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As the U.S. farming industry evolves, Auburn University’s College of Agriculture, the Alabama Cooperative Extension Service and related programs may have to change too. Across the nation, land-grant institutions are reevaluating their missions to meet the demands of the 21st century.
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By David Morrison
Photos by Jeff Etheridge
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Barret Stephenson ’05 and dog Fudge sniff out new business opportunities, including maintaining the family farm as a hunting ground for game.
at “how to get more out of an acre” will evolve into courses designed to teach students and the public how to protect the environment, ensure a nutritious food supply, exploit markets for new products such as alternative fuels, take better advantage of new technology, and survive as entrepreneurs and businesspeople in a global economy.
I f Barret Stephenson ’05 regrets anything about his AU College of Agriculture education, it’s his absence during a critical time in the training of his chocolate Lab, Fudge. Instead of becoming a first-class “duck dog,” Fudge fell under the tutelage of Stephenson’s mother, Freida ’76, who made him a pet. Although Stephenson says his non-hunting mom occasionally will venture into the duck blind on cold gray mornings with him and his brother Chance, an AU freshman horticulture major, she remains, like Fudge, primarily an observer. What she sees, though, is the evolution of Alabama agriculture and the changing nature of U.S. farming. The new ways in which we work the land and raise livestock, along with the drastically decreasing percentage of students who elect to major in agriculture, presage dramatic changes for AU and other land-grant institutions, which must allocate diminishing resources to continue meeting their responsibilities to educate students and provide services to the public. That means AU and its university peers are less likely to focus on “plows, cows and sows,” as agriculture administrators jokingly refer to their curricula. Instead, says AU agronomy professor and extension specialist Charles Mitchell, programs generally aimed
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Stephenson, part of AU’s most recent crop of agriculture graduates, paid attention in class. Although his grandfather’s livelihood depended on cotton and peanuts from the rich Alabama black belt, the family today makes its living renting self-storage mini warehouses in Eufaula. On the 475-acre family farm in Barbour and Hen r y cou nt ies, t he Ste phensons will plant random rows of corn near woodlands thick with undergrowth, in the muddy basins of drained ponds, and in oddly shaped fields, all to attract quail and other game. They’ll plant soybeans and peanuts for deer to gobble, ingesting protein that promotes antler growth. Stephenson, whose country-boy manner cloaks the intensity of a Wall Street investment banker, expatiates on the relative value of other “crops”—beggar lice, various grasses and thick stands of pines—to different game species. On a cold afternoon, with the moon as pale as a watermark against the bright blue sky, the 23year-old scratches the farm’s rich soil, examining peanut-like chufa grass root pods, a delicacy for wild turkeys. This spot will become a veritable “turkey mecca,” he says, where hunters might pay $400 each for a chance to shoot one tom during the spring season. People will pay “$75 a gun” to shoot doves, $300 for an afternoon quail hunt or morning duck shoot, $200 to try for those well-nourished deer antlers. With the ink not quite dry on his agricultural business diploma, Stephenson argues convincingly that, through proper management and innovation, the farm can pay off handsomely. In a state where cotton once was king, husbanding farmland for recreation is part of a $1.6 billion hunting and fishing industry. “If I wanted to make a living in row crops, I shouldn’t have studied agricultural economics at Auburn,” he says.
At AU, Jason Crawley ’98 studied ways to improve crop yields and streamline his farm’s business operations.
fficiently plowing ahead South of Dothan on County Road 33, the name of a third-generation Houston County farmer is emblazoned like billboard advertisements on cotton trailers. Jason Crowley ’98, manages nearly 1,200 acres with well-planned rotations of cotton, peanuts, oats, grasses and cover crops—all with just one helper. “It gets wooly,” he says, “but we can manage it.” At Auburn, he studied techniques for improving crop yields and running an efficient business. Farm efficiency, however, often eliminates jobs. Crowley, 30, rents land from others who got out of the farming business, whether to retire for good or
to find their fortunes elsewhere. He’d like to streamline his farm’s operations even more, but can’t yet afford to equip his giant John Deere tractor with a computer-based system that uses global positioning technology to enable the great machine to plow without him at the wheel. Such a piece of equipment, he says, would allow him to divert his attention to other necessary chores. “There’s never a shortage of things to do,” says Crowley, “just a shortage of time.” Across the road from his late grandfather’s house, Crowley surveys the three dozen mixed-breed cows he hopes will become another income-producing activity of the farm, between crop plantings on the fallow grasscovered fields. “I still have a lot to learn about cows and calves,” he says. “But I’ve also learned that farming will pull you in directions you didn’t think you’d ever go.”
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isappearing farms Serious questions exist about how the United States will continue feeding its 400 million people in the future. Mushrooming cities and suburbs continue to swallow undeveloped farmland. Americans still flee rural areas for lack of work, and the average age of those who stay in the country inches upward. The nation buys more and more agricultural products abroad, giving rise to speculation that, for the next generation, food will become the geopolitical equivalent of oil. With the help of AU and other land-grant institutions, productivity per acre has increased: One machine picks more cotton in a day than 20 migrant workers can pick in a week; millions of farm acres have been converted to timber; poultry production is booming. There’s even a fledgling tourism industry around farming that is helping landowners and workers make a living, as evidenced by the pumpkin and Christmas tree farms, apple warehouses and petting zoos that now dot the rural landscape. But, as AU rural sociology professor Connor Bailey intones, change doesn’t happen without consequences. When pine trees became the new commodity for many smaller farmers, jobs in rural areas began to evaporate because the conifer’s
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two-decade growing season no longer required annual harvesting. Likewise, many Alabama farmers abandoned crops for more profitable poultry production, which has the unfortunate side effect of creating environmentally hazardous waste. Land-grant institutions traditionally have played pivotal roles in making chicken salad out of challenging socioeconomic situations. During the Civil War, Congress appropriated huge chunks of land for states to use to build higher education institutions for agricultural and mechanical disciplines. The government required land-grant institutions to maintain applied research programs and offer direct help to farmers. For its part, AU has conducted research through the Alabama Agricultural Experiment Station and community outreach through the Alabama Cooperative Extension System since 1872. Extension agents have provided a wide range of services, from advising farmers on fertilizers and pesticides to installing running water in homes. Extension personnel today serve broader constituencies in urban and suburban communities.
aking agriculture attractive Just over a century ago, more than half—55 percent—of Auburn’s student body studied agriculture. When Richard Guthrie ’62, dean of the College of Agriculture, was an undergraduate, ag majors still dominated the student body. Fast forward to today: The number of students studying agriculture now totals about 1,100, a mere 4.7 percent of the university’s enrollment. Of the nearly 3,400 degrees the university awarded last year, only 184 were from agriculture-related programs.
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AU rural sociology professor Conner Bailey and doctoral student Laura Robinson seek solutions to the undesirable social consequences of shifting agricultural economics.
and professional disciplines. Only about 5 percent of AU agriculture graduates today actually go to work on farms, says Bill Hardy, associate dean of the AU College of Agriculture. About 40 percent pursue postgraduate degrees in other fields. The new faces of agriculture education include Kellie Segrest ’05, who spent her childhood playing in cotton trailers and riding tractors as her father and his brothers worked their 2,700 acres of cotton and peanuts in Macon County. After obtaining a bachelor’s degree in agricultural economics, Segrest now attends law school at Faulkner University in Montgomery. And then there’s Scott Bolton ’97, who studied agriculture before entering Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore. He plans to return to Montgomery to practice radiology. “A good education is a good education,” whether one stays in one’s undergraduate field or not, he says.
Those numbers aren’t reason enough to sell the farm—but AU administrators are considering ways to make the College of Agriculture more relevant to future generations. This spring, the university board of trustees will consider a plan for revamping Auburn’s approach to agriculture. Preliminary details of the proposal already have generated controversy among some faculty, but there’s general agreement: Change is necessary for the discipline’s future success. Funding is a critical issue. Universities are competing for government and private dollars, particularly those earmarked for research projects, and, not surprisingly, the most celebrated research institutions tend to grab bigger shares. “There is,” AU Provost John Heilman told university leaders last fall, “a sense of urgency for doing this.” As the discipline struggles to attract Generation Y, changes may include blending programs such as environmental sciences, nutrition and land use, or creating disciplinary niches such as bakery science or golf course management. Nationally, land-grant universities now are promoting the new science- and research-laden agriculture curricula as a strong foundation for post-graduate work in law, medicine
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The Bearden sisters grew up on a Maplesville farm, but 20-year-old Rachel (riding piggyback) studies animal science while Rebecca, 23, majors in agricultural communications and wildlife sciences.
rose is a rose Southeast of Montgomery on Ala. 110, stock tanks and herds of thoroughbred cattle form picturesque backgrounds for signs advertising 12-acre “estates” among the rolling grasslands and trees draped with Spanish moss. Fancy fenced pastures, tennis courts and swimming pools coexist with ancient stone cisterns, brick silos and chimney ruins. Luxury subdivisions with homes in the hundreds of thousands are a long way from the clapboard farmhouse of yesteryear, but they’re pivotal to Alabama’s economy and, ironically, its agriculture industry. The wealthy, after all, buy shrubbery and other ornamental plants for their big yards, hire gardeners and lawn services, and shop at farmer’s markets for the freshest organic produce. For a number of AU agriculture alumni, the folks who are making money in the service and industrial sectors represent a customer base that’s ripe for the picking. Lamar Thompson ’73, president and CEO of CCC Associates in Montgomery, and Bill Cook ’73, vice president of the multinational company’s Southern Growers wholesale plant and shrubbery distribution business, talk about that kind of opportunity as they stroll through a massive greenhouse ablaze with red poinsettias. They insist that institutions such as AU and other land-grants can best meet their obligations to farmers and agribusiness by helping them creatively mine new markets. About 10 percent of the company’s business is composed of growing and selling ornamental plants and shrubbery to mom-and-pop garden stores and large national retail chains. But the company generates most of its revenues through a division that manufactures home décor, ranging from silk flowers to pre-lighted artificial Christmas trees. To an extent, the company’s history symbolizes how the agriculture industry has evolved in the past half century. Thompson’s father, J.L. ’46, and a partner started the business as a flower shop in 1950, when ornamental horticulture was a new field at Auburn. Later, the company became an impressive example of “vertical integration,” opening a wholesale florist operation, then an artificial-flower import business and a manufacturing plant. The company now employs about 400 people domestically and 5,000 in Asia.
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Former AU classmates Lamar Thompson and Bill Cook say AU must spawn creative thinkers to secure the future of agribusiness.
“J.L. Thompson was first to make botanically correct plastic flowers,” says Smith. “Because of his horticulture background, he knew what a real rose was supposed to look like, and to him, a rose is a rose, even if it’s plastic.”
“We wanted the finished product to have more the feeling of a conservatory, like the National Arboretum in Washington, rather than a garden center in Montgomery,” says Thompson.
Still, change is the one constant in business, and Lamar Thompson says the company has begun branching out again to build revenues. The concept, Southern Homes & Gardens, is an upscale retail chain they feel is a step above a warehousetype garden center. With stylish Belgian-built greenhouses instead of more utilitarian buildings as an enticement, Southern Growers is betting that consumers and specialty retailers will appreciate better quality and service, even if it costs more.
istorical value Jerry Baker, a part-time preacher, took over 250 acres of his family farm in Shelby County in 1977. His brother, Larry ’66, tried his hand, but left to go to medical school and now practices in Jasper. The land’s been in the family since their great-grandfather bought it in the late 1800s. Their 97-year-old father, Earl, has picked cotton here every year since he was a toddler. He lives in a house with a stone chimney built more than a century ago.
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There’s history here, and Jerry Baker sees that as his greatest asset. Baker’s early attempt at traditional farming ended in financial disaster that, like a biblical plague, took him seven years to overcome. He then vowed to forestall future disaster by turning the farm into a rural “experience.” Baker farm has become perhaps the most visible attraction in the blink-and-you-miss-it town of Harpersville. The Baker farm now grows tourists as well as crops: Visitors soon will be able to walk through a replica of a Native American village, and there’s already been a wedding under the brush arbor. Come fall, he’ll sell about 1,200 Christmas trees and thousands of pumpkins from a 22acre patch to people who pay to pick or chop their own. Hundreds of schoolchildren will wander through a cornfield maze, go on hayrides and eat sack lunches in the old barn loft. Baker hosts living-history festivals, Civil War reenactments, antique tractor shows and other events that draw as many as 6,000 people a weekend. Jerry Baker of Harpersville is harvesting ideas he believes will drive his farming business as time goes on.
“We want people to feel like this is as much their farm as ours,” he says. “And it is, really. It’s part of their history too.”
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Photography
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AU laun ches larges t fund raisin g cam paig ne ver
By David Morrison
In February, 150 years from the institution’s founding as a men’s liberal-arts college, Auburn University launched t he public phase of t he la rgest comprehensive campaign in the school’s history. The goal: to raise $500 million for programs to enhance the university’s national reputation and position it to f ulf i ll its mission in coming decades. Nursing major Annica Potts, with daughter Jada, owes her AU education to two brothers whose interest in Icee offered them the means to give. Auburn Magazine
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Christopher B. Roberts
The “It Begins at Auburn” campaign delivered 10, 20 and 30 years ago? How can we faster than higher-education spending, accordseeks $290 million to endow faculty posi-
perpetuate the Auburn spirit?”
The dawn of the 21st century represents both tions, scholarships and programs; $124 opportune and challenging times for fundraismillion for buildings and other capital im- ing, experts say. On the one hand, state governprovements; and the balance for outreach, ments, including Alabama, recently have increased their financial support for public colleges research and operations. The university al- and universities. But for years prior, legislators ready has accrued more than $300 million throughout the country systematically reduced the higher-education portion of their state fundtoward the goal. ing pies. Now governments must address a new “This campaign is about students,” says Bob potentially budget-busting situation: Millions of McGinnis, AU’s vice president for development. baby boomers are reaching retirement age and “How can we give students in today’s environ- becoming eligible for health care assistance. ment the kind of strong education that Auburn State Medicaid funding will continue to grow Winter 2006
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ing to the San Jose, Calif.-based National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education.
The good news is that boomers, America’s most affluent generation, are generous and willing to contribute to causes and institutions with which they identify, reports the Boston College Center for Wealth and Philanthropy. A significant portion of people who fall into that demographic group are expected to support higher education with their dollars. At AU, modest increases in state funding won’t reverse the decades-long trend of diminishing public appropriations—which means a
The Uthlaut award instilled a new level of confidence in Roberts, who was an associate professor at the time.
How can we give students in today’s environment the kind of strong education that Auburn delivered 10, 20 and 30 years ago?
large private campaign is critical to the university’s future, says McGinnis.
“As a result, I am motivated to take my work to higher levels. I would love for other faculty in our department to experience a named professorship, because it has meant so much to me,” he says. Roberts’ research interests are multifaceted. One research area involves the creation and separation of nanoparticles and the development of nanoparticle thin films. “The focus of our work now is to use the properties of benign solvents in nanomaterials processing in the microelectronics and semiconductor industries—call it ‘green engineering,’ if you will,” he says. “We are studying semiconductor quantum dots and precious metal nanoparticles such as gold, silver and platinum for applications in sensors, catalysis and specialized optics. Our job is to process these unique materials in an environ mentally responsible manner.”
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“Auburn simply won’t be able to afford to evolve into a great university without significant and increasing financial support from the private sector,” he says.
The scale of the fundraising effort means AU alumni are more important to the institution’s future than ever before, experts say. Private giving to AU rose to an all-time high of $101.2 million in the last fiscal year, but a recent analysis of university operations by higher-education expert James L. Fisher indicates that Auburn alumni aren’t giving back to the university in the same proportions as many of their counterparts throughout the country. Last year, AU ranked 102nd in annual-fund giving—well behind the universities of Alabama (22nd) and Florida (27th). Stated simply, fewer Auburn alumni give larger gifts, and the campaign will enable AU to expand its donor base, McGinnis says.
For the beneficiaries of private giving to AU, even the smallest gifts can make the difference between enrolling in undergraduate courses and finding solutions to society’s problems, or choosing a different path. Here are their stories.
Balancing Act Every day, Christopher B. Roberts walks a figurative tightrope, juggling his three-pronged job as researcher, teacher and administrator. It’s a circus, and he loves it.
The chair of Auburn University’s chemical engineering department joined AU’s faculty ranks 12 years ago. He has since garnered an endowed professorship named for benefactors George E. and Dorothy Stafford Uthlaut. “When I received the Uthlaut professorship in 2000, it gave me a tremendous boost to know I was appreciated here,” Roberts says. “It was an award to me at a stage in my career when my research was taking off, and it meant a lot to me.” The position mandated balancing teaching and research. George Uthlaut “recognized and reminded us all that you can’t be good at one without the other,” says Roberts. “Teaching is about communicating, and the way that research is used in teaching depends on how you communicate what you have found. The impact of all research is much greater if you can translate it to a whole generation of new engineers—which is the goal of a great university.” Auburn Magazine
By taking research questions into the classroom, Roberts and his colleagues hope to teach creative problem-solving and critical-thinking skills. “We challenge students to design a widget using science and engineering principles coupled with environmental, economic and social considerations,” he explains. “If you give them that kind of open-ended problem, they cannot help but be creative…As a researcher working with the bright minds here at Auburn and at several universities across the nation, I want us to address the truly important engineering challenges, such as our concerns about the energy security and energy independence of our future generations. Personally, I feel that this is the No. 1 problem facing this next generation of engineers. “We need support from our alums to be able to do this. We are at a very exciting time in chemical engineering when we must develop alternative solutions, including bio-derived energy sources and renewable fuels. I feel like my responsibility as chair is to ensure that every student is equipped to address these important challenges.” —Gita Smith For Alumni & Friends of Auburn University
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Annica Potts
Paula Backscheider
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Reading between the lines Three centuries ago, Paula Backscheider likely would have been considered a dangerous woman: She teaches her literature students there are no boundaries to what they can achieve. Fourteen years ago, Backscheider was at the University of Rochester in New York, winning prizes for her books and earning respect from her peers as a literature scholar. Auburn University wooed her with the offer of a position as H.M. Philpott-West Point Stevens Eminent Scholar in the English department, with funds for travel and research, in July 1992. Since then, she has stretched not only the boundaries of her own work but also those of students and fellow professors. “Coming to Auburn liberated my teaching,” Backscheider recalls. “At Rochester, I was expected to stay within the confines of the 18th century. Here, I was given the chance to stretch.” Outside the classroom, Backscheider began a research internship program for undergraduate students, and the endowment allows her graduWinter 2006
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ate students to travel with her to London every doors for others like me. We should support our three years to conduct research in their areas of students and open more doors for them.” interest. The eminent scholar position, funded —Gita Smith by private giving, also offers financial incentives that allow for Backscheider’s ambitious projects, such as investigating the writing and careers of 18th-century women poets. When Annica Potts enrolled at Auburn UniMoney from the eminent scholar position also versity four years ago, she worked two jobs at has benefited Backscheider’s colleagues. “I help Wal-Mart and Winn-Dixie, commuted to class them approach publishers for their books. I look 100 miles round trip from her home in Roanoke at their grant applications. My fund helps them and cared for a 7-year-old daughter on her own. achieve their dreams. I may buy someone a book or help him or her go to Austria to a conference,” Last fall, the road to Potts’ nursing degree got she says. even more bumpy financially when gas prices The products of a faculty member’s career— began to soar.
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Caring enough
presentations, books, research projects, papers, “I’ve really had to balance family, education, courses—contribute to AU’s standing among work and play for as long as I can remember,” peer institutions and its ability to attract the best says the 25-year-old senior, whose parents both students. work in textile mills along the Chattahoochee “We need to be out there at international River in east Alabama and west Georgia. Alconferences, waving the AU flag, or on the lec- though Potts and her daughter, Jada, live with ture circuit. We need more financial support so Potts’ folks, she says she’s worked since age 16 that we can travel to scholarly events and show and doesn’t lean on her parents for money. the world how good this faculty is. It’s a familiar story to Larry T. Watkins ’57 “I am the only woman out of 19 eminent scholars in Alabama,” adds Backscheider, the daughter of a cotton buyer, who grew up in west Tennessee. “I came back for the opportunity to open
of Marietta, Ga., and his brother William C. “Wick” Watkins ’56 of Auburn. The pair’s mother, Bertha, supported them on her own in Montgomery in the 1940s and ’50s after divorc-
ing their father. Left with no income, Bertha Watkins took some business courses and went to work for the U.S. Veterans Administration. “She never made more than $3,000 a year,” says Larry Watkins. Still, she managed to support the family and help send both her sons to Auburn. When Bertha Watkins died at 93, Larry and Wick decided to endow a scholarship in her honor. Now retired from running Icee frozen drink distributorships in Alabama and Georgia, the brothers noted the many AU nursing students and alumni at Opelika’s East Alabama Medical Center who helped their mother during her last illness. The young women and men so impressed the pair with their kindness and enthusiasm, the Watkins decided to honor their mother with a gift of an endowed scholarship in her name. The scholarship rewards strong grade-point averages and is geared toward single parents or the children of single parents. Bertha Watkins would have loved the gesture of a scholarship endowment, her sons say. And so does Annica Potts. “I really appreciate it,” she says. “It’s helped me a whole lot.” —David Morrison
Jordana “Cassidy” Girten
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The road to the White House
‘Good luck,’” Girten says. “‘If you want to go to college, you’d better get some scholarships.’ If it weren’t for the scholarships, I wouldn’t be here.”
Jordana “Cassidy” Girten used to harbor a desire to be the U.S. defense secretary, but at the moment a White House national security adviser post is looking pretty attractive to the 21-year-old Auburn University student. Such a position also appears well within reach for Girten, an aerospace engineering and political science major who was selected for a competitive training program sponsored by the federal Defense Intelligence Agency. The organization analyzes satellite pictures, data on troop movements and shifts in political winds for the nation’s top policy wonks, including the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff and the secretary of defense. Teenagers with less drive probably wouldn’t have made it to AU’s campus. In her senior year of high school, fire destroyed Girten’s family home the day after Christmas. Two weeks later, Girten was seriously injured in an automobile accident, and the following summer her father lost a two-year battle with cancer.
Enter Leonard Mitchum ’51 of Huntsville. A few years ago, he set up the Ila and Leonard Mitchum scholarship in the Samuel Ginn College of Engineering with stock from SCI Systems Inc., a company he helped start. The endowment’s earnings provide aid to three or four students a year. But Mitchum’s largess has caveats—students have to be interviewed and, as a mechanical engineer himself, Mitchum says he wanted candidates “who got their hands dirty and greasy and knew how to use a wrench. Other than grades, the characteristics I thought should distinguish the people were discipline and ambition.” Girten’s defense agency work puts her in contact with other high-achieving college students around the nation, but she’s neither impressed nor intimidated by her Ivy League counterparts. “They go to prestigious schools, but you can tell they don’t ‘love’ their colleges,” she says. “I love Auburn. Auburn has become my home.”
Girten recalls a blunt conversation at the time with her mother, a teacher. “She basically said, Auburn Magazine
—David Morrison For Alumni & Friends of Auburn University
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Dr. Ray Dillon and students
A heart’s desire
over 15 years, is to help translate basic research knowledge into improved patient care.”
advanced residency training and important research—unless they are supported with more funding.
In his cardiopulmonary research, which em“While it is great to develop (veterinary gradphasizes inflammatory lung disease and congestive heart failure in dogs and cats, Dr. Dillon has uates), and it reflects well on the university, the collaborated for the past 12 years with scientists ability to recruit them back to academic positions often asks of them to make hard financial sacriat Harvard University and UAB. In recent months, Dr. Dillon’s work on heart- fices,” Dr. Dillon explains. “They graduate with a significant debt load, and we need to be able Research being conducted by AU’s Ray Dil- worm disease again put AU in the news. After to fund residencies, and then professorships, for lon on heart disease in animals has promising Hurricane Katrina, many heartworm-positive the best candidates.” dogs from the South were being adopted all over implications for human heart patients. Last year, How, then, to get graduating veterinarians to he was the principle investigator of the canine the country in areas where heartworms are less come back to AU and generate new knowledge? common. As a result, he has been contacted daily studies in a National Institutes of Health project for consultations by veterinarians across the naprobing the mechanism of heart failure. “It takes endowing positions to lure good peotion who are unfamiliar with the problem. ple back or leave better-paying jobs. It will take “The research we have put together (with “To get cut t ing- edge science to answer funding for residency slots. Next year, we will University of Alabama at Birmingham medical clinically important questions, and then to only be able to offer five internships and limited staff ) is unique in the country,” says Dr. Dileffect changes in the therapy of patients (ani- residency positions for which we get hundreds lon, who holds the title of Jack O. Rash Profesmals and humans), is not only personally re- of applications,” he says. “How wonderful if we sor of Medicine in the College of Veterinary warding, it makes coming to work exciting,” Dr. could offer our most talented students the chance Medicine. “Being a veterinarian scientist, I have to stay and do important work at AU. Dillon says. been dedicated to translational research—the “In the war over talent, there are no truces.” But what concerns him lately is that AU can’t two-way transfer between work at the laboratory bench and clinical application. My position on retain the best and brightest young veterinary —Gita Smith the heart failure team, which has been active for graduates—those who study under him, doing In 2004, Auburn University veterinarians made national headlines when they performed heart surgery on a Birmingham Zoo gorilla named Babec. But news reports of the ape’s historic operation told only part of the story.
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Fish out of water
Lauren Duerk grew up on a 70 -acre farm near the rural northwest Ohio town of Defiance, the 1790s outpost established by Revolut ionar y War Gen. “Mad A nt hony” Wayne to divert Native Americans from the path of America’s westward expansion.
Lauren Duerk Duerk received the Col. Donald Theodore Jones Scholarship for Medical Education in the health professionals program of Auburn’s College of Science and Mathematics.
Duerk’s father builds houses. Her mother sells real estate. The youngest of six children, Duerk learned to swim in a tiny six-lane, 25-meter pool. Swimming mainly for the local YMCA team, she had graduated to national competitions by age 13.
Duerk, an Academic All-American and biomedical science major, is one of many students who’ve benefited from the scholarship endowment named for Jones ’33, a football letterman and former Chicago Bears player. Jones’ widow, Vera, who died in 1989, established the scholarship with a $98,338 bequest in her will.
Now an Auburn senior, Duerk is a breaststroke ace, a six-time All-American on the women’s swimming team. She didn’t do as well as she’d hoped in the 2000 and 2004 Olympic tryouts, so her star collegiate career probably won’t extend farther than a few final meets this summer.
The Jones scholarship recognizes both academic achievement and students’ preparatory work for careers in medicine or other health care fields. Duerk, who carried a perfect 4.0 grade point average throughout high school, qualified on both counts.
But the 21-year-old has other career choices in mind.
Duerk’s sister Amber, 26, has already graduated from medical school and is working in a North Carolina residency program. After incurring heavy debt from sending two older kids
She’ll likely enroll in medical or pharmacy school: In addition to a swimming scholarship,
Auburn Magazine
to college, the family wasn’t positioned to help the others, who had to rely on scholarships and student loans. “I really wouldn’t be here without the scholarships,” says Duerk. “I haven’t had to take out any loans. It will be so nice to graduate without any debt at all.” —David Morrison For Alumni & Friends of Auburn University
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