my former adviser and Dr. Foegeding as my current adviser; they have been wonderful mentors.”

While Nin commits the majority of her time to her studies, she also is actively involved in the university’s Food Science Club.

She has organized major social and academic events, and, in the spring, she chaired the department’s team for the College Bowl, an Institute of Food Technologists-sponsored trivia competition in which schools from across the country participate.

summer 2010 15

College Profile Dr. Rob Dunn helps others grasp the complexity of the living world and of the people who study it.

By Dee Shore

Marc Hall

CollegeProfileCollegeProfileCollegeProfile 16 perspectives

e

Marc Hall

Dr. Rob Dunn investigates small interactions in the living world that matter in some bigger way — such as the patterns determining the prevalence of human diseases and the effects of global warming on living things.

F

or

Dr. Rob Dunn, the world remains a captivating place

full of surprises. “Mystery,” the N.C. State University biologist likes to say, “still lurks around ordinary corners.”

Exploring those corners through research and writing is perhaps what Dunn does best.

An assistant professor in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, Dunn is by training an ant scientist who investigates, as he puts it, “small, strange and sometimes obscure interactions in the living world — but interactions that matter in some bigger way.”

By teaching students and by studying ants, parasites and other species and phenomena, he hopes to help answer such puzzling questions as where we can expect to find the most of the Earth’s undiscovered species, what patterns determine the kinds and prevalence of human diseases around the world and how global warming may affect living things.

And through essays that appear in such popular venues as National Geographic, Natural History, the Smithsonian Online and BBC Wildlife, Dunn strives to help others grasp the complexity of the living world and the people who study it.

His first book, published in 2009, is an award-winning collection of stories about some of the scientists who have made it their mission to explore life on land, in the seas, in outer space and under the microscope.

Every Living Thing: Man’s Obsessive Quest to Catalog Life, from Nanobacteria to New Monkeys conveys both the conflict and thrill of scientific discovery, all the while reminding us why we should care.

Through his writing, Dunn seeks to provide “a window into the richness … of life” to people who might otherwise not get to experience it daily.

“It would be great to be able to show people that there’s this joy and beauty in trying to struggle to figure out how the living world works,” he says.

Dunn’s joy about the natural world stretches back to his childhood in Michigan, when he “was outside, mostly, kicking ant colonies and catching snakes and turtles.” But when he went off to Kalamazoo College, he did so with the intention of becoming an economist. Dunn’s dad was a banker, and he had no idea that one could make a living studying the creatures that had fascinated him as a child. Once he figured that out, he switched his major to biology.

At one point in his undergraduate studies, he took a poetry class that proved pivotal: Not only did

he meet his future wife, Monica, in the class, he also discovered his penchant for writing.

From Kalamazoo, Dunn went on to earn a doctorate at the University of Connecticut and to become a Fulbright Fellow at Curtin University in Australia and then a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Tennessee. Along the way, he spent time studying ants in Australia, Ghana, Bolivia, Peru and Costa Rica – even discovering one that now carries his name, Camponotus dunni.

In 2005, Dunn joined the faculty at N.C. State, where he teaches field ecology and emerging concepts in biology to undergraduates as well as biogeography and community ecology to graduate students. His research mixes field experiments with large-scale observational studies of the distribution of species, traits and interactions.

In forests at Duke and Harvard, Dunn leads a project in which he and his colleagues have set up 15foot-wide chambers that are warmed to simulate the effects of climate change. Inside these chambers they are looking at what occurs when the air is warmed and what those changes mean for the forests and the creatures that live there: For example, will the impact of fire ants be exacerbated? Or will the abundance or geographic distribution of native and non-native ants change?

“Although trees are likely to move slowly in response to changing climates, some insects may, like a small but consequential tide of life, respond more quickly,” Dunn says. His simple models suggest that the warming North Carolina is expected to experience by 2050 may lead to a doubling of the number of individual ants.

summer 2010 17

Whether this is borne out in time or in Dunn’s experiments remains to be seen.

Another project, funded by NASA, attempts to understand “where there remain the most undiscovered species, whether of ants or mosquitoes or mammals or birds,” he says.

“It is a project in which we hope to take advantage of climate data derived from satellites and samples taken on the ground to predict from space where the most species are likely to be found and how that will change with time,” he explains. “We are interested in both the negative and positive consequences of the diversity of life and how it varies globally, whether in the context of valuable services provided by insects, such as the dispersal of seeds, or disservices, such as vectoring diseases.

“So one of the approaches that one of my students, Benoit Guenard, has taken is simply to say, ‘If we take the places that … we know are well-known — people have been there studying for a long, long time — what’s the relationship between the temperature and the number of species we would expect?’’

If they find places that are, for example, 26 degrees C, and yet only have eight recorded species, they will know that something is missing.

The project will include a sampling component, where scientists will go out in the field to see if the models they come up with are working. Dunn is also considering ways to involve student-scientists worldwide in the effort. He recently won a National Science Foundation grant that will involve students from classrooms around the world, from, Dunn hopes, “New York to Namibia,” in studying the living world, and in particular the ant’s worlds around them.

“There are lots of things that an 8-year-old can do and see in their backyard that nobody else in the world knows. There are just a few 18 perspectives

hundred ant biologists in the world, for example, but billions of children with hands that are just small enough and with curiosity just intense enough to be great studiers of the world around them. And so to be able to take advantage of all these eyes of students, be they 8 or 80, all over the world is to be able to see things that we wouldn’t see otherwise — I think that’s pretty exciting,” he says.

“We are very good at using our tools to see small things, or far away things, but we have no real tools for seeing the patterns in animal life.

Students can collectively see what is otherwise invisible,” he adds. “They will have to send us back samples so that we can identify what they find, but they can look at some things very much on their own. For example, how long does it take for a piece of cookie to be discovered by an ant?

On the one hand, that’s really silly; but it also, I think, relates to an average student in a way they can think about in their own life.”

Significantly, he adds, “there’s this very real biological measure that follows from this thing having to do with the ants in your picnic.

“We know from a lot of stuff we’ve done that how long it takes for an ant to get to a cookie is about the same as it takes to get to a pest on a crop — it’s about as long as it takes to get to a butterfly larva in the forest,” he says.

M

aking such connections between the strange, the small and the obscure and broader scientific questions is what Dunn enjoys.

“I think a lot of science today is really drilling down into something narrow. You can study one kind of nerve cell for your entire life and study it only in humans and still be considered relatively broad,” he says.

“That is not the kind of science …

I have the right nature for. I have a restless brain and am much happier taking ideas … from one area and

bringing them over to another – of thinking about how things relate, of the analogies between human and insect societies or the analogies between human cells and bacterial cells, for example.”

Perhaps because he reads a lot and talks a lot with scientists from disparate disciplines — to, he says, the occasional distress of his students — he’s never at a loss for ideas for stories he’d like to tell or research he’d like to conduct or simply consider.

As an example, he points to a discussion he had with a scientist who was studying the strength of skulls from different hominids.

“Just in that conversation some ideas … came up about responses to competition versus predation. And it made me realize we haven’t thought very much about whether there are physical changes in ants associated with their susceptibility to predation,” he says. “Are ants from places that have more predation, say like forest canopies, more likely to have tough skeletons, too? Do their bodies look different?

“That might not be a good idea, but it sort of comes over from one field to another. And now I can spend some mornings poking around and seeing if anybody has written very much about predation in ants,” he says. “I think the answer is ‘not very much.’”

That question and many of his other ideas may be blind alleys, he says, but they keep his work interesting.

“For a little bit, I can enjoy thinking about what would an ant that was tougher so it didn’t get eaten look like,” he says. “I’ve got drawers and drawers in my brain full of those things that might amount to nothing. Usually they do. But every so often … .”

He trails off, but quickly adds, “I like other people’s stories about the ways that ideas and discoveries come together, as well. And that’s

‘We imagine we will colonize other planets, but we have barely probed this one. We have yet to find a lifeless place on Earth, and

Studying ants and other creatures gives Dunn an analogous biological measure to connect to broader scientific questions.

would have liked to have trained students who are able to think about the world in exciting ways and to have shown through my writing to a broader number of people the richness of the living world and what can still be discovered,” he says.

For Dunn’s indefatigable curiosity, it seems, there will always something new to explore around every corner and, indeed, in every conceivable place.

As he puts it in Every Living Thing, “We imagine we will colonize other planets, but we have barely probed this one. We have yet to find a lifeless place on Earth, and there are many places we have yet to check.

“The surface of Earth is covered in unstudied life. There are new species, unnamed species, living even in your own body. There is much here still.

“More than we now know, and more than we can yet imagine.”

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one of the reasons I do the writing. I love being able to see other people’s stories and to show people who don’t get a chance to do science how fun it can be to turn a stone and see something new or to even just stand at a white board and try, with some markers and students, to understand the world.”

So with endless scientific mysteries to unravel and books and articles to write, Dunn stays busy. But he also made time this year to devote to his family, taking a short leave of absence to tend to his newborn son, August (“Goose”), as well his daughter, Olivia (or “Lula”), who, he says, are much better at discovering things than he is.

“They are closer to the ground, closer, too, to the size of most of life on Earth,” he says. “Now we get to poke at ant colonies together.

Though I’m sure, having spent so much time with biologists, they will both grow up to want to be bankers.”

He’s also writing a second book, Clean Living is Bad for You (And Other Consequences of Having Evolved in the Wild), which focuses on how our changing interactions with other species has affected our health and well-being.

In the end, when asked what he would like contribute in the long term, Dunn says he hopes that his musings will have helped shape some of tomorrow’s scientists and added to the public’s understanding of science and the world.

“So to look 50 years down the road, if I could think of what I would have liked to have done, I think I

Marc Hall

there are many places we have yet to check.’

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noteworthy

NEWS

Faculty voices recall BAE’s 75-year impact

20 perspectives

Dr. Mike Boyette (right), has developed many innovations for postharvest problem-solving.

lot of what I do and use in the work came from people whom I sat at the feet of years ago. I teach seniors, and I do my dead level best to impart to them all the ideas and stories and things that I learned about how to be a good engineer, how to be a good person, how to be a productive citizen.”

CALS Communication Services

Talk long enough with long-time faculty members about N.C. State University’s Department of Biological and Agricultural Engineering, and the conversation will eventually wind its way around to a 19th century Jean-Francois Millet painting called “Man With a Hoe.” The grim oil-on-canvas work depicts a gaunt farmer leaning wearily on his hoe as he toils to overturn the dirt on a rocky piece of land.

A copy of the painting hung in Weaver Labs for many years, reminding faculty and staff of what their work was all about: trying to relieve the farmer’s burden by taking much of the backbreaking drudgery out of farm work. As the department reaches the 75th anniversary of its founding, faculty and staff have reason to celebrate. They and their predecessors have largely accomplished that goal by mechanizing tilling, planting, cultivating, harvesting and drying of a range of crops and by developing new ways of housing farm animals. Their efforts have reduced the amount of manual labor, raised yields, increased profits, protected the environment and created a safer supply of food and fiber.

The department dates its start to 1935, the year its first graduate, Abner S. Knowles earned a bachelor’s degree.

But for 22 years before that, N.C. State had employed two professional agricultural engineers to work on drainage issues associated with agriculture and road building, particularly in eastern North Carolina. Over the years, the faculty, staff and student body grew and became more diverse, and so did the subjects of their study. In commemoration of BAE’s 75 years, faculty

members, present and past, recently spoke about the department’s impact.

‘A link in the chain that goes back a lot of years’

I

came here in the fall of 1966. And I literally came out of the tobacco field.

We actually harvested tobacco that morning. My roommate and I came in the afternoon. Our parents dropped us off, and we could have just as well been on the other side of the moon. But I very quickly found out that it was almost like a second home. That is something that those of us who are on the faculty have always tried to do: to make Bio and Ag Engineering a sort of second home to our students.

“I see my tenure in Bio and Ag Engineering as being just a link in the chain that goes back a lot of years. A

—Dr. Mike Boyette earned his bachelor’s, master’s and Ph.D. in agricultural engineering at N.C. State and became an Extension specialist in 1983. His innovations related to tobacco are part of a departmental legacy that has helped reduce the amount of farm labor used to grow and harvest tobacco and deliver it to market. Boyette’s efforts have led to improved sweet potato storage, the practice of baling and tagging tobacco for market and the reduction of harmful nitrosamines in cured tobacco.

Putting the ‘B’ into BAE

W

hen Dr. Pat Hassler came to the department [in 1950], he was a young Ph.D. out of Michigan State, and I think [the late department head] Professor Giles put him pretty much in charge of trying to get our graduate program going, and he did a tremendous job of it. At that time, it was just known as Agricultural Engineering, but he got the Biological tacked on pretty (continued next page)

Voices (continued) quickly, because he felt that was really what we did: We worked with biological systems. So I think that the development of that program and consequently the development of … national and worldwide recognition [for the department] was pretty much a result of his work in the graduate programs in the late ’50s and ’60s.”

‘A lot that BAE can be applied to’

T

he department has been very good about embracing and seeing that we don’t have to be confined to one very specific field, but there is a lot that biological and agricultural engineering can be applied to. We have not lost the core of what we do; it still deals with the safe — and I mean safe both from a consumption standpoint and an environmental standpoint — production of food and fiber. … I go across the country and people say, ‘You are not in the civil engineering department?’

And I say, ‘No, I’m in the Bio and Ag Engineering Department. It actually makes sense: How does a stormwater wetland work? How does a green roof work? How do rain gardens work?

They all use biological principles; they are all biology-based systems.’”

—Dr. Bill Hunt earned his master’s degree in BAE at N.C. State before becoming an Extension specialist and nationally recognized expert on urban stormwater management.

Enrollment growth, decline and growth again

W

hen I first started here, the biomedical engineering concentration [which began in BAE] had developed into its own department [in 2003], and so our department had to recover from the loss of some of those faculty and a lot of those students. I went from teaching a class that was 58 students, and then the following year, when BME left, to 13. Since then, year after year, we’ve increased our student population. … Now I have 43 in my

Becky Kirkland

—George Blum, perhaps the oldest of the oldtimers, came to N.C. State as a student in 1944 and served as BAE’s undergraduate coordinator for 22 years.

BAE’s Dr. Mari Chinn (right), here working with Dr. Bryon Sosinski of Horticultural Science, is developing efficient ways of processing sweet potatoes to produce ethanol.

class. Some of the attractive points are bioenergy and environmental engineering programs. But I have also noticed that our traditional agriculture numbers are going up as well.”

—Dr. Mari Chinn joined the faculty in 2003 as a bioprocess engineering professor and researcher. Her research focuses on renewable materials that can be converted into valueadded products — for example, turning sweet sorghum into ethanol.

Looking ahead

T

here are three areas [key in BAE’s future]: Water is going to be just a massive issue for the next 50 years. If you look at projections on water supplies and water scarcities on a global basis, as well as on a national basis, into the future, it is a frightening picture.

Energy is obviously important; we’ve got to be independent as far as energy is concerned. Bio-based energy is the area that many people feel is going to be what replaces our need for foreign oil and for coal resources and so forth.

But there are many problems associated with that. And the other [area of importance] is the general environment: As we have more and more people and as we do new things such as develop biologically based production of energy, that will challenge us environmentally… . So lots of challenges in the future — and interesting, important challenges.”

—Dr. Wayne Skaggs joined the faculty in 1970 to conduct research on drainage and drainage water management. His research on controlled drainage in shallow watertable soils has helped reduce nitrogen losses

to coastal streams and estuaries by close to 2 million pounds per year in North Carolina alone. Such efforts earned him the prestigious Alexander von Humboldt Award in 1997 as well as entry into the National Academy of Engineering.

A vision for the future

I

think I could summarize my vision into three components: First for the department to be recognized by our peers as one of the elite biological and agricultural engineering departments in the country. We have for many years been bouncing back and forth in the [top] six-to-eight range, but I think it would be a milestone if we were to move up into that top five. Second, for the department to have state-of-the-art facilities for research and teaching.

And third, for every member of the faculty to be recognized nationally and internationally as a leader in their program area. … The key is having a very accomplished faculty.”

—Dr. Robert Evans, who earned bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degrees in engineering at N.C. State, served as an Extension specialist beginning in 1983 and became BAE Department head in 2006.

For more of the story and reminiscences from additional BAE faculty members, see the upcoming postings of Perspectives Latest News online at http://www.cals.ncsu.edu/agcomm/magazine/ index.html.

summer 2010 21

VetPAC is the go-to guide for pre-veterinary students

The College of Agriculture and Life Sciences’ strong pre-veterinary program just got stronger — with the launch of VetPAC, the Veterinary Professions Advising Center.

First there was HealthPAC, the Health Professions Advising Center, created in 2006 in the College to provide services to help students become candidates for health professional schools and careers. Now CALS is also the home of VetPAC, a place for pre-veterinary students to receive centralized advising on the veterinary profession and the DVM application process. VetPAC was officially launched May 5 during a reception at N.C. State University’s Riddick Hall, site of the center.

“Our pre-vet students are in a variety of majors like animal science, biology, zoology, poultry science, microbiology and biochemistry. This center will serve as a major resource for assisting in their planning of a future veterinary career,” said Dr. Shweta Trivedi, teaching assistant professor in the CALS Department of Animal Science and the director of VetPAC. “I am also working on the website simultaneously, so that students can register and start building their portfolios toward the vet school application.”

Trivedi is herself a veterinarian who received her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in veterinary science in India and her Ph.D. in immunology at N.C. State’s College of Veterinary Medicine (CVM). She teaches anatomy and 22 perspectives

physiology animal science courses, as well as coordinating VetPAC. Trivedi indicated that the young center is already quite successful, noting that this year there are 20 CALS students heading to the CVM and eight more going to other vet schools across the country.

Furthermore, in what Trivedi described as a “huge leap for our program,” James Tyndall, a CALS senior in animal science, was elected president for 2010-11 of the American Pre-Veterinary Medical Association at the APVMA Symposia this past March. It was the first year of N.C. State students’ attendance at the event, Trivdei said, with travel-funding assistance from Merial animal health company and Hills Pet Nutrition.

The center in 341 Riddick includes an open space that functions as a li-

Becky Kirkland

Becky Kirkland

Dr. Shweta Trivedi guides a visitor around the new VetPAC workstation area.

Guests gather at the Riddick Hall “Hearth” for the VetPAC launch.

brary/workstation area. There students have access to four computers — two PCs and two MACs — and referencelibrary shelves full of current veterinary, animal-health and related professional publications, such as JAVMA, the N.C. Biotechnology Directory, Veterinary Practice News, Exotic DVM: A Practical Resource for Clinicians and CVM: the Magazine of the College of Veterinary Medicine at N.C. State University. Also available are various guides for preparation for taking the Graduate Record Exam (GRE) and other information for prospective graduate students.

The center is also the place for undergraduates to learn about the new VetPAC Interns program for sophomores, juniors and seniors. In this unique leadership program, students can earn up to two credit hours of on-campus learning experience under the direct mentorship of Trivedi. The interns have the opportunity to participate in the fall N.C. Veterinary Conference, the annual APVMA symposia trip, the HistoPath Conference at the N.C. State CVM, spend-a-day sessions with the three different CVM faculty members and a once-a-semester paid lunch with DVM students at the CVM. They also are eligible for letters of recommendation for internships from Dr. Trivedi.

The VetPAC seminar series is another valuable resource for students, offering presentations such as the “Summers of Discovery” Research Internship Program at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, RTP; the Vetward Bound Program at Michigan State University; the Bald Head Island Conservancy Sea Turtle Internship Program; Introduction to the DVM program at Ross University, West Indies; Opportunities at Novartis Animal Health; and International Perspective on Veterinary Medicine — as well as “How to crack the GRE: Kaplan Test (continued next page)

CALS landscape design students bring ‘Fantasy Croquet’ to Wilson Botanical Gardens

Courtesy Cyndi Lauderdale

A giant bamboo fish sculpture takes shape at Wilson Botanical Gardens, with help from Will Hooker’s landscape design students.

The Wilson Botanical Gardens is now home to a whimsical bamboo sculpture created by landscape design students in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. Will Hooker, CALS horticultural science professor of landscape design, led his HS 400 studio class in the creation and installation of “Fantasy Croquet,” a larger-than-life interactive piece that is delighting visitors at the 11-acre gardens on the grounds of the Wilson County

Cooperative Extension center.

The sculpture is made up of 8-foottall wickets through which a 4.5-footdiameter croquet ball can be rolled toward a colorful post atop which is poised an orange koi or catfish-like piece with a blue flower in its mouth, floating around and spun by a wind catcher in the form of a ginkgo leaf. All elements are created from bamboo.

“It’s loads of fun!” said Hooker. “As

VetPAC (continued) Preparation,” “Inspired Essay Writing: How to Fashion a Winning Vet School Personal Statement” and “Incredible Interview Techniques: How to Shine in Your Vet School Interview.”

VetPAC has also partnered with the Wake County Animal Center in a joint certification program in the care of shelter animals. The purpose of the program is to provide undergraduate students interested in a career in veterinary medicine the opportunity to experience all aspects of care of shelter animals. The program aims to give students a better understanding of shelter veterinary medicine.

VetPAC works closely with CALS’ Food Animal Scholars Program, started in 1992 to encourage students to consider careers in food animal medicine.

In essence, VetPAC is there to guide students to the courses, activities and opportunities that can help build the kind of background experience necessary to get into veterinary school. There are 28 veterinary colleges in the U.S. and roughly more than 6,100 students applying to them each year. Of that number about 700 apply to N.C. State’s CVM, where there are 80 slots available — 62 for in-state students, 18 for non-residents.

With VetPAC, N.C. State’s pre-veterinary students are up to the challenge of that competition.

— Terri Leith

I tell every class when I ask them to do a design for the bamboo sculpture, there are two requirements I insist on: First, whenever anyone sees the sculpture, I want them to at least smile; I would prefer a chuckle and love it when there’s outright laughter, but the point is that I want these sculptures to be fun — not maudlin or serious in any way. Second, I prefer that these sculptures be interactive in some way.”

It’s successful on both counts, reports Cyndi Lauderdale, Wilson County horticulture Extension agent. “Feedback is all positive,” she said. “Since the sculpture is larger-than-life it is easily seen, and people question about it. Today we had a group of senior-citizen ladies come and tour the WBG. One actively played croquet with the 4.5-foot ball. It was great to see a senior running after the ball (which I think was taller than she was)!”

The idea to contact Hooker for the project came to Lauderdale after she read an article in Perspectives about a bamboo sculpture he and his students created at a Raleigh elementary school. “I thought the design was wonderful and a way to get the community and NCSU involved in a cooperative effort,” she said. “This project was supported by a grant from the Arts Council of Wilson through the North Carolina Arts Council Grassroots Arts Program, with funding from the state of North Carolina.”

The grounds of the Extension center and gardens are maintained by the Wilson Extension Master Gardener Volunteers.

—Terri Leith For more information, go to www.wilson-co. com/arboretum.html.

summer 2010 23

New pink hydrangea is Invincibelle® This young lady enjoys the beauty of the Hydrangea arborescens Invincibelle® Spirit.

Courtesy Tom Ranney

A new variety of hydrangea, developed

by N.C. State University horticulturist Dr. Tom Ranney, will have gardeners thinking pink this year. Hydrangea arborescens ‘NCHA1’ Invincibelle® Spirit is a hybrid of the typically white-flowered Hydrangea arborescens mountain hydrangea — or white-flowering ‘Annabelle’ — but with a significant difference: It has bright pink flowers. Unlike the finicky, exotic big-leaf hydrangea, this native species is tough and adaptable, impervious to cold, and the flowers of Invincibelle® Spirit are always pink. This pink hydrangea holds its color, unlike others that turn blue in North Carolina’s naturally acidic soils. The first pink mountain hydrangea to be made available to the public, the new hydrangea is now making its debut in garden centers.

And it brings with it another pinkcolored plus: The flowering shrubs brand Proven Winners® Color Choice® will

donate $1.00 from each purchase of Invincibelle® Spirit hydrangea to the Breast Cancer Research Foundation.

One review of Invincibelle® Spirit is blooming with superlatives: Spring Meadow Nursery on its website calls it a

Webinar series brings agritourism education Tourism Extension specialists at N.C. State University attracted nearly 250 participants to a spring webinar series on agritourism. Dr. Samantha Rozier Rich and Dr. Stacy Tomas, along with Sue Colucci (area specialized horticulture Extension agent) and colleagues from Rutgers University, hosted the five-part series, with topics ranging from “Is agritourism right for your farm?” to “Social Media 101.”

Rich said the webinar series grew out of her efforts to create an eXtension community of practice on agritourism.

In the process, she met Stephen Komar of Rutgers, and they began discussing possibilities for agritourism education.

Agritourism refers to enterprises that bring consumers to farms or other rural settings for education, recreation and entertainment. They can include experiences like on-farm shops, pickyour-own operations, corn mazes or special dinners.

The webinars were each offered twice on Tuesdays in March and April, at noon and at 7 p.m. Throughout the series, 245 participants were involved, though some of those were repeats.

24 perspectives

Though the instructors were from North Carolina and New Jersey, webinar participants came from approximately 13 different states.

“We are thrilled the webinars were such a success. While nothing can replace face-to-face workshops, the webinars provided an excellent alternative for sharing pertinent information in a time where travel is limited for both Extension professionals and others,” Rich said. “The online environment provided the opportunity for participants from various professions, interests, and geographic locations to come together and learn about agritourism.”

From participants’ surveys, Tomas and Rich learned that a majority of the webinar participants were female farmers age 50 to 64. Most participants said they had no problems participating in the webinars and felt the webinar presentations were equal to or better than traditional Extension programs.

“When we began planning the series, we had some concerns as to whether farmers would use this technology and participate in the webinars,” Tomas (continued next page)

“remarkable hydrangea” and “the most exciting development in hydrangeas since 1988.”

Able to be grown in cold climates, Invincibelle® Spirit is also heat-tolerant — bred to be as hardy as the typical ‘Annabelle’ breed but with an abundance of hot-pink flowers lasting from early summer to frost. It can be grown in full sun to partial shade and is adaptable to many soil types, producing months of beautiful pink flowers regardless of soil pH. The man responsible for the plantbreeding breakthrough is Ranney, a College of Agriculture and Life Sciences horticulture professor who leads a research program at the Mountain Horticultural Crops Research and Extension Center near Asheville.

Ranney began work on developing the plant in 2003. “The project required combining multiple recessive traits into a good landscape form,” he says. “The primary goal was to combine pink flower color with a showy, mop-head flower architecture.”

A 2009 article in Nursery Notes by Ranney and co-researcher Dr. Richard Olsen, Research Geneticist at the U.S. National Arboretum, indicates that Olsen first suggested the potential for breeding a pink-flowered ‘Annabelle’ (and some of their first research was initiated) when he was Ph.D. student at N.C. State. With support from Spring Meadow Nursery, the project continued with various research specialists contributing to the development of “numerous generations” and “back crosses” until, the authors say, “we selected one outstanding plant that combined particularly nice form, foliage and exceptional pink mophead inflorescences.”

The resulting rebloomer, Ranney says, “is a new twist on a classic, native garden shrub that is ideally suited for North Carolina.”

— Terri Leith

Agricultural law course makes students firsthand witnesses to the law in action

Marc Hall

Ron Campbell (left) and his students recreate a famous trial at the N.C. Supreme Court.

Ron Campbell, a lecturer in the Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics, believes that exposing students to the law is one of the best ways to teach it.

That’s why his new course, Advanced Agricultural Law (ARE 495), doesn’t take place in a classroom. Instead, the 21 students enrolled in the spring seminar experienced law firsthand at places like the North Carolina Supreme Court and Central Prison in Raleigh.

This is the first year of a three-year trial for the new course, and at the end, Campbell said he hopes to have demonstrated the value of real-life, hands-on learning.

“We’ve had extraordinarily strong experiences in which students are not

Webinar (continued) said. “We were pleased to discover that nearly 60 percent of all participants were indeed farmers, and several commented on how easy the webinar software was to use.”

Archived recordings of the webinars are available free from the Tourism Extension website: www.ncsu.edu/ tourismextension. Tourism Extension is making plans to offer additional webinars in the near future.

— Natalie Hampton

only learning procedure but also learning about life,” Campbell said.

A former attorney, Campbell stresses the value of witnessing the law “in action” in order for his students to fully understand it. They’ve watched a trial at the Federal Court in Raleigh, walked down death row at Central Prison and toured the Campbell School of Law. Campbell also took a van full to Washington, D.C. But it wasn’t all field trips.

After each outing, the students were required to write a three-page paper detailing its significance. They also wrote research papers throughout the term using a thick volume of general statues and delivered presentations on their findings.

“It’s critical that they fully understand what they’re experiencing and know how to use their resources,” Campbell said.

Just days before a scheduled May visit to the state Supreme Court, Campbell received word that the court had canceled that particular session. But rather than drop the trip, Campbell got on the phone with clerk of court Kristy Cameron to develop an alternative learning experience for his students.

In the state Supreme Court chambers, Cameron walked the students through the historic Blanche Taylor Moore death penalty trial, assigning

roles and quizzing them on procedure.

The students were allowed to sit in the justices’ seats on the bench, as well as act as attorneys for the case.

Cameron gave extensive background on each person involved in the trial, as well as a brief history of the N.C. Supreme Court. She also offered a word of warning to the students investigating their surroundings up on the bench: “Be careful,” she said. “One of those buttons will have the capitol city police blazing over here before you know it!”

To say that the students love this course is an understatement.

“This is one of the best courses I’ve ever had,” said Ryan Smith, a senior from Warsaw. “It’s helped with my research skills and my presentation skills. … Those things are all part of being a lawyer.”

Adam Speaks, who plans to work for his family farm in Traphill after graduating in December, said, “I learned a lot about farm law and business law from this class. It’s not just for students who want to be lawyers.”

In fact, the course is open to any N.C. State student, because as Campbell says, “cross-pollination among disciplines makes for richer experiences.”

Campbell said that the format of the research writing course keeps his students on their toes.

“Even if I had 60 students, I’d call on 45 of them,” he said. “In a seminar class, they know to be prepared.”

Their meetings on campus take place in the student senate chambers, and Campbell receives no compensation for teaching the experimental course.

But fueled by the early success of the course, Campbell is steadfast in his goal to make it permanent.

“It’s not textbook,” Campbell said.

“Everything is practical, hands-on, so then the law has meaning.”

— Suzanne Stanard

summer 2010 25

Growing up alongside the plants in his parents’ greenhouse business, Cary Rivard knew exactly what he wanted to study in college.

Plant pathology was a no-brainer for Rivard, but it wasn’t until an internship at the Center for Environmental Farming Systems and a serendipitous pairing with plant pathology professor Dr. Frank Louws that cemented his interest in vegetable production and led to a ground-breaking research project.

Rivard, a freshly minted doctoral graduate of the Department of Plant Pathology in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, conducted an accomplished research program in tomato grafting, a propagation method that involves the attachment of two halves of different plants to make a whole, new plant. The rootstock (below-ground portion of a plant) is selected for its ability to resist disease, and the scion (above-ground portion) is chosen based on fruit quality. Grafted together, they form an ideal plant.

Rivard’s work in tomato grafting earned him a first place prize in the university’s Graduate Research Symposium last year. More important, his research program with Louws played a key role in jump-starting the use of tomato grafting as a propagation method in the United States.

“At the time that Dr. Louws and I started our work on the grafting project, there were very few people grafting tomatoes in the United States,” Rivard says. “Most thought it wouldn’t work or that it wasn’t economically feasible for production.

“But in Asia and Europe, the practice of vegetable grafting has been progressing since the 1940s and 1950s,” he says. “Now, a large portion of vegetable production in those regions uses grafted plants.”

Louws attributes the low use of grafting in this country to the development of simple chemical-based soil treatments such as fumigation with methyl bromide.

But as the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency places continued restric26 perspectives

tions on the use of soil fumigation, the method soon will disappear.

“As methyl bromide is phased out, there is a heightened and critical need for alternative tactics, and grafting has promise to play a prominent role in managing soilRivard’s tomato plant combines the disease resistance and borne pathogens,” fruit quality of two different plants.

Louws says. “Another trend has been the emerging marcalls from growers this spring who are ket for organic tomatoes, particularly grafting their own tomatoes, and I rethose that can be distinguished in the ally enjoy helping them work through market, such as heirloom tomatoes.” their problems. It’s especially gratifying These lines typically do not have to hear back when a particular method genetic resistance to the soilborne pathohas worked.” gens that thrive in the Southeast, Louws Rivard and Louws say they believe says. Organic growers also are under that the benefits of grafting tomatoes economic pressure to maximize returns outweigh the cost. on their best land, and this decreases “Growers can focus on growing a their ability to have long crop rotation tomato crop that meets the specialty programs as a tactic to manage soilborne demands of their market, whether direct pathogens. sales or wholesale,” Louws says. “They So, Louws says, “grafting tomatoes also can focus on managing their site or is a strategy whose time has come in field specific problems by selecting rootboth the conventional and organic prostocks that offer plant disease control duction systems.” or enhanced fruit quality and yields.”

However, one large obstacle to the The environmental benefits of vegwidespread practice of tomato grafting etable grafting also are profound, as the is the expense. biologically-based method replaces one “These transplants can cost anythat is chemically-based. where from three to five times as much Rivard hopes to continue work in as non-grafted ones,” Rivard says. “The vegetable grafting and says he feels forissue we face isn’t efficacy. It’s economic tunate to have landed at N.C. State. feasibility.”

“This has been an incredible experiDespite this, commercial production ence,” Rivard says. “I’m probably one has been gaining steam in the United of the luckiest students around, to have States over the last two years, Rivard gotten to work with Dr. Louws, as well says. as numerous others during my graduThrough workshops, presentations ate work.” at conferences throughout the Southeast Louws returns the compliment, and one-on-one consultations with growsaying “Cary is a well-rounded student ers, Rivard has been on a mission to help who has a broad and deep scientific make grafting feasible. background complimented with com“Many of our local farmers are mon sense and practical agricultural interested in propagating their own experience. grafted plants for economic and logisti“Thus, he has been able to manage cal reasons,” he says. “I’ve had a lot of (continued next page)

Becky Kirkland

Grad student’s grafting research creates an ideal tomato plant

Getting enough calcium in early life could be key for optimal lifelong bone health

Becky Kirkland

Dr. Chad Stahl (center), with lab manager Brynn Seabolt (left) and Ph.D. student Lindsey Alexander, worked with newborn piglets in his calcium nutrition research.

There’s no denying that people need calcium for strong, healthy bones. But new research from N.C. State University’s College of Agriculture and Life Sciences suggests that not getting enough calcium in the earliest days of life could have a more profound, lifelong impact on bone health and perhaps even obesity than previously thought.

During an 18-day trial involving 24 newborn pigs, the researchers documented markedly lower levels of bone density and strength in 12 piglets fed a calcium-deficient diet compared to 12 piglets that received more calcium. Not only that, but when researchers looked at certain stem cells in bone marrow, they found that these cells in the calcium-deficient piglets appeared to have already been programmed to become fat

cells instead of bone-forming cells.

Because these programmed mesenchymal stem cells replicate to provide all the bone-forming cells for an animal’s entire life, very early calcium deficiency may have predisposed the piglets to have bones that contain more fat and less mineral. That could make those pigs more prone to osteoporosis and obesity in later life, said Dr. Chad Stahl, an associate professor of animal science who led the study.

In a longer-term study now under way, the researchers will look at whether that’s the case: By conducting a longer feeding trial, the scientists will be able to see if the changes persist through sexual maturity, which occurs for pigs at around eight months of age.

The researchers use pigs as a model

Tomato (continued) field-based projects, work well with growers in on-farm-research projects, conduct advanced science experiments in the lab and very importantly, translate the information to growers, students and other clientele in a way they understand and can use it.”

What’s next for Rivard?

“Find a job,” he says with a laugh.

“I’ve applied for a few academic positions, such as Extension specialist, but

I’m very interested in teaching, too,” he says. “I find that although these areas have completely different audiences, the overall goal is the same.

“And that’s what I enjoy the most,” Rivard says. “Being able to look at data and pull something meaningful from it, whether it’s a grower recommendation or a theoretical concept delivered in the classroom.”

— Suzanne Stanard

for human health because pigs and humans are similar when it comes to bone growth and nutrition. Pigs are one of the few animals known to experience bone breaks related to osteoporosis, Stahl said.

One of the most surprising findings of the 18-day feeding study was that while the calcium-deficient pigs had substantially lower bone strength and density, blood tests didn’t indicate any difference in levels of the hormonal form of vitamin D, which regulates the amount of calcium circulating in the blood of older children and adults. Stahl said this suggests that calcium regulation in newborns doesn’t depend on vitamin D. Stahl thinks the research is relevant to the infant food industry and suggests the significance of the nutritional status of breastfeeding mothers. It also points to a need for greater emphasis on bone health in very early life, not just during those times when children are growing most rapidly.

“While the importance of calcium nutrition throughout childhood and adolescence is well-recognized, our work suggests that calcium nutrition of the neonate may be of greater importance to lifelong bone health, due to its programming effects on mesenchymal stem cells,” Stahl reported at the recent Experimental Biology 2010 meeting in Anaheim. “It also points to a potential paradigm shift in which health professionals might want to begin thinking about osteoporosis not so much as a disease of the elderly but instead as a pediatric disease with later onset.”

“For me,” Stahl said, “the biggest message is that calcium nutrition, or mineral nutrition as a whole, needs to be a priority from day one. Early life nutrition is setting children up physiologically for the rest of their lives.”

— Dee Shore

summer 2010 27

N.C. State scientist searches the world for plants that help human health

28 perspectives

Lila hopes to find health-boosting plants that can become agricultural crops.

Dee Shore

From Bhutan’s rugged Himalayas to Ecuador’s cloud forest to Alaska’s frozen tundra, Dr. Mary Ann Lila searches high and low for what could be called pharmaceutical plants – and not the brick-and-mortar kind that make medicines. She seeks the leafy kind, full of chemical compounds that can stave off human disease, promote endurance and strength, improve metabolism and erase signs of aging.

Lila works from the N.C. Research Campus in Kannapolis, where she directs N.C. State University’s Plants for Human Health Institute. The institute strives to shift the way the American public views and uses plant food crops as sources not just for nutrients but also for phytochemicals that protect and enhance human health.

The two-year-old institute, part of the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, takes a multidisciplinary approach to pursuing that goal through research related to plant genomics and metabolomics, biochemistry, breeding and postharvest physiology.

Lila, a professor in the Department of Food, Bioprocessing and Nutrition Sciences, is one of five N.C. State faculty members now working in the institute, which is expected to grow to 15 faculty members. Her current research focuses on three areas: studying health-enhancing compounds in blueberries and other berries, isolating phytochemicals that counteract malaria, and working with scientists and students from around the world to explore natural products for biomedical use.

During a recent seminar at the research campus, Lila discussed the latter project, which has taken her to Central and South Asia, New Zealand and Australia, Alaska and the Dakotas, Central and South America, and Africa.

These efforts are part of the Global Institute for BioExploration, or GIBEX, a research and development network Lila helped start while she was on the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign faculty. The partnership also includes N.C. State and Rutgers universities.

The group works with scientists, students and traditional healers in developing nations and with Native Americans to identify plants that hold promise for human health.

GIBEX doesn’t take any plants from the locations where it works, but it trains and equips local scientists with cost-effective drug-discovery tools and technologies that are portable and easy to use, Lila said. That way, discoveries can be made in the field, with the intellectual property remaining with the local population.

While GIBEX scientists use modern research-based technology to screen plants for medicinal properties, they depend on centuries-old native understanding of the healing properties of plants as their starting point.

“We work a lot with traditional healers or the scientists at the university who still, a lot of times, have a foot in both camps: They are modern scientists; they use advanced technologies such as high performance liquid chromatography, but they still practice some traditional medicine. It’s what they grew up with,” Lila explained.

“But mostly the traditional medicine hasn’t been validated. They don’t have the capacity to validate it. They don’t have the instrumentation. They don’t have the money to do the bioassays we can do here. So what we are really doing is putting some substance behind what your grandmother always told you.”

Since GIBEX was started in 200304, it has used this approach to identify 17 plant extracts that have been licensed to pharmaceutical companies, Lila said.

These extracts involve so-called secondary compounds — phytochemicals that aren’t directly involved in a plant’s normal growth, development or reproduction, she explained. Instead, these chemicals are created to help the plants protect and defend themselves and attract pollinators.

“Pigments such as carotenoids in tomatoes and anthocyanins in blueberries are examples. They won’t necessarily accumulate in the plant unless the plant is under stress, and that’s why wild plants tend to have the highest concentrations of these secondary components,” she said.

“Now interestingly, these same components that a plant uses to enhance its own survival under stress can interact with human therapeutic targets when the plant is ingested as food,” she added.

“They will interact with human therapeutic targets to specifically counteract human disease and improve human metabolism.”

While Lila spends some of her time in the field looking for plants with such properties, she also conducts complex laboratory research aimed at understanding the precise health benefits of particular phytochemicals and at shedding light on the previously hidden ways that the chemicals build people’s muscles, boost immunity, inhibit cancer, reduce inflammation and more. One of Lila’s recent studies found, for example, that concentrated amounts of blueberry anthocyanin reduced glucose levels in diabetic mice better than metformin, a drug widely prescribed for type 2 diabetes.

In looking ahead, Lila said she hopes to continue to discover plants that could become agricultural crops that boost human health.

—Dee Shore

CEFS launches 10% Campaign and releases guide on local foods

Marc Hall

Guests enjoy the local foods at the Farm to Fork picnic at Breeze Farm.

In May, more than 600 people gathered at the Breeze Farm in Orange County’s Hurdle Mills to celebrate and enjoy local food prepared by area chefs. The Farm to Fork Picnic is one of ways the Center for Environmental Farming Systems — co-sponsor of the event with Slow Food Triangle and Breeze Farm — is helping advance the cause of local food across North Carolina.

The Farm to Fork Picnic, called the “Best All You Can Eat Feast” by Bon Appetit magazine, draws faithful foodies from the Triangle area. In its third year, the picnic regularly sells out, even at a cost of $50 a person.

Since fall 2008, N.C. State’s CEFS has been active in working with citizens to develop local food economies for North Carolina. Beginning with a series of six work sessions across the state, CEFS’s Farm to Fork initiative gathered input from more than 1,000 citizens, ending with a summit last spring and the announcement of 11 game changer ideas to advance the cause.

The May picnic marked the soft launch for one of the game changer ideas — the kickoff of the 10% Campaign, designed to educate and encourage consumers to eat 10 percent of their food from local sources by shopping for local food or growing their own. The website for the campaign is available at http://nc10percent.com. Consumers will be able to sign up for the Golden LEAF-funded campaign and track their progress toward their goal of 10 percent local food.

N.C. Cooperative Extension — based at N.C. State and N.C. A&T State universities, with centers in all the state’s

100 counties – will also be a partner in the 10% Campaign.

An Extension agent in every county will serve as an on-the-ground resource person for both consumers and businesses or institutions that want help meeting the 10 percent goal. Links to all county Extension centers are online at www. ces.ncsu.edu.

“Promoting local food is not a fad.

It’s a way to sustain our state’s small farmers, protect the environment by reducing the miles our food travels to reach us and help citizens to eat more healthy by consuming fresh, local produce and other farm products,” said Dr. Nancy Creamer, director of CEFS and distinguished professor of sustainable and community-based food systems.

CEFS is a partnership of N.C. State University, N.C. A&T State University and the N.C. Department of Agriculture & Consumer Services. Its mission is to develop and promote food and farming systems that protect the environment, strengthen local communities and provide economic opportunities in North Carolina and beyond.

The Farm to Fork initiative has been successful in meeting other game changer ideas as well. In May 2009 as participants gathered for the Farm to Fork summit, one of the major goals of Farm to Fork was being approved by the state’s General Assembly — creation of the N.C. Sustainable Local Foods Advisory Council. The council began meeting in February, with the goal of promoting local foods within North Carolina.

Then in April, CEFS released a state guide — “From Farm to Fork: A Guide to Building North Carolina’s Sustainable Local Food Economy” — that summarizes all the recommendations of the Farm to Fork initiative, along with

personal goals for consumers.

CE FS has expanded its role of outreach to the community, through its annual Sustainable Agriculture Lecture, bringing in heavy hitters in the local foods movement including Slow Food International’s founder Carlo Petrini, Judy Wicks of Philadelphia’s White Dog Café and Growing Power’s founder Will Allen. The lectures are free and open to the public.

Though CEFS has led the charge at N.C. State for increasing local food consumption across the state, others at the university have also been involved. The Campus Farmers Market, a student-led initiative, started last fall as an effort to provide a direct market for local food and to educate the campus community about the importance of buying local foods.

The market brings food and farm product vendors to campus one day a week for most of the fall and spring semesters. At the spring market, students from a nutrition class cooked and shared samples of dishes made with seasonal market foods – kale chips and strawberry shortcake. And each semester, University Dining holds a locavore dinner, with many foods produced in North Carolina.

The university also has a history of involvement with Slow Food International. Religion and philosophy professor Dr. David Auerbach has been a delegate to Slow Food’s Terra Madre, an international conference held in Italy every two years. Three Cooperative Extension professionals attended the event in 2008.

— Natalie Hampton

summer 2010 29

Work continues on managing the weed Palmer amaranth

Marc Hall

Dr. Jim Burton (right) and Dr. Jenn Schaff are studying the genetic makeup of Palmer amaranth to learn about its herbicide-resistance mechanisms.

Dr. Jim Burton of horticultural science is studying the genome of herbicideresistant Palmer amaranth in hopes of learning more about the genetic adaptation that has allowed the plant to resist herbicides like glyphosate, or Roundup. Burton, who specializes in weed science and herbicide behavior in plants, believes that learning more about Palmer’s resistance could lead to the creation of crops that can adapt to other hardships, including drought, and could ultimately help farmers better deal with resistant weeds.

For years, farmers have relied on the convenience of genetically modified crops to easily manage the problem of weeds in their fields. Roundup Ready crops like cotton, soybeans and corn allowed growers to manage weeds by spraying entire fields with the herbicide glyphosate without damaging crops. But heavy reliance on Roundup Ready crops has led to the emergence of weeds that are resistant to Roundup and other herbicides.

“Roundup has proven to be a very effective weed management tool. But if you use only one tool in your toolbox, when it comes to weeds, you’re going to shoot yourself in the foot,” Burton said.

Roundup-resistant weeds, like the voracious Palmer amaranth, have left growers with few tools to keep weeds 30 perspectives

out of their fields.

In some cases, these resistant weeds are so invasive they even cut into crop yields. N.C. State weed scientist Dr. Alan York estimates that about half of all Palmer amaranth populations in eastern North Carolina are resistant to glysophate, and about half show resistance to another class of herbicides, ALS (acetolactate sythase) inhibitors. A quarter of all Palmer is believed to be resistant to both types of herbicides.

Currently, better management strategies show the most promise for controlling this resistant weed, and N.C. State weed scientists are working to educate growers. “In my opinion, the overall level of control growers are achieving is better now than it was three or four years ago,” York said. “The problem is not going away; it is just something growers will have to deal with from now on.”

When Roundup Ready crops first became available, scientists believed that it would be difficult for weeds to develop resistance to glyphosate, so they were surprised when resistant strains of Palmer began showing up in fields of the Southeast.

“In 1980, people said, ‘Herbicide resistance is never going to be a problem.’

But with resistance, if you don’t manage for it, you’re lost.”

Scientists at the University of Georgia and the University of Colorado recently discovered that gene amplification in resistant Palmer has led to this unexpected resistance to glyphosate. Most plants have one gene that produces an enzyme that binds with glyphosate. But this single gene cannot produce enough enzyme, known as EPSPS, so glyphosate nor-

mally overwhelms and kills the plant.

Glyphosate kills by blocking the production of specific amino acids that are made in plants, but not animals, making it a relatively safe herbicide. Plants try to fight back by producing EPSPS, but non-resistant plants don’t produce enough enzyme to protect themselves.

Resistant Palmer amaranth has a new defense: amplifying the gene for EPSPS to create multiple copies on different strands of the plant’s DNA. These plants with multiple EPSPS genes can produce enough of the enzyme to bind with and overcome glyphosate, making it ineffective in killing the weed.

“This is something brand new that’s never shown up before in plants,” Burton said. “This plant has so many of these enzymes that they swamp Roundup.”

Burton and his research colleagues are looking at the transcriptome, or RNA, of both resistant and non-resistant Palmer, in hopes of understanding how the plant developed this gene amplification. Dr. Jenn Schaff at the N.C. State Genomic Sciences Laboratory performed the transcriptome sequencing, and Dr. Elizabeth Scholl in Plant Pathology performed the initial bioinformatic analysis.

The researchers are also looking at the role of the different genes: Are there differences in how they control specific biological processes or molecular functions? Are there differences in genes that could be involved in herbicide resistance? The researchers have discovered the resistant and non-resistant Palmer are genetically similar, and 97 to 98 percent of genes in Palmer have been identified in other biological organisms.

Learning more about the mechanism of resistance in Palmer amaranth could help farmers in several ways. One benefit would be developing precise — and, it is hoped, simple — in-field tests that would help growers identify resistant Palmer in their fields.

“What we could do with this infor(continued next page)

Commodity leaders, growers train in food-safety crisis communications team, developed a train-the-trainer program on fresh produce safety two years ago. The goal of the program is to help growers minimize risks when it comes to providing a safe food supply.

However, even when farmers may do everything possible to implement Good Agricultural Practices (GAPs), a foodborne illness outbreak in another state can affect them and the entire industry.

Marc Hall

North Carolina commodity association leaders and growers are better prepared to communicate in the event of a fresh produce safety crisis, thanks to a training initiative sponsored by N.C. MarketReady and the Fresh Produce Safety Task Force.

The Fresh Produce Safety Task Force, which includes faculty from the Kannapolis-based N.C. MarketReady

Growers and commodity leaders practiced taking produce-safety related questions from the media.

Palmer amaranth (continued) mation pretty easily would be to develop markers where we could go into a population and determine where there is resistance to different herbicides. One of the reasons why farmers don’t manage their resistance issues, or they haven’t in the past, is they’re not really sure they have a resistance problem. They believe, ‘If it comes to my field, I’ll deal with it.’”

But Burton believes that an in-field test could confirm that a grower has herbicide-resistant Palmer. He hopes the information would encourage farmers to respond more quickly in dealing with resistant weeds, potentially slowing the spread of the resistance problem.

Palmer amaranth is native to the Sonoran Desert in the southwestern United States and northwestern Mexico.

As a result, it is capable of withstanding drought and temperatures of 95 to 105 degrees F. If genes controlling for drought heat tolerance could be identified and bet-

ter understood, the genetic material could be incorporated into crops to make them more tolerant of hot, dry conditions that Southeast growers face.

Discovering the keys to Palmer’s relentless adaptability could help scientists to use traits to growers’ advantage.

Could cotton ever be as productive or as stress tolerant as Palmer amaranth?

Burton believes it’s a question worth asking.

The fact that genetic research has become more affordable makes it possible for researchers to take a closer look at genetic composition, like that of Palmer amaranth, and to discover new information that could be used to the advantage of agriculture. “We can learn from this,” Burton said. “It is the start of a more detailed understanding of this rather amazing plant.”

— Natalie Hampton

Through a crisis communications module, Extension agents and growers were introduced to the basics of dealing with a crisis.

The effort was so well-received that a number of commodity organizations in the state asked for their own program. So task force member Dr. Ben Chapman, College of Agriculture and Life Sciences Extension food safety specialist, developed outbreak scenarios for seven commodity and industry groups, and a team of fellow N.C. State University faculty and task force members took the training directly to association meetings.

A total of 260 growers and association leaders went through the steps of an unfolding food-borne illness related to their commodity. Many squirmed and dodged make-believe reporters, who tried to put them on the spot with questions about the outbreak and their commodity crops. One growers’ group — United Fresh — has done the training twice.

“I think it has been really positive,” Chapman said. “It’s a really unique way to deliver extension information — getting participants involved in a game really.”

Participating in the scenarios also encouraged growers to consider GAPs training offered by N.C MarketReady, as well. Chapman recalled one grower who said the scenarios training — funded by an N.C. Department of Agriculture & Consumer Services (NCDA&CS) specialty crops grant — made him realize how exposed he was without GAPs in place on his operation.

“The outbreak scenarios introduced growers to the many elements they need to consider in the event of a food-borne illness. They helped growers understand that while they need to be making important business decisions in a crisis, they may also have the news media and others demanding their time. It can become quite stressful, even with a crisis management plan,” said Leah ChesterDavis of N.C. MarketReady.

The next step, after the outbreak scenarios, was to help producers develop (continued next page)

summer 2010 31

Trudy Mackay elected to National Academy of Sciences Dr. Trudy Mackay is the ninth current N.C. State faculty member to be elected to the National Academy of Sciences.

Becky Kirkland

Dr. Trudy F.C. Mackay, William Neal Reynolds and distinguished university professor of genetics and entomology in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at N.C. State University, has been elected into the National Academy of Sciences, one of the world’s most important scientific societies.

Mackay becomes the ninth current N.C. State faculty member to be elected into the august scientific society. She is one of 72 new members and 18 foreign associates elected this year.

Mackay studies the genetic and environmental factors affecting variation in quantitative, or complex, traits. Her groundbreaking work in the study of quantitative trait loci, or the locations in the genome where variations occur, largely focuses on the model organism Drosophila melanongaster, the fruit fly.

She currently receives funding from the National Institutes of Health to study the genetics of glaucoma, the genetics

of alcohol sensitivity and the genetics of aggression.

Mackay has authored or co-authored 140 refereed publications and several books — including the principal textbook in quantitative genetics — and book chapters. She has been invited to present papers at numerous conferences, symposia and seminars.

Mackay has also served on a number

Crisis communications (continued) their own crisis management plans.

Chester-Davis organized two days of training at N.C. State for 29 producers, commodity association leaders, Cooperative Extension agents and specialists, faculty members and Fresh Produce Safety Task Force members.

The intensive workshop on crisis preparedness training was designed to help producers and commodity leaders understand how to manage a food-borne illness crisis by developing key messages, anticipating hard questions and keeping news organizations informed.

“Our goal was to walk them through the steps of developing a crisis management plan,” Chester-Davis said.

In addition, a smaller group of association leaders and selected producers, representing a range of the state’s key commodities, participated in on-camera training sessions to prepare them for television interviews in the event of a fresh produce safety crisis. Trainees represented North Carolina’s strawberry, melon, tomato, sweet potato and apple industries.

“If there is a food-borne illness 32 perspectives

outbreak in this state related to fresh produce, news media often want to interview farmers,” Chester-Davis said.

“Through this training, we wanted to prepare growers to work with news media, whether speaking about an outbreak on their farm or as a representative of their industry.”

“The training was very helpful,” said Doug Patterson of Rowan County’s Patterson Farm. “We were able to apply classroom tips to on-camera interviews.

Our interviews were reviewed and feedback was given to help us become more comfortable in dealing with the media.”

The two-day training was funded by the NCDA&CS and a U.S. Department of Agriculture specialty crops grant for sweet potatoes. As a result of the USDA funding, N.C. MarketReady opened the training via live video to other universities across the country, including the University of California-Davis, Louisiana State University, Mississippi State University and the University of Arkansas-Pine Bluff.

— Natalie Hampton

of professional boards and panels. She is the chief executive editor of Genetics Research and is on the editorial board of PloS Genetics.

She also served as associate editor of Genetics for 12 years. She is treasurer of the Genetics Society of America and past president of the American Genetics Association.

Mackay was named American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) fellow in 2003, received the Genetics Society of America Medal in 2004, was named a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2005 and was named fellow of the Royal Society in 2006. She received the University of North Carolina system’s O. Max Gardner Award, its highest faculty award, in 2007. She also became a member of the New York Academy of Sciences in 2007.

Mackay received the Alumni Outstanding Research Award from the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences in 2000 and has served on numerous university search and nominating committees. She has also supervised 11 Ph.D. and three master’s degree recipients at N.C. State. She is a member of AAAS, the Genetics Society of America, Sigma XI and the Society for the Study of Evolution.

A native of Canada, Mackay earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in biology from Dalhousie University and a Ph.D. in genetics from the University of Edinburgh. She came to N.C. State as an associate professor in 1987 and was named full professor in 1993, William Neal Reynolds Professor in 1996 and distinguished university professor in 2006.

— NCSU News Services

noteworthy

ALUMNI Helping veterinarians match medical excellence with business excellence

Courtesy Jeff Barnes

Jeff Barnes works closely with veterinarians and their practices as he provides customized templates for reaching desired business outcomes.

Where can veterinarians go when they need help in realizing their practices’ full business potential? The answer is Synergy Veterinary Consulting, a company founded two years ago in Tampa, Fla., by Jeff Barnes, a 1999 graduate of the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences.

Barnes, who holds a bachelor’s degree in agricultural and extension education, with a minor in business management, describes his company as “a full-service firm that is focused on assisting veterinarians achieve their revenue, compliance, client service and professional/staff development goals.”

Along with veterinary practices, Synergy advises businesses and non-profits.

Its website (www.synergyconsulting. com) offers its client organizations “proven and effective strategies to help your leaders and team members realize corporate and personal success… .

Synergy will help you focus on the daily occurrences that can improve compliance, profitability, employee satisfaction and client satisfaction.”

The firm offers “on-site management consulting, business coaching, public speaking and business development/

client satisfaction training (through an affiliation with the Sandler Sales Institute of Tampa),” says Barnes, who is also a business intermediary licensed in the state of Florida with Legacy Mergers and Acquisitions group. “I focus on developing exit strategies and purchase strategies, as well as the facilitation of any purchase-and-sell agreements involving veterinary practices.”

A typical work day for Barnes might include “all the administrative things that come along with running a business such as phone calls or email,” before he goes to visit veterinary practices. “I spend roughly four to six hours on each visit,” he says. “I typically visit each hospital one to two times per month.”

During these visits, he spends time “with the doctor and his practice manager going over goals and initiatives and tracking progress,” he says. “I also make any necessary adjustments and suggestions in order to grow the business. They are given customized templates and instructions to reinforce desired behaviors and outcomes.”

Barnes brings extensive agricultural business experience to the job. Upon graduating from N.C. State, he went to work for the agricultural chemical and pharmaceutical company Rhone Poulenc (now Aventis CropScience) as a territory manager in central and southeast Michigan. “My job was to sell to ag retailers who serviced commercial farmers,” he says. “Needing a change, I moved back to North Carolina and took a marketing role with John Deere Golf and Turf as a product specialist for greens mowers.”

He then took a position with Merial, Merck’s and Aventis’ animal health division, which gave him the opportunity to work extensively with veterinarians and learn “the intricacies of their business and how different their business is as compared to [that of] human’s physicians,” he says. “I built strong relationships and developed a passion for the industry.”

Within four years, he became director of marketing “at the largest veterinary referral center in the southeast United States,” he says. “I further developed relationships and my business acumen for the industry, and in late 2007, Synergy was birthed and officially opened for business in February 2008.”

Throughout these endeavors, “my education and business background obtained through CALS prepared me very well,” Barnes says.

Barnes, who now resides in Tampa, came to N.C. State from Garysburg, N.C., near Roanoke Rapids.

Among his favorite faculty members were CALS’ Dr. Jim Flowers, now head of the Department of Agricultural and Extension Education, and Dr. Ron Schrimper and Bob Usry, both now retired from the Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics.

What’s next “is just to continue to form strategic alliances and grow my business to where I really focus on mergers and acquisitions,” he says. “My goal is to make sure that clients get the best value for their business upon exiting, as well as helping clients find a great deal when purchasing.”

—Terri Leith

summer 2010 33

‘Scientists in the Classroom’ brings science to elementary school

Marc Hall

Amie Newsome, center, in full bee costume, teaches third-graders at West Smithfield Elementary School about insects as part of a school science activity.

Third-graders at West Smithfield Elementary School were all abuzz recently over the opportunity to take their classroom outdoors to study plants, insects and soils. And N.C. Cooperative Extension agent Amie Newsome dressed in a bee costume was the center of attention, as she shared information about insects with the eager students.

Newsome and four other local extension and conservation professionals were on hand for some serious science lessons, all conducted outdoors, using hands-on learning activities. The Scientists in the Classroom program is like an on-campus field trip to help students learn, according to school parent and program coordinator Paula Woodall.

Woodall is a founding member of the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences Alumni & Friends Society and serves on the group’s Past President’s Council. She is also a member of the N.C. Agricultural Foundation and is a past member of the N.C. State Alumni Board.

Woodall, who earned a bachelor’s degree (’86) in agronomy and a master’s degree (’98) in management from N.C. State, is senior agribusiness development officer for First Citizens Bank & Trust Co. in Smithfield, one of only four such positions in North Carolina. As a parent at the school, Woodall saw that the science teaching program needed help, and she volunteered.

Woodall has organized several science education programs for the school, 34 perspectives

and frequently she has turned to N.C. State faculty members as resources.

N.C. State faculty members who participated in a rainforest program for second graders included Clyde Sorenson, entomology; Sharon Ruth Ramsey, food, bioprocessing and nutrition sciences; and George Place, crop science and the College’s Herpetology Club. Cooperative Extension staff brought in animals Paula Woodall for a first-grade science program. Science programs are also offered during two-week quarterly breaks in the school’s modified yearround schedule.

Principal Chad Jewett said the hands-on science programs have helped in many ways. Since the school began offering more hands-on science, fifthgraders’ end-of-grade science test scores have improved by 42 percent.

“Teachers keep asking for hands-on learning, and we’ve always turned to N.C. State to get it,” Jewett said. “This is a very beneficial way for kids to learn.

These programs help kids to experience things they might never experience otherwise.”

Johnston County’s Extension Director Bryant Spivey said the county’s Extension agents are frequently involved in school programs. On the day of the

West Smithfield program, Agriculture Agent Tim Britton was at nearby Smithfield-Selma High School conducting a program on tractor safety. 4-H Extension Agent Lori McBryde reaches more than 1,000 local elementary school students through the 4-H embryology program each year.

At the West Smithfield Elementary School program, Horticulture Extension Agent Shawn Banks showed students the impact that essentials like sunlight, nutrients and water have on plant health. He showed students how plants deprived of these growth essentials are not as strong and healthy as those that are exposed.

Representatives of the local Natural Resource Conservation Service were also on hand to offer lessons. James Massey, soil and water conservation district director, demonstrated the use of an auger to reveal the different layers of sedimentation below the soil’s surface.

Students took turns turning the auger until the core sample was obtained.

Eddie Humphrey, natural resource conservationist, led students as they acted out the roles of different types of soil in a pot and how they interact with water.

And Jerry Raynor, district conservationist with USDA- NCRS and CALS Alumni & Friends Society board member, led students in mixing soil, water and alum in plastic bottles so they could see over time how layers of sediment separated in the bottles. The classes danced vigorously to shake up the bottles, creating a chocolate milk-like liquid.

Though the students enjoyed the day, each activity was designed to teach specific lessons. Newsome’s insect program taught students how bees and insects pollinate flowers, the importance of pollination, and the pros and cons of insects found in the soil and on plants.

Connecting the activities to the state’s education goals helps ensure that students learn the science lessons intended for their grade level, Woodall said.

—Natalie Hampton

Agriculture teacher Jodi Riedel named N.C. Environmental Educator of the Year Jodi Riedel (right) and students Alec Check and Elizabeth Campbell prepare a colorful display for the plant sale at Wakefield High, where Riedel endeavors to raise students’ understanding of and appreciation for agriculture.

Becky Kirkland

Jodi Riedel, a College of Agriculture and Life Sciences alumna and Wakefield High School agriculture and horticulture teacher, has received North Carolina’s highest honor for environmental education, the Environmental Educator of the Year Award bestowed by the N.C. Wildlife Federation.

Riedel will be honored at the 47th annual Governor’s Conservation Achievement Awards banquet at a hotel near the Raleigh-Durham International Airport in September.

Riedel began her teaching career eight years ago at Wakefield in Wake County, after earning a bachelor’s degree in horticulture from Michigan State University and her master’s in agricultural and extension education from N.C. State.

As part of her thesis project under Drs. Jim Flowers, Gary Moore and Elizabeth Wilson, Riedel found urban agricultural literacy to be lacking, and she has focused her teaching career at least in part on trying to raise students’ understanding of and appreciation for agriculture.

Riedel gained such appreciation while growing up in Hastings, Mich., a blue-collar town where she lived on an exotic animal farm that her family operated as a hobby. She says her mother was her role model for teaching, presenting her with tangible lessons about the natural environment that surrounded her.

At Wakefield, Riedel — who calls herself a “tree hugger” — incorporates hands-on learning that takes advantage of the school’s setting on a former dairy farm surrounded by wooded and wetland areas. She manages a 1,800square-foot greenhouse, multiple gardens — including an organic vegetable garden — and a 150-member FFA club.

Riedel incorporates into her classes a forestry curriculum she wrote when she took part in N.C. State University’s Kenan Fellows Program. She has used the curriculum — cited as one of the reasons she won the Environmental Educator award — with 700 of her students. She’s also trained dozens of other teachers

throughout the state to incorporate the curriculum in their science, agriculture and horticulture classes.

Riedel designed the guide to help her students explore the value of North Carolina’s forestry industry, learn skills used in the industry and find out about forest ecology, tree identification, forestry careers and sustainable forestry practices.

The curriculum informs students of the role that trees play in their lives by serving as the source for newspapers, books, magazines, tissues, paper towels, housing materials, furniture, desks, fences, boxes, and other wood products.

It also points out that trees provide ingredients for such products as cosmetics and acne medications.

The lessons also cover the environmental benefits of having a forestry industry. Riedel notes that one acre of trees consumes the amount of carbon dioxide equal to what is produced by driving a car for 26,000 miles and produces enough oxygen for 18 people to breathe for one year.

Through the lessons, Riedel says that students start to sort out fact from fiction when it comes to the criticism they’ve heard about clear-cutting and other forestry practices.

“Students are not apathetic. This generation of kids is doing more for the

environment than my generation did — or your generation,” she said. “And the more informed they are, the more passionate they are — and the more able they are to make informed choices.”

Riedel wrote the five-lesson guide while she was a Kenan Fellow from 2006 to 2008. The prestigious Kenan program promotes teacher leadership, addresses teacher retention and advances K-12 science, technology and mathematics education. The fellows are competitively selected public school teachers from diverse disciplines.

As part of the fellowship, Riedel studied in Chile and Asheville. Her mentor for the project was Dr. Susan Moore, extension assistant professor and director of the Forestry and Environmental Outreach Program in N.C. State’s College of Natural Resources. She also got help from the Weyerhaeuser Co.; Renee Strnad, coordinator of N.C. Cooperative Extension’s Project Learning Tree; and the N.C. Forestry Association’s Director of Education Jennifer Grantham.

Riedel credits N.C. State University for helping her and her students succeed.

Several of her students have gone on to study in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences and its Agricultural Institute, and she’s grown new teaching alliances with student teachers she’s mentored through N.C. State’s Agricultural and Extension Education program. Those teachers share, she says, her passion for innovative education and for agriculture.

“I love agriculture,” she says, “and I’m passionate about making people aware of its importance in our everyday lives.”

— Dee Shore

summer 2010 35

noteworthy

GIVING

‘All in the golden afternoon’ at the 2010 Arb Gala

Terri Leith

Becky Kirkland

Mad Hatter and Alice acquire new faces (far left), while a young visitor sways to the sounds of the Southern String Band.

36 perspectives

Looking-Glass denizens as the hookahsmoking Caterpillar and Tweedledee and Tweedledum. The grassy paths winding through the arb’s gardens took on the whimsical ambiance: One almost expected a Cheshire Cat to appear in a tree in the Winter Garden or to hear the clinking of teacups from the Mad

Becky Kirkland

It’s not unusual for guests at the JC Raulston Arboretum’s annual Gala in the Garden to feel they’ve been transported to an enchanted world of botanical beauty. But this year, N.C. State’s nationally renowned gardens gave the gala visitors an adventure in the kaleidoscopically colorful world created by Lewis Carroll in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass.

“Gala in Wonderland” was the theme of the May 2 fund-raising event at the JCRA. And it was a day so bright and balmy and busy that it was worthy of Carroll’s “golden afternoon” description of the 1862 excursion that inspired his Alice stories. Costumed players portraying Alice, Mad Hatter, White Rabbit, Queen of Hearts and the White Queen mingled among guests, who also were delighted by the themed décor, including life-size illustration reproductions of such Wonderland and

Hatter and March Hare pouring in the White Garden gazebo.

When not enjoying all the through-the rabbithole touches – including an opportunity to put faces in cutouts and pose as Wonderland characters – guests enjoyed gourmet food and browsed silent auction tents where everything from plants and trees to objets d’art to jewelry to wine to Wolfpack memorabilia were available for bid. Those tents also offered a shady respite from the unseasonable mid-90s temperatures.

In the evening guests attended a reception and program at the arboretum’s McSwain Education Center, where the center’s namesake and benefactor, Ms. Ruby Chancellor Randy Woodson (left) joins CALS Dean Johnny Wynne on the path to the arb gala.

Terri Leith

Terri Leith

Becky Kirkland

Becky Kirkland

The silent auction tents offered a shady respite from the heat along with tempting items for bid.

Sporting mad and colorful hats were honorary event co-chairs Jerry and Nina Jackson (top), garden guests (center) and gala volunteers.

McSwain, was among those enjoying an array of desserts, including N.C. State ice cream. Dr. Johnny Wynne, dean of the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, opened the program by thanking the “many dedicated volunteers whose efforts made the gala a truly wonderland experience. We are very fortunate to have many devoted and talented donors and friends who give of their time and energy. And the 2010 Gala event chair, Sylvia Redwine, is a perfect example of this kind of friend.”

Wynne then introduced Dr. Randy Woodson, new chancellor of N.C. State University, and his wife, Susan, attending their first arb gala.

Woodson said he particularly enjoyed the event because “my background is horticultural science, in fact,

ornamental horticulture.” He then revealed that he had visited the arboretum in December 2009, and at that time, he told his wife, “I’ve got to take you to see one of the best university arboreta in the country.”

The 10.5-acre JC Raulston Arboretum has one of the largest and most diverse collections of landscape plants adapted for landscape use in the Southeast. Plant collections include more than 5,000 total species and/or cultivars of annuals, perennials, bulbs, vines, groundcovers, shrubs and trees from more than 50 different countries.

Maintained by N.C. State students, faculty members, volunteers and staff members, the Arboretum is named in honor of its late director, Dr. J.C. Raulston, who founded it in 1976.

“I know what a university arboretum means to the university and the community,” Woodson said. “It is an honor to be with you today and be a part of this great university and this very special arboretum.”

Woodson introduced the gala’s honorary co-chairs, Jerry Jackson, an N.C. State textiles alumnus, and Nina Jackson, an artist. The Jacksons are longtime supporters of the arboretum and the Arts N.C. State program, as well as leading benefactors of the renovation of Frank Thompson Hall. Jerry is also an officer on the JCRA board of advisers.

Woodson and Wynne presented the Jacksons and Redwine (in absentia) each a Lasting Impressions miniature trough garden.

Dr. Ted Bilderback, JCRA director, then paid tribute to some special support of the arboretum, including the gifts of CALS horticulture alumni Mitzi Hole and Michael Stallings in support of the arb’s new Lath House, the plan of which was donated by designer Frank Harmon; and the Charles T. Larus will bequest that donated $279,000 to create the Charles T. and Ethel T. Larus Endowment for the JC Raulston Arboretum and $126,000 to be used for arboretum master plan areas under construction.

He then noted the April 23 passing of Dr. Donald Moreland, whose donation in memory of his late wife, Verdie Moreland, made possible the recent renovations in the arb’s Japanese Garden.

Moreland, a 43-year N.C. State plant physiologist specializing in weed control, and his wife also endowed a Caldwell Fellows Scholarship in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences and the N. C. State Alumni Association; established the Donald Moreland Endowed Graduate Fellowship to fund graduate education and research in the College of Natural Resources; and created facility, staff and book endowments in the university libraries, as well as a graduate fellowship in the College of Engineering.

— Terri Leith

summer 2010 37

A Family Affair: How a young couple’s bequests create a legacy of giving for their children It’s never too early to plan for the future, says Rachel Monteverdi.

At 41, she already has amassed a lifetime of experience in public service, and she wants that legacy to thrive long after she’s gone. Monteverdi, a Cooperative Extension agent in Warren County, and her husband, Dr. Bob Monteverdi, recently created their will, establishing 10 bequests to a number of different nonprofit organizations, including two endowments for North Carolina Cooperative Extension.

Each of the couple’s children is connected to the individual charities in some way, whether through an interest in construction (Habitat for Humanity) or a long-time involvement in the Boy Scouts of America. And each child is

expected to serve those organizations in some way.

“We structured these gifts in a way that encourages our kids to get involved, to continue philanthropy, to ante up, not only in physical labor and energy but also in dollars,” Monteverdi says. “We pray that they will be successful in their worlds and do good things.”

The “Monteverdi Pay It Forward 4-H Scholarship Endowment” will create scholarships to any two- or four-year institution in the United States for current or former 4-H’ers from Durham or Wake counties. And income from the “Monteverdi Pay It Forward Program Endowment” will be used to support creative grant proposals in the areas of education, the environment, health, hu-

man services, parenting, women’s issues and the elderly in a number of North Carolina counties.

“My heart lies in Cooperative Extension,” Monteverdi says. With her husband’s and children’s tremendous support, this legacy of giving truly has become a family affair.

— Suzanne Stanard

Mark Dearmon

The North Carolina 4-H Museum and History Center moved a step closer this spring to becoming reality, thanks to two very special gifts.

The North Carolina Peanut Growers Association Inc. gave $100,000 to name the front hall of the museum, housed in the famous “House CALS Dean Johnny Wynne (left) and Dr. Marshall Stewart, that Peanuts Built,” state 4-H leader, thank Juanita Hudson, whose family conwhich was con- tributed the center’s courtyard and gardens. structed in 1939 by Rudolph Carl Ellis.

The Peanut Growers Front Hall Ellis parlayed his 4-H peanut project – the largest room in the house – will into a major entrepreneurial venture, Elfeature exhibits on Ellis’ life and work, lis Fancy Peanuts, and used the proceeds including his and other historic peanut to buy his tenant farm family 29 acres farmers’ methods of cultivation, processof their own and to build a new house ing and marketing. It also will spotlight on the land. Later donated to 4-H by modern methods of peanut production Ellis’ daughter, Dr. Sharon Elis Joyner, and nutritional information. the “House that Peanuts Built” now “With this gift, we are ensuring serves as the centerpiece of the N.C. 4-H that the story of 4-H and peanuts is Museum and History Center, located at told to countless visitors,” said Bob Millstone 4-H Camp in Ellerbe.

Sutter, executive director of the North 38 perspectives

Courtesy Rachel Monteverdi

Peanut Growers, Hudsons make substantial gifts to 4-H Museum and History Center Bequests made by the Monteverdis (above) will benefit Cooperative Extension, as well as a number of nonprofit organizations.

Carolina Peanut Growers Association.

“We’ve always supported 4-H and are proud of that relationship. Supporting the museum in this way enhances the educational mission of both 4-H and the peanut growers.”

The “House that Peanuts Built” is one of four key elements of the planned museum and history center complex.

There also will be a 4-H History Center, the Farm Bureau Old-Fashioned Farm Shop and beautiful new outdoor space, made possible by a recent gift from the family of Juanita and Mack Hudson.

The Juanita Ogburn Hudson and Mack Hudson 4-H Courtyard and Gardens are named for a family whose loyalty to 4-H and its ideals is unwavering after nearly seven decades.

The courtyard and four surrounding gardens will be designed to represent (continued next page)

Sweet potato campaign charges toward $1.3 million goal In the 1940s a small group of forwardthinking farmers planted the first acres of certified sweet potato varieties in North Carolina at the urging of horticultural research and Extension faculty from N.C. State University.

Sixty years later, the state’s sweet potato industry leads the United States, producing nearly 40 percent of the nation’s supply. Through the years, the partnership between farmers and university faculty has continued to fuel innovation in plant varieties, production and storage methods.

Today, leaders in the North Carolina SweetPotato Commission are spearheading a campaign to ensure the future of this productive partnership.

The North Carolina SweetPotato Commission Campaign for Excellence has raised $710,000 to date, more than half of its $1.3 million goal. A new kind

of collaboration between the commission and the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, the campaign aims to raise funds for investment in the Henry M. Covington Endowment for Excellence in Sweet Potato Research and Extension.

Through competitive grants directed by the board of the N.C. SweetPotato Commission, the Covington Endowment provides perpetual funding for N.C. State research and Extension that supports the sweet potato industry.

Kendall Hill, a Lenoir County farmer and chair of the campaign, said every donation lightens the burden of the N.C. SweetPotato Commission, which traditionally has funded research. Other members of the campaign committee include Johnny Barnes, Jimmy Burch Sr., David Godwin, Sue Johnson-Langdon, Thomas Joyner, Tom Monaco, Stewart Precythe, Dewey Scott and George Wooten.

History Center (continued) head, heart, hands and health. Nearby agricultural plots will display heritage farm techniques.

At the endowment signing ceremony, Kent Hudson, son of Juanita and Mack Hudson, said, “By making this gift in our parents’ name, we hope to continue a tradition of generosity that they instilled in us very early on.”

Dr. Marshall Stewart, state 4-H program leader, describes the courtyard and gardens as the “heart” of the museum and history center complex.

“New generations of 4-H’ers will walk among the gardens and take renewed inspiration from the life of the remarkable people honored here,” Stewart said. “Each day, the flags of 4-H, the state, and nation will be raised and lowered with reverence as a reminder of the duty each of us owes to our club, community and country, a responsibility ever close to the hearts of Juanita and Mack Hudson.”

Inspired by a visit from legendary home demonstrator Jane McKimmon in the 1930s, Juanita Hudson took 4-H by storm, eventually leading her club to win North Carolina’s “Feed a Fighter” contest during World War II. This feat

caught the attention of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who invited Hudson to christen a warship built by 4-H’ers in North Carolina, the USS Tyrrell, on July 10, 1944.

Hudson’s experience in 4-H laid the foundation for a successful career in interior design. She remains an active leader and supporter of 4-H and Extension and Community Association clubs. She and Mack, her husband of 60 years, live in Coats on their family home place.

“We are so grateful for the generosity of the North Carolina Peanut Growers Association and the Hudson family,” Stewart said. “These gifts are critical to our effort to complete the North Carolina 4-H Museum and History Center, which will bring to life the stories of outstanding 4-H’ers, like Rudolph Carl Ellis and Juanita Hudson, who helped change the course of history.”

These gifts are part of a $4.5 million fund-raising effort to construct the North Carolina 4-H Museum and History Center complex.

— Suzanne Stanard and Brad Dixon For more information: http://www.ces.ncsu. edu/depts/fourh/donors/museum.html.

“I came to N.C. State in 1957 and saw firsthand how hard Dr. Covington and other university faculty worked for the sweet potato industry,” Hill said. “This is why I am so enthused and why we are working so hard to build this endowment.

By 2011 when Mrs. Covington comes for her visit, we hope to exceed the goal we’ve set for this campaign.”

In a recent ceremony at the N.C. State University Club, the College celebrated the signing of several endowments to support the campaign: • Burch Farms Endowment for Excellence in Sweet Potato Research and Extension • Ham Farms and Produce Company Endowment for Excellence in Sweet Potato Research and Extension • Daniel Franklin Kornegay Family Endowment for Excellence in Sweet Potato Research and Extension • Henry F. Chancy Jr. and Laurie Barnes Chancy Endowment for Excellence in Sweet Potato Research and Extension • Hershel M. and Agnes S. Williams Endowment for Excellence in Sweet Potato Research and Extension • Hill Top Farm Service Center Endowment for Excellence in Sweet Potato Research and Extension • Warren Farming Partnership Endowment for Excellence in Sweet Potato Research and Extension Additionally, George Wooten of Wayne E. Bailey Produce Company Inc. has committed to the creation of an endowment in support of the initiative.

Also at the event, two donors signed commitments for major gifts to the campaign: David Morris, on behalf of AgCarolina Financial, and Dr. Ken Pecota, in a personal gift.

“The North Carolina SweetPotato Commission and its members have once again taken on a leadership role among the state’s commodity groups,” said Dr. Tom Monaco, College coordinator of commodity relations. “The Commission has a history of providing exceptional (continued next page)

summer 2010 39

Jones professorship at Kannapolis established with $1 million endowment in College David Murdock (center) shows his appreciation to Ruby and Ben Jones for their gift to the David H. Murdock Research Institute, as well as for their funding a CALS professorship, at the Kannapolis research campus.

Justin Moore

Ben and Ruby Jones of Kannapolis are committed to improving human health.

They’re also eager to support an initiative they believe will strengthen their local community.

Those are just a couple of the reasons why the couple recently created a $1 million endowment in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences that will establish a professorship at the Plants for Human Health Institute on the North Carolina Research Campus in Kannapolis.

The Ben and Ruby Jones Distinguished Professorship will support the work of a researcher investigating diseases like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. The UNC system will match that amount with $500,000 to invest $1.5 million into the endowed professorship.

The couple also gave a separate $1 million gift to the David H. Murdock Research Institute that will fund research on neurological diseases.

“I can’t say enough how grateful we are for the generosity and vision of Ben and Ruby Jones,” said Dr. Johnny Wynne, dean of the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. “This endowed professorship gives the College the opportunity to find a world-class scientist to further our research on human health.”

Ben Jones graduated from the CALS

Dave Caldwell

New foundation launched at joint Extension foundations event

T

he North Carolina Cooperative Extension Foundation, the 4-H Development Fund and the Family and Consumer Sciences Foundation have welcomed a fourth foundation to the Extension family. The North Carolina Extension and Community Association (ECA) Foundation was officially launched April 22 at the foundations’ annual joint meeting. As part of the ceremonies, longtime Extension home economist Ada B. Dalla-Pozza was honored as an ECA Foundation lifetime board member. Shown unveiling the ECA foundation logo above are Dalla-Pozza, Maurene Rickards of CALS Advancement and Sylvia Churchwell, president of the new foundation.

40 perspectives

Department of Agronomy (now Crop Science) in 1947 and bought a farm in Cabarrus County that same year. After cultivating the farm for more than 50 years, he sold it in 2006. Jones also was the wastewater treatment plant supervisor for Cannon Mills from 1956 to 1985.

— Suzanne Stanard

Sweet potato (continued) support for sweet potato research and extension programs. However, the creation of the Campaign for Excellence through the commitment of major gifts out of Commission members’ own pockets is unprecedented.”

The earned interest on the Covington Endowment eventually will be disbursed to support sweet potato research and Extension activities across various disciplines in the College. Faculty and staff are hard at work in a number of areas, including breeding, production, seed micropropagation, post-harvest curing, pest management and environmental stewardship.

Campaign for Excellence endowment founders are Wayne E. Bailey Produce Co., Carson Barnes, Johnny and Lisa Barnes, Burch Farms LLC, Henry and Laurie Chancy, David and Barbara Godwin, Kendall Hill, Hill Top Farm Service Center, Kornegay Farms, Mike Godwin Farms Inc., Scott Farms Inc., Vick Family Farms, Warren Farming Partnership, and the Hershel and Agnes Williams Family.

— Suzanne Stanard

We want YOU … at CALS Tailgate 2010!

Come help celebrate the CALS Tailgate tradition! silent auction that • Exciting raises funds for the CALS

Alumni & Friends scholarship endowment

— a Live Bluegrass • Sassafras Band all-you-can-eat catered • An BBQ meal from McCall’s from various CALS • Exhibits departments State pep band and Mr. • N.C. and Ms. Wuf to start a pep rally and plenty more!

NC State’s College of Agriculture and Life Sciences will hold its 19th annual CALS Alumni & Friends Society Tailgate on Saturday, Sept. 4, 2010, at Dorton Arena from 1 - 5 p.m., in conjunction with the N.C. State versus Western Carolina football game, which kicks off at 6 p.m.

If you would like more information about the event or how to get involved with Tailgate 2010, please contact Nicole Franklin at 919.515.7222 or calsalumni@ncsu.edu.

We hope you will join us as we

Celebrate the Tradition!

Registration now OPEN! Go to www.cals.ncsu.edu/alumni to register or for more information.

SAVE THE DATE FOR TAILGATE 2010!

See and hear from some of CALS’ best and brightest!

Go online to Student Perspectives http://www.cals.ncsu. edu/agcomm/magazine/student-perspectives.html.

That’s where you’ll find slideshows with audio narration from the students themselves.

Student Perspectives — Stories in sound and images

Among currently featured students are: Nyeema Harris, Ph.D. student in fisheries and wildlife, who earned the Emerging Conservation Leader Award from the Philadelphia Zoo. Ellen Orabone (left), a May graduate in food science, who has traveled the world doing research on hunger and poverty.

Kirk Smith, a senior in food science and Art to Wear design winner.

Nathan Bihlmeyer, biochemistry major, who recently received the Goldwater Scholarship.

Natalie Cooke, a senior majoring in biochemistry and nutrition sciences, who is part of a nutrition education program called A PACKED Kitchen.

PERSPECTIVES College of Agriculture and Life Sciences Campus Box 7603 North Carolina State University Raleigh, NC 27695-7603

NONPROFIT ORG. U.S. POSTAGE PAID RALEIGH, NC PERMIT #2353

Ground-breaking Research Dr. Cary Rivard inspects his ideal tomato plants, products of a research program that is jump-starting the use of tomato grafting as a propagation method in the United States. (Story, page 26)

Becky Kirkland