Answering the Call for Smart Solutions, Winter 2016 by NC State College of Agriculture and Life Sciences

NC STATE UNIVERSITY

perspectives

Winter 2016

The Magazine of the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences

ANSWERING the CALL for smart solutions

Courtesy Peter Daniel

Answering the Call

his past November, when the boards of the N.C. Agricultural, Dairy and Tobacco foundations convened for their fall joint luncheon, there was an excitement and optimism for the

future, as news was shared about activities to usher in a new day in North Carolina agriculture. The board members heard about what the $2 billion Connect NC Bond Package – announced Oct. 21 by Gov. Pat McCrory – could mean to the state, its citizens and its economy. It’s a package upon which citizens of the state will have the opportunity to decide March 15 – and one that could be a key factor in infrastructure and agricultural investment in North Carolina. Its passage, among other things, would enable the plans for the college’s Plant Sciences Initiative and needed agricultural research facilities to come into being, without incurring additional tax burdens. The Plant Sciences Initiative aims no less than to establish North Carolina as the global hub for plant-related innovation through an interdisciplinary research and collaborative-systems approach that builds on the strengths of academe, industry and government. Via such activities, it could help improve crop yields with fewer natural resources, grow local economies, protect natural resources and produce safe, affordable foods. The formula of progress through partnership is a hallmark of the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, as it responds to the needs of

At Gov. Pat McCrory’s Oct. 21 announcement of the Connect NC Bond Package are (from left) CALS Dean Richard Linton, Larry Wooten of N.C. Farm Bureau, McCrory and NC State Chancellor Randy Woodson. (Story, page 2)

gram, we’re participating in the work of faculty clusters in 20 multidisciplinary areas across the university, focusing on some of society’s most challenging issues. Those and other such efforts are detailed here. We also spotlight the important issue of water for a growing world, the subject of our 2015 Stewards of the Future conference in November. Another exciting and important initiative that’s afoot is the Food Processing and Manufacturing Initiative, which promises to create jobs and grow the economy. This past year I was part of a 35-member governor’s task force that assessed food industry needs and business opportunities and explored the possibilities of establishing our area as a centralized hub in the Southeast, focused on food manufacturing. All this work represents a chance to turn global challenges into local opportunities. But perhaps most important, the upcoming decision on the bond offers the opportunity for us all to come together and bring forth an essential investment in the future – and create a template for what we can all do together to grow North Carolina.

North Carolina and its citizens. In this issue of Perspectives we show how we answer the call of our stakeholders and clientele, moving from need to fulfillment through collaboration and innovation. We’re tackling natural resource and environmental management

Richard Linton

problems at our Center for Environmental and Resource Economic Poli-

Dean

cy. We’re helping to fulfill the need for tomorrow’s agricultural leaders

College of Agriculture and Life Sciences

and industry workforce, efforts enhanced by our Warren Leadership and Public Policy Fellows program and our Developing Future NC Farmers program. And, taking part in the Chancellor’s Faculty Excellence Pro-

NC STATE UNIVERSITY

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Perspectives is online at the CALS News Center: www.cals.ncsu.edu/agcomm/news-center/

The Magazine of the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences Winter 2016 Vol. 18, No. 1

F E AT U R E S 2

Associate Editor: Dee Shore

Staff Photographers: Becky Kirkland, Marc Hall, Roger Winstead Staff Writers: Terri Leith, Dee Shore, Suzanne Stanard

Printed on recycled paper. 33,000 copies of this public document were printed at a cost of $20,253, or $.61 per copy. Printed by PBM Graphics, Durham, N.C.

Sam Pardue, Associate Dean and Director, Academic Programs Richard Bonanno, Associate Dean and Director, North Carolina Cooperative Extension Service

Crucial Conversations, Crucial Conservation Stewards of the Future brings together experts on Water for a Growing World.

College Profile Environmental economist Dr. Laura Taylor makes the collaborative connections to ensure public policy aligns with smart economics.

NOTEWORTHY 17

News 2015 class of William Neal Reynolds Distinguished Professors honored at special celebration • Extension helps spread word about avian flu threat • Bonanno named extension director • PowerPack is the newest Howling Cow dairy product • New NC State consortium to study microbes at the root-soil interface • Wanted: Future Farmers • Program brings bright minds together to solve some of society’s most complex challenges • Giant opportunity • NC State wins $6.7 million grant to curb devastating fruit pest • Student’s research sheds light on monitoring for spotted wing drosphila • CALS takes next steps in improving innovation and efficiency

Steve Lommel, Associate Dean and Director, North Carolina Agricultural Research Service Sylvia Blankenship, Associate Dean for Administration Richard Campbell, Chief Communication Officer Keith D. Oakley, Executive Director, Advancement, 919.515.2000 Celeste D. Brogdon, Director of Alumni and External Relations

Unique Opportunities Warren Fellows’ summer internships are part of a first-of-its-kind undergraduate agriculture program.

William R. “Randy” Woodson, Chancellor Richard H. Linton, Dean and Executive Director for Agricultural Programs

Lucrative Process Bringing together agriculture and commerce, the Food Processing and Manufacturing Initiative will create jobs and grow the economy.

Perspectives is published 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, NC State University, Raleigh, NC 27695-7603.

Solid Investment Plant sciences and Connect NC represent a chance to turn global challenges into local opportunities.

Managing Editor: Terri Leith Design and Layout: Vickie Matthews

contents

Alumni Troxler, Collins honored as CALS Distinguished Alumni at Alumni Awards event • CALS alumnus addresses agricultural challenges from farm to fork as a PepsiCo R&D director • CALS' Sam Pardue to become UGA dean • Bertone helps solve insect mysteries

Giving New day in North Carolina agriculture heralded at joint foundations meeting • Horton endowment created to fund biochemistry scholarships • Remembering Ruby C. McSwain, philanthropist and JCRA benefactor • Traditional tailgate activities enhance scholarship support

The Cover: CALS answers the state’s needs through workforce education, outreach and engagement, and timely research: Agribusiness student David Johnson interns at a cattle farm (top left); Elias Clarke Campbell of FBNS presents at the Stewards of the Future Innovation Fair; Dr. Marc Cubeta and students conduct plant pathology research; student Selena McKoy gets handson horticulture experience; food processing innovation is ongoing; and the proposed Plant Sciences Research Complex could enable economy-boosting ag research. (Photos: Becky Kirkland, Marc Hall and courtesy Developing Future NC Farmers program.)

Solid Investment by Dee Shore

Plant sciences and Connect NC represent a chance to turn global challenges into local opportunities.

tate voters heading to the polls on March 15 will have a chance to help connect North Carolina farmers with next-generation agricultural and biological sciences. Connect NC, the popular name for the North Carolina Public Investment Bond Referendum, gives voters the say in whether the state will borrow $2 billion to invest in rural and urban infrastructure across the state. The funds would mainly be used for higher education, but there are also projects proposed for parks and recreation, water and sewer, public safety, and, importantly, agriculture and agribusiness, the state’s $76-billion-a-year economic engine. Two proposed facilities are significant for agriculture: the Plant Sciences Research Complex at NC State University and a laboratory complex for the N.C. Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services. As State Agriculture Commissioner Steve Troxler has pointed out, the two buildings will help create a bright future for North Carolina and its agricultural sector. “We’re going to drive North Carolina forward,” he said. “We’re going to continue to lead the world in agriculture.”

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Marc Hall

Sharing an optimistic handshake on what the North Carolina Public Investment Bond – also known as Connect NC – can mean to the state are Chancellor Randy Woodson (center, right) and Gov. Pat McCrory (right). Also shown are N.C. Rep. Tim Moore (left) and Lt. Gov. Dan Forest.

Concentrated world-class research NC State has a long history of creating worldleading scientific solutions to pressing agricultural and life sciences challenges. The plant sciences complex would be designed to stimulate the types of interdisciplinary interaction needed to continue to solve complex problems today and into the future. The $160 million building – $85 million of which would come from the bond package – is part of a larger initiative that’s focused on

helping North Carolina first while creating worldwide excellence, said CALS Dean Richard Linton. The North Carolina Plant Sciences Initiative is aimed at making North Carolina’s Research Triangle the top global hub for plant sciences, with the building bringing together university, corporate and government scientists on NC State’s Centennial Campus. “The initiative will also place our students in an innovative, collaborative and interdisciplinary

An artist’s concept drawings (above, right, and opposite, top) show how the Plant Sciences Research Complex on Centennial Campus could appear inside and out. A new plant sciences facility hasn’t been built at NC State since the 1950s.

learning environment, making them much better prepared for the job market upon graduation,” Linton said. Those who’ve been involved with planning for the building say that it will spur the type of innovation local farmers need to increase productivity and profitability while protecting the environment. It will help ensure a safe, healthy and affordable food supply for a rapidly growing world. And it will create what CALS Associate Dean for Research Dr. Steve Lommel called “an entrepreneurial ecosystem” driving the development of new companies and new jobs. As NC State’s chancellor Dr. Randy Woodson put it, “The Plant Sciences Building is our first step in our interdisciplinary approach of bringing together North Carolina’s agriculture community with the great biotech industry we have here in the Triangle and across the state.” Supporting the state’s farmers and biosciences industries Agricultural and biosciences industries have shown strong support for the plant sciences building and the initiative it’s part of: Commodity groups and other organizations have

donated $9 million to complement what the North Carolina General Assembly had designated for planning the project. For Dan Weathington, executive director of one of the committed commodity groups, the North Carolina Small Grain Growers Association, supporting the project is a matter of supporting the state’s farmers. “The science and innovation that will come from this investment can dramatically improve crop yields across all our commodities – helping boost productivity for our farmers and improve their profitability,” he said. “This innovation will allow North Carolina farmers to better feed a growing population, having a global impact while driving local economies.” Dan Gerlach, president of the grant-making Golden LEAF Foundation, concurred. “It’s crucial for all of us to support because the demand for food and other agricultural products that all of us want and need is growing,” he said. “North Carolina has a big role and opportunity to play in meeting that demand.” As the initiative drives innovation to meet the agricultural demand, it will also strengthen NC State’s basic and discovery

plant sciences in a way that could spawn new products and solutions with applications in industry, medicine and more. North Carolina already has achieved significant momentum in the life sciences and biotechnology development, and the initiative will reinforce that, creating a discovery pipeline with endless possibilities, Lommel said. Preparing highly skilled graduates The plant sciences building would not only benefit those involved in commercial agriculture and biosciences; it would also benefit students. Lommel said the state-of-the-art building would give students the chance to develop a deep knowledge of their particular plant sciences discipline while learning how to interact effectively with scientists and engineers whose expertise in other disciplines complement theirs. The building wouldn’t house departments but rather teams of scientists from multiple departments and disciplines who can work together to tackle big challenges. “The aspiration of this entire project is to do innovative plant sciences research and

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provide a new kind of student – an interdisciplinary kind of student that’s very marketable, that’s very skilled and that has a deep understanding of a particular discipline but can speak the language in other interdisciplinary areas,” Lommel said. The building would have state-of-the-art labs, collaborative spaces and greenhouses, as well as spaces for seminars and classes. Right now, there’s a stark gap in plant sciences infrastructure at NC State. A new plant sciences facility hasn’t been built since the 1950s. Modernizing state agricultural laboratories Passage of Connect NC would help close that gap. It would help advance NCDA&CS’s work, as well. The $94 million NCDA&CS laboratory facility proposed in the bond package would replace five labs that are an average of more than 40 years old. According to department communication director Brian Long, the facilities “struggle with inadequate ventilation,

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climate control, the capacity to expand within limited space and the ability to utilize advance testing equipment.” The new lab, to be located on Reedy Creek Road in Raleigh, would include a Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory providing tests required for international and domestic shipment of poultry and livestock and serving as the state’s first line of defense for identifying a foreign animal disease or bioterrorism agent. A Food and Drug Protection Laboratory would also be part of the complex. The state’s sole food safety and defense testing lab, it will be one of only five labs in the nation internationally accredited for chemical and biological testing. “This benefits our residents, because it allows federal partners like the FDA and USDA to accept our data, which can speed up decisions pertaining to the safety of food and animal feed,” Long said. Other components of the proposed laboratory would handle pesticide tests, motor fuels analysis and precision testing of devices used in commerce.

Creating modern infrastructure to support a thriving global economic workforce and a rapidly growing population is Connect NC’s goal. And it’s a goal that can be achieved without raising taxes, according to Gov. Pat McCrory’s office. About 66 percent of the proposed bond funding is for higher education, with upgrades proposed for community colleges, as well as for the University of North Carolina system. For NC State, in addition to the plant sciences building, the bond package includes partial funding for a new engineering building on Centennial Campus. An additional 5 percent would go to improve state parks and the N.C. Zoo; 4 percent would go for National Guard regional readiness centers and other public safety projects; and 16 percent would go toward improving water and sewer infrastructure and local parks. That leaves 9 percent for the two agricultural projects that North Carolina Farm Bureau’s president Larry Wooten has said are vital for farming and for the state’s rural communities. As he wrote in the November issue of The Leader, “While bonds build brick-and-mortar buildings, the resulting research and regulatory advantages the facilities provide will help North Carolina farmers weather the bad times and provide them with the tools to be more prosperous during the good ones. As a result, rural communities will also prosper.” And, Lommel said, those benefits will extend to the rest of the state as well, as the plant science initiative generates new companies, jobs, products and solutions.

Courtesy Peter Daniel

Chancellor Woodson speaks about how the bond package could benefit higher education, including the building of the Engineering Oval and the Plant Sciences Research Complex. “Investing in engineering and agriculture is so critical for NC State,” he said. “This investment will ensure we continue to support people across the state.”

Toward statewide prosperity

Lucrative Process by Suzanne Stanard

Bringing together agriculture and commerce, the Food Processing and Manufacturing Initiative will create jobs and grow the economy.

hink about a can of beans. Before it can hit the grocery store shelf, the beans have to be processed and packed, the can manufactured and the label printed – all of which add up to a product that’s worth far more than the beans alone. This, in a nutshell, is the premise behind a massive new initiative designed to elevate North Carolina as a food manufacturing destination, bolstering the state’s economy and breathing new life into its rural communities. Born of seeds planted by the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at NC State University, the North Carolina Food Processing and Manufacturing Initiative is quickly becoming a reality. In 2014 the North Carolina General Assembly funded the initiative to diversify and add value to agricultural-based businesses through food processing. An economic feasibility study led by CALS and the N.C. Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services revealed that North Carolina has a significant opportunity to catalyze food processing, manufacturing and industrial development statewide. The anticipated economic impact of the Food Processing and Manufacturing Initiative, if four key recommendations are established, will be an increase of nearly 38,000 jobs and associated economic output of $10.3 billion. That’s no small potatoes. “The results of the feasibility study are staggering,” said Dr. Christopher Daubert, head of the CALS Department of Food, Bioprocessing and Nutrition Sciences. “The Food Processing and Manufacturing Initiative could have a huge impact on our state, especially in our poorest communities.” The new initiative aims to elevate North Carolina as a food manufacturing destination, bringing a significant economic impact.

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The task force has four sub-committees that focus on business recruitment, communications/advocacy, infrastructure needs/assets and food industry needs assessment. Together, they plan to present a report of recommendations to the governor in the spring, Linton said. The committee also received grant funding from the N.C. Tobacco Trust Fund Commission to support their work and to make possible a full-time joint position in the N.C. Department of Commerce and N.C. Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services that will

“This state’s economy is built upon those industries that make things, that innovate things, that build things, that produce things and that grow things,” McCrory said at the first task force meeting. “And I firmly believe as we continue to recover from this recession that we’re going to still be very dependent upon those industries to create the jobs and grow the economy of North Carolina. I’m proud of the manufacturing and agriculture industry that’s been an important part of our past, present, and it will be a very important

Marc Hall

The decline of three of North Carolina’s traditional industrial strengths (textiles, tobacco, furniture) over the past 20 years has hit rural communities hard, but it also presents a unique opportunity for the state to leverage its agricultural resources, industrial capacity and research innovation assets to fuel the growth of new value-added industry. “North Carolina has the potential to be the breadbasket of the South,” said CALS Dean Richard Linton. “We are the third most diverse state in the country when it comes to production of ingredients. We produce just about anything you’d want to put into a value-added good.” The state also boasts “an abundant water supply, clean watersheds and a sizable, capable workforce, not to mention NC State University and its associated intellectual capital,” Daubert said. The Food Processing and Manufacturing Initiative will focus on four main goals: • Capture added value from North Carolina’s agricultural commodities through the development of innovative food products and processing technologies • Foster the growth of food manufacturing entrepreneurial endeavors • Proactively target site selection attraction opportunities within the food manufacturing supply chain

After announcing the initiative in his State of the State address in February 2015, N.C. Gov. Pat McCrory assembled a task force of 35 representatives of all aspects of food manufacturing, from farming to transportation to economic development. Linton chairs the Food Manufacturing Task Force, and Daubert serves as his designee. N.C. Agriculture Commissioner Steve Troxler, N.C. Lt. Gov. Dan Forest and N.C. Secretary of Commerce John Skvarla make up the rest of the task force's core leadership. “This is significant because it’s the first state-directed strategic initiative that has brought agriculture and commerce together,” Linton said.

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Last February, Gov. Pat McCrory (seated) assembled a 35-member Food Manufacturing Task Force that included CALS Dean Rich Linton (right) and State Agriculture Commissioner Steve Troxler (front left).

focus solely on attracting food manufacturing industries to North Carolina. “This could be an opportunity – like RTP was 30 years ago – to establish a centralized hub focused on food manufacturing that could serve the Southeast and be a huge economic bolster to the entire state,” Linton said. “We have a goal to expand the economic impact of agriculture and agribusiness in North Carolina to $100 billion by the year 2020. Food manufacturing is a big part of the solution to get us there.” McCrory agrees.

part of our future.” For Daubert, who grew up in a small rural community in Pennsylvania, it boils down to helping people. “This initiative translates into jobs, especially for people in our poorest communities,” he said. “Creating new jobs will raise the tax base, which in turn will improve quality of life and bolster the state’s economy. “Now is the time. And North Carolina is definitely the place.”

• Provide regulatory training and outreach to the food processing/manufacturing sector

Weighing in on the FPMI John E. Skvarla III Secretary, N.C. Department of Commerce Why do you think the Food Processing and Manufacturing Initiative is important for the state of North Carolina?

we bring teams together that we see the focus and critical mass that’s necessary to drive success, especially when we tackle an important and complex opportunity like this one.

Steve Troxler Agriculture has always been a key driver for North Carolina’s economy, approaching 20 percent of our overall GDP. But it’s clear there’s more opportunity we’re leaving on the table. By developing greater capacity for food processing and manufacturing, we will add more value to the agricultural products we currently produce, driving our economy to new heights, especially in the state’s less populated areas. What do you think the initiative will accomplish? The Food Processing and Manufacturing Initiative is already achieving results. Thanks to a supporting grant from the N.C. Tobacco Trust Fund, we are ramping up our marketing to this important sector. The Economic Development Partnership of North Carolina is hiring a dedicated business development manager to recruit food manufacturers. Over time, as our success builds and food industry leaders hear more about North Carolina’s natural advantages for manufacturers, we’ll see increased investment in our state and, of course, more jobs. Why is collaborative leadership (Commerce, Lt. Gov., NCDA&CS, NC State, etc.) critical to this initiative? There’s an old saying that economic development is a team sport. That’s certainly true for this opportunity around food manufacturing. North Carolina has expert teams working at many of our public and private institutions. But it’s only when

Commissioner, N.C. Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services Why do you think the Food Processing and Manufacturing Initiative is important for North Carolina? I believe there is a lot of potential for North Carolina in the area of food processing and manufacturing. There have already been a good number of successful food products launched in the state, including sauces, pickles, meats and jams. We have the manufacturing capacity, the agricultural resources and the entrepreneurial drive to grow this sector of agribusiness. Adding value to agricultural products through processing helps farmers, it helps rural communities that have lost traditional manufacturing jobs, and it helps our state as a whole. How do you think the partnership between NCDA&CS and CALS strengthens the initiative? For many decades, partnership between our department and CALS has led to a number of positive developments for North Carolina agriculture. The combination of research and scientific know-how at CALS with the marketing expertise within our department could be a real asset as the Food Processing and Manufacturing Initiative moves forward.

Tom Holt Retired, BASF Chairman of the initiative’s Food Industry Needs Subcommittee Why do you think the initiative is important for the state? There are several reasons the initiative is important to North Carolina. The initiative can have a direct result in increased manufacturing jobs and indirect employment opportunities in supporting industries, such as transportation. Many of us envision the initiative having a direct and very positive effect on North Carolina producers, some of whom will be able to sell more of their produce, as well as others who will be able to switch from lower-value commodity production to higher-value specialty crops. North Carolina still secures a significant amount of produce from other states, especially California, with burgeoning environmental, labor and regulatory issues, along with the added costs of transportation. The Food Processing and Manufacturing Initiative can provide “food security” for North Carolinians and perhaps secure lower costs. North Carolina is a state proven capable of producing and processing virtually any food; the ultimate vision is that North Carolina establishes itself as the breadbasket of the East Coast. What do you believe the initiative will accomplish? Whether we move slowly or quickly, I believe the “breadbasket” vision will become a reality. Why? Because the challenges we face – water quantity and quality, regulatory issues, transportation costs, among others – will intensify. Additionally, the Southeast states, including North Carolina, have rapidly increasing populations. My hope is that our efforts and insights will in fact move North Carolina food manufacturing forward at a faster pace.

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UNIQUE Opportunities by Terri Leith

CALS Advancement

Warren Fellows’ summer internships are part of a firstof-its-kind undergraduate agriculture program.

Gail and Joe Dunn (seated), benefactors of the Adolph Warren Leadership Program Fund and Endowment, and their daughter Bailey Dunn (center) meet with the inaugural class of Warren Leadership and Public Policy Fellows: From left are Becky Zhong, Deans Eatman, Caroline Clement, Anne Link, Grayer Sherrill, Lynde Ring and Clayton Dellinger.

ast spring, when the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences hosted its annual donor appreciation event, Grayer Sherrill, NC State University senior in agricultural business management from Newport, came to the podium representing the inaugural class of Adolph Warren Leadership and Public Policy Fellows. He thanked Joe and Gail Dunn for funding the program in honor of Gail Dunn’s father, long-time Sampson County agriculture teacher Adolph Warren. Through FFA activities, Sherrill had heard of Warren, whom he described as “a true hero of agricultural education in North Carolina.” So when he heard about the fellowship program, he said, “I knew it was something I had to get involved in. It’s been a true blessing.” Also there to share that sentiment were the six other inaugural Warren Leadership and Public Policy Fellows, all now CALS seniors: Caroline Clement, agricultural science, Spivey’s Corner; Clayton Dellinger, agricultural science, Iron Station; Deans Eatman, agricultural science, Roanoke Rapids; Anne Link, animal science, Charlotte; Lynde Ring, food

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science, Warrensville; and Becky Zhong, plant and soil sciences, Chapel Hill. By this fall semester at NC State University, the seven had even more to thank their benefactors for: true leadership experience. The Warren Fellows each took part in a summer public policy internship with public officials in the state. The one-year Warren Fellows Program, for CALS sophomore, junior and senior students, is designed to develop the students in the areas of personal leadership, organizational leadership and public policy. Dr. Marshall Stewart, CALS director of College Leadership and Strategy, worked with the Dunns to create the program. “The Warren Leadership Program is one of a kind in the country, as it prepares students in agriculture majors who have an interest in public policy with enrichment experiences throughout the year and a privately funded summer internship experience,” he said. “There hasn’t been a pipeline or on-ramp to prepare students for public policy work in food and

agriculture in the past. This is a remarkable opportunity for our students.” And the summer internship is a key component of that preparation. Clement, who is from the same community as Adolph Warren – and “always looked up to him while growing up,” she said – interned at the N.C. General Assembly in the House of Representatives with Rep. J.H. Langdon from Johnston County. “I attended sessions, committee meetings and other functions with him to learn the legislative process and meet many people,” she recalled. “I also read a lot of legislation to learn about different things going on in the state. The biggest project to tackle was obviously the budget.” Among her memorable experiences was working on the Farm Act of North Carolina, she said. “I also enjoyed meeting representatives from all over the state and forming relationships with them, as well.” Clement hopes to work in communications within the agriculture industry. Lynde Ring’s internship involved working with the N.C. Department of Agriculture

Warren Fellows Anne Link (center left), Lynde Ring and Clayton Dellinger share information about the program at their CALS Tailgate booth.

Warren Fellows Photo

ing committee meetings, aiding in communication updates to members, and developing a leadership program; learning how bills moved, organizing information into a bill tracker and updating it; and gathering information in preparation for meetings with legislators. These experiences, Link says, enhanced her skills as a community advocate, increased the clarity and efficiency of her writing and communications, and taught her to navigate the political structure of state-level politics. “Being able to collaborate with other organizations and meet other lobbyists was the best. I really felt like I had a support system in my work at the General Assembly,” said Link, who would like to pursue a career in international food policy. She described her mentor Sparko as “fantastic and so supportive! It was the best relationship I have ever had with a supervisor, and she has so much knowledge to share. I really felt like I could take on a policy position after that experience.” Also stationed at the General Assembly was Becky Zhong, who reported that she took part in a 12-week internship in the office of state Sen. Andrew Brock. “I always knew that it’s important to be engaged in public policy works, no matter what you study,” Zhong said. “This internship in the state senate’s Agriculture and Natural Resources Committee co-chair’s office has exposed me to first-hand policy creation and the negotiation process.”

Warren Fellows Photo

and Consumer Services’ policy development analyst Joy Hicks and observing collaboration with members of the General Assembly to implement legislation in response to concerns from the agriculture community and the department. Ring, whose career goals include working in food safety and public health, said the experience gave her “opportunities to see the concerns of the agriculture community being advocated through bills presented in committee meetings and legislative sessions. Moving forward, I hope to continue to be well-informed of agriculture issues and follow them through the legislative process.” Ring also noted that “Joy Hicks was a phenomenal mentor. She really took the time to make sure I understood the legislative process and offered many opportunities to explore the other areas of the department.” She added that her time as a Warren Fellow “has helped me understand who I am, what my goals are and how my passions, strengths and even weaknesses can help me reach those goals.” Anne Link was assigned to intern with the Carolina Farm Stewardship Association, working alongside mentor Rochelle Sparko, CFSA policy director, in lobbying activities at the General Assembly. Among the key experiences she lists are developing relationships with lobbyists from partnering organizations; working in coalitions on specific bills, attend-

Grayer Sherrill (left), a CALS senior from Carteret County, served a public policy internship with the N.C. Farm Bureau Federation. He is shown here with Larry Wooten, N.C. Farm Bureau president.

The time spent “definitely broadened my view about public policy, especially on policy issues relating to agriculture and the environment,” she said. “The 2015 Farm Act and the biennial state budget, especially the Natural Resources and Economics portion, are just some of the bills that I paid attention to closely this summer while working in the senate.” Zhong found the internship program to be “extremely rewarding to me. I am definitely more politically oriented than before.” The Warren Fellows actually would often encounter each other at the General Assembly, she said. “Since five fellows were assigned to public policy offices of certain agriculture-related organizations, many of us saw each other in agriculture or other senate or house committee meetings and in session, as well.” One of those five was Clayton Dellinger, who was interning with the NCDA&CS. He plans to use his experiences in the Warren Leadership Program to explore graduate degree opportunities in law and public policy. He

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Warren Fellows Photo

The inaugural group gathers for dinner with Dr. Marshall Stewart, who worked with the Dunns to create the program. From left: Ring, Dellinger, Zhong, Stewart, Eatman, Clement, Sherrill and Link.

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“The staff and board of directors at the N.C. Pork Council all took time to help me understand the full breadth of the work they do on behalf of North Carolina’s hog farmers,” he said. “Of course, none of the experiences which I and the other fellows enjoyed would have been possible without the generosity of Gail and Joe Dunn and the inspiring legacy left by Mr. Adolph Warren.” Sherrill spent his internship with the North Carolina Farm Bureau Federation (NCFB), working with its public policy team, under the direction of Jake Parker, NCFB state legislative director, and Paul Sherman, associate legislative director. His job as a public policy intern was to work directly with members of the North Carolina General Assembly on behalf of the 500,000 Farm Bureau membership families, to help secure implementation of agricultural and rural policies. “Needless to say, my expectations for what I would learn during my internship were far exceeded,” Sherrill said. Sherrill had three main learning objectives in his internship: to gain a better understanding of the legislative process and the role that the Farm Bureau has in it, to develop a greater

knowledge of North Carolina agriculture and public policy, and to develop skills relating to agriculture advocacy. “Overall, I had an amazing experience at the North Carolina Farm Bureau,” he said. “Most people can look back upon their career and identify people who were instrumental in the success of their lives – the true foundation of their careers. I believe as I look back upon my career, the individuals at the North Carolina Farm Bureau that I have had the opportunity to interact with throughout the fellowship will serve as those people.” He aims to explore graduate opportunities in public policy and administration and hopes to pursue a career in government relations and agricultural advocacy. It’s the type of career all seven will be uniquely prepared for, thanks to the Warren Leadership Program. “There’s always something that would impact you from a public policy change, no matter if it’s at the community, state or federal level,” Zhong said. “We need to start early and cultivate more and more young people in all areas of studies to become oriented with public policy works.”

envisions owning an agribusiness and taking an active role in public service in the future. In his blog on the Warren Program website, Dellinger said that his internship taught him “more about state government than most would care to know.” He was particularly impressed with the work ethic he saw exemplified by the state’s lawmakers: “Many senators and representatives travel three to five hours, some even more, to come to Raleigh, away from their families and lives, to represent the people of their communities and to attempt to pass legislation to better their constituents’ lives,” Dellinger reported. “Each week during session, they come to Raleigh to work on Monday afternoon and work tirelessly until Thursday evening and on occasion into the wee hours of Friday mornings, depending on the bill before the body.” Eatman interned with the North Carolina Pork Council, an experience he used to explore opportunities for engagement in agricultural education and policy. His goal is to attend graduate school in law or public policy, followed by service to the agriculture industry, either in government or the private sector.

CRUCIAL CONVERSATIONS, CRUCIAL CONSERVATION by Suzanne Stanard

Becky Kirkland

Stewards of the Future brings together experts on Water for a Growing World.

‘W

Chancellor Randy Woodson (top) welcomed conference participants, including Tamar Haspel (center), who moderated a discussion of the Neuse River Basin from panelists (above) Dr. Deanna Osmond (left), Bill Holman, Ken Waldroup and Billy McLawhorn. Bottom photo: CALS’ Christy Perrin poses a question from the audience.

ment, wastewater quality and management, irrigation technologies and developing agricultural products while protecting water resources. “Here in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, we work hard in close partnership with our stakeholders to identify and solve the grand challenges faced by North Carolinians and the world,” said CALS Dean

Marc Hall

ater is the most important resource issue for humanity in the 21st century.” So said Brian Richter, director of global freshwater strategies for The Nature Conservancy and keynote speaker at the college’s “Stewards of the Future: Water for a Growing World” conference. The event, which drew nearly 500 participants to the McKimmon Center on Nov. 2, focused on water quality and quantity issues, with emphasis on North Carolina agriculture. Through keynote addresses, multimedia presentations, a panel discussion and moderated workgroups, the conference addressed key topics such as water conservation, treatment technologies, precision water manage-

Becky Kirkland

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The Nov. 2 conference at the McKimmon Center focused on water quality and water quantity issues – and the management of a safe and reliable water supply.

Becky Kirkland

Richard Linton. “One challenge that has been identified, over and over, from every sector and every scale of operation, is the management of a safe and reliable water supply.” The conference was designed to provide a variety of perspectives on issues of water quality and quantity, identify key challenges and generate critical conversation on how to ensure a safe and plentiful water supply for North Carolina and the world, according to Dr. Deanna Osmond, professor in the college’s Department of Soil Science and conference planning committee co-chair. Richter, author of Chasing Water: A Guide for Moving from Scarcity to Sustainability, kicked off the event with an examination of global water shortage issues. Water shortages are occurring in one-third of the planet’s watersheds and aquifers, affecting one half of the world population, Richter said. In the western United States, more than half of the

Bill Lord, area specialized agent, water resources, Franklin County Extension, talks about wetlands preservation at the conference’s Innovation Fair.

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Becky Kirkland

rivers and streams are being depleted by 50 percent, and more than a quarter are being depleted by 75 percent, he said. “Increasing water scarcity has serious ecological, economic and security impacts,” he said. But despite these grim statistics, Richter said that he remains “quite optimistic and quite hopeful” that solutions such as water desalination, reuse and conservation have the potential to solve global water shortage issues. In the second keynote address, Dr. Ken Reckhow, Duke University professor emeritus of water resources, delivered a detailed overview of national water safety regulations and examined challenges to North Carolina water quality, which include everything from the complexities of the nitrogen cycle to pollutant load reduction. Following Reckhow’s talk was a rapid-fire multimedia presentation that featured a variety of industry and government leaders working to solve water quality and quantity issues. Participants in the session included BASF, the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality, Smithfield Foods, Orange County government, the North Carolina Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, the Natural Resources Conservation Service, Bayer CropScience, John Deere Co., Syngenta, the Greenville Public Utilities Commission and SePRO Corp. After lunch, NC State Chancellor Randy Woodson welcomed participants to the second half of the conference.

“Water is one of the most pressing global issues that has impact on everything from agriculture to the way cities are developed to the way countries behave toward one another,” Woodson said. “It is so crucial that we take the information derived from today’s conference and put it to work.” Following Woodson’s remarks was a multimedia session, “Innovation in Action: Ensuring a Water Future” that spotlighted more than a dozen of the college’s faculty members and the important work they’re doing to address the grand challenges of global water quality and quantity. Tamar Haspel, Washington Post columnist and author of the website “Starving Off the Land,” moderated a lively panel discussion on the Neuse River Basin. Participants were Bill Holman, North Carolina state director of The Conservation Fund; agricultural consultant Billy McLawhorn; and Ken Waldroup, assistant public utilities director for the city of Raleigh. Osmond, a Neuse River basin expert, was a surprise addition to the panel. “I would like people to appreciate that they all live in a river basin or watershed,” she said. “We’re all part of the problem and part of the solution. We must look at this holistically.” After the panel, Georgia farmer Donald Chase took the stage for a talk that focused on water conservation and agriculture, with a focus on drought.

Becky Kirkland

the session. Outcomes from the facilitated discussions will be made available on the conference website: go.ncsu.edu/stewardsofthefuture. The conference wrapped up with the presentation of two sets of awards: the Innovation Fair Awards and the CALS Outstanding Research Awards. The Innovation Fair, a marketplace of ideas where CALS scientists and their interdisciplinary collaborators showcased ongoing and emerging scientific research, took place throughout the summit’s second day. Dr. Matt Koci, associate professor of poultry science, won first place in the Innovation Fair Awards competition. Dr. Dean Hesterberg, William Neal Reynolds Distinguished Professor of Soil Science, took second place; and Sofia Feng, graduate research assistant in the Department of Food, Bioprocessing and Nutrition Sciences, came in third. The CALS Outstanding Research Awards winners, Barbara Doll, water quality specialist with the Sea Grant Program, and graduate student Robert Vick of the Department of Biological and Agricultural Engineering, were determined by online voting on YouTube videos created and submitted by the candidates. This competition celebrated the ingenuity and innovation of the college’s scientists and

Dessy Owiti, graduate research assistant in the CALS Soil Science Department, shares her work at the Stewards of the Future conference.

awarded flexible funding to help support their research programs. Dr. Wayne Skaggs, William Neal Reynolds Distinguished Professor of Biological and Agricultural Engineering, who emceed the event, hit home with thoughts on the magnitude of the problem (“Google world water scarcity,” he instructed the audience), as well as the vast potential for solutions. “While the problems are enormous, so is the scale of our opportunities to make positive contributions to what I believe is the most important of the grand challenges facing us,” he said. “The challenges are immense, but I am optimistic that we are capable of finding solutions. I am optimistic because I have seen the progress we have made, both at the university and in industry, in finding ways to conserve water and improve water quality. I am optimistic because I have seen the work our students are doing to develop and apply new technologies here at home and around the world. I am optimistic that each one of us can make a difference.”

Becky Kirkland

New technologies, planning and collaboration are bright spots on the horizon for effective drought response and water conservation, Chase said. “The time to plan for droughts is before they happen, not when the crisis hits,” he said. “We have friends everywhere, not just in agriculture. We need to be working together and finding solutions.” In the final session of the conference, about 25 facilitators representing state agencies, non-profit organizations, private businesses, Cooperative Extension and Industrial Extension led small-group discussions about how to seize new opportunities while meeting the challenges presented throughout the conference. The groups shared their perspectives and identified not only the challenges but also the solutions and actions they could take to ensure clean and ample supplies of water. “One of the biggest goals of our Stewards of the Future conference series is to generate important conversations on the big issues that impact agriculture and life sciences – issues that impact us all at local, state, national and global levels,” Linton said. “We want to hear what’s important to you.” Dr. Mary Lou Addor of North Carolina Cooperative Extension and Larry Roberts of the Roberts Business Group coordinated

Among Innovation Fair presenters are Cooperative Extension’s Mitch Woodward (center), water quality specialist, and Wendi Hartup, Forsyth County natural resources agent.

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COLLEGE Profile

Environmental economist Dr. Laura Taylor makes the collaborative connections to ensure public policy aligns with smart economics.

C State University environmental economist Dr. Laura Taylor has always loved the ocean and even grew up planning to become a marine biologist. That plan took a detour when she got to college and fell in love with the social science of economics. Yet the ocean is still part of her professional purview, as she works to help shape policy on issues that impact the environment. Taylor, a professor in the College of Agriculture and Life Science’s Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics (ARE), is director of the university’s Center for Environmental and Resource Economic Policy (CEnREP). Established in 2001 under the leadership of Dr. Kerry Smith, ARE professor emeritus, the center provides expertise in economic research and outreach programs to promote forward-thinking environmental policy for the state and the nation. Its faculty members are actively engaged in economic research that addresses natural resource and environmental management problems. Taylor pulls together the interdisciplinary teams to tackle challenges and to guide the forward motion of policy makers, assisting their understanding of the economic effects of national or local environmental policies. And she’s doing this at home and around the world. Most recently, Taylor advised the government of Chile on ways to update their economic assessment of policies designed to reduce air pollution in Santiago and other cities. The reason a center such as CEnREP was needed, says Taylor, “and the reason that it exists today is to help solve the big hairy challenges: feeding an expanding population under increased water stress, climatic variations, storms and droughts; urban and rural water pressures and conflicts; and creating energy solutions that are sensitive to the waterenergy-food nexus.”

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Becky Kirkland

by Terri Leith

In December, Taylor was elected president of the national Association of Environmental and Resource Economists.

Whether the solutions to the challenges are technical or engineering solutions, she says, “None of them succeeds unless we understand the human dimension.” A key aspect of understanding that human dimension is the economics – and in this context, economics means understanding how people will respond to the incentives of various policies and understanding what kinds of impacts policies will have on communities and constituents. “The tools we use in economics to understand how people interact with the environment, with each other and with policy are critical to develop solutions that work in the real world,” Taylor says. “If the economics aren’t aligned, it’s going to be very difficult to get solutions that the community can support. Smart public policy typically is aligned with smart economics.” That’s where CEnREP comes in.

he center was established as a means to elevate and integrate the work of NC State economists into the interdisciplinary research and outreach and engagement and extension across the university, Taylor says. As center director, she identifies opportunities for research partnerships among her colleagues at NC State, across disciplines and across colleges. A key goal of the center is “to provide the economic basis for management solutions to environmental challenges we face and to add

an economic dimension to the policy process focused on the environment,” Taylor says. “The environment is at the heart of what we do, whether it’s agriculture, energy or water resources, wildlife conservation or thinking about how land-use change impacts all of these things. One of the nice things we do as economists is we cut across many environmental domains – including energy, air quality, water quality, water quantity, land use, urbanization, loss of farmland, wildlife management – and the public policies that address all of these. We work in all those dimensions, because economics is the fundamental component of the decision-making process, for addressing any of these problems.” Current CEnREP research projects and study areas include the impact of voluntary and mandatory water restrictions on residential water consumption; estimating how water reuse systems impact household outdoor irrigation choices; estimating the monetary benefits of improving water quality in North Carolina’s fresh and saltwater bodies; designing optimal management strategies for endangered and invasive species; improving management of wildlife habitat for migratory birds along the Outer Banks; improving regulations for harvesting game animals; estimating the impacts of offshore wind development on the state’s tourism economy; and estimating the cost to local fishermen of potential off-road vehicle restrictions on Cape Hatteras beaches, where the National Park Service

“You may very well want to drill for oil, but you should understand what the trade-offs are. It is not without risk,” she says. “And my point at that conference was to clarify the rhetoric about some of the benefits there may or may not be for North Carolina.” Water quality issues – and the CEnREP’s community-of-scholars approach – are center stage in a relatively new and important program: the Research Network on Water Solutions (ReNeWS). Taylor and colleagues from NC State received a NC State Research and Innovation Seed Funding grant to help build a campuswide community-of-practice that works to create a systems-level understanding of water issues and their innovative solutions. “ReNeWS is an example of the center trying to elevate interdisciplinary work around particular themes, in this case water,” she says. “We’ve had a terrific year building connections among water resource scholars across campus, engaging faculty from seven colleges and over 20 departments, centers and institutes located at NC State.” She also notes that, as a result of At the 2015 Stewards of the Future Conference, Taylor speaks about the economic benefits of water-quality improvements. new connections made through ReShe also notes that “the No. 1 entity that NeWS, a team from NC State’s CALS, College we import oil from is Canada. In 2014, we of Natural Resources, College of Sciences and imported more oil from Canada than from OPEC College of Design got together and submitted as a whole. Folks don’t realize what a relatively a multi-university proposal to the National small share is currently coming from OPEC Science Foundation. The proposal is focused countries. It’s not what it was back in the ’70s.” on understanding how upstream land-use As for natural gas, she says, “We are aldecisions in the Neuse and Tar-Pamlico waterready energy independent. We are a net exsheds affect estuarine health in the Pamlico porter of natural gas. So adding more doesn’t Sound. make you any more independent.” “The proposal merges natural sciences with In making such analyses for decision makers, social sciences and explores how to manage environmental economists think about the beneupstream land-uses when people who bear the fits and the costs – the benefits of environmental costs of regulations (landowners upstream) are protections and what trade-offs have to be made not necessarily the same people that directly to attain those protections, she says. benefit from the regulations (coastal residents and businesses),” Taylor says.

It will not change energy prices to drill off North Carolina’s coast, she says, because “it’s such a small part of a very large global market in the case of oil and a very large market in the case of natural gas. I liken it to opening one more McDonald’s restaurant in Durham. It’s not going to change the price of fast-food meals for residents of Durham or citizens of the state.” Taylor says that “based on estimates of the resource size I have seen, I would expect no effect in gasoline prices if resources in North Carolina are developed.” And, she adds, if energy security is defined as reduced purchasing from international partners, then the drilling will not be the answer: “The amount of oil off our state’s coast is not enough to stop our dependence on a foreign oil source.”

Becky Kirkland

seeks to rehabilitate piping plover and sea turtle populations. “So often when people think of economics, they think of it in a context almost like they think of accounting: Is it profitable or not? Will this make a business money? But that’s not how we harness economics. Economics is a social science, where we try to understand how people respond to all sorts of incentives, not just the profit motive,” Taylor explains. “We try to make tangible some of the intangibles about the environment, like the value of our ecosystem in sustaining our communities and our quality of life. This is a really important component of what we do at the center.” Taylor thinks of the center’s work as “the stewardship of our natural capital: Our natural resources and our environment sustain us in so many ways, and it isn’t just in production of goods we directly consume. It’s in our recreation opportunities, our health and frankly our well-being and quality of life.” In addition to undertaking high-quality research, center scholars advise and train policy makers and practitioners in educational workshops. They also serve on advisory boards for organizations such as the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and North Carolina Sea Grant, as well as the North Carolina Legislative Commission on Global Climate Change and the Offshore Energy Exploration Study Committee of the North Carolina General Assembly. This past July, Taylor was a featured speaker at the North Carolina Coastal Federation’s forum, “Shaping Our Economic Future: Offshore Drilling in North Carolina.” There she addressed the economic implications of oil and gas exploration and development, specifically the economic considerations for North Carolina. “My particular role was to talk about the broad-based economic impacts in terms of energy prices for North Carolinians and energy security as a national policy. My message was to make sure folks understood that the amount of oil and natural gas that is believed to be directly off the N.C. coast is so small relative to the overall production of natural gas and crude oil in the United States, and indeed globally, that it is assuredly not going to have any impact on general energy prices and indeed no impact on energy security as we typically refer to it,” she says.

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perspectives

essentially sequester people away for a couple of days with faculty from around the Triangle. “We have in the Triangle probably one of the largest concentrations of environmental economists in the United States. We’re nationally known as having a tremendous amount of activity in economics research focused on the environment and natural resources. So we invite graduate students from around the country, and they come and they present their work much like in a conference format. But they are able to present their work at earlier stages and get feedback from the faculty who work in the Triangle. It’s designed to be high quality and high contact.” Taylor calls the workshop a wonderful way for students to begin to network – and not just with faculty members: “They form lifelong relationships with each other. They get to see what other students across the country are working on – the cutting edge research that’s happening outside of their university. “And now graduates of Camp Resources are faculty members and are sending their students,” she says. “We have alums at so many research institutions around the country, it’s amazing!” In fact, one graduate is Taylor herself, who, as an NC State Ph.D. student in economics, presented at the very first Camp Resources, in Beaufort.

aura Taylor is a North Carolina girl, who grew up in Lexington and loves her hometown barbecue. She graduated from Central Davidson High School, then earned her undergraduate degree in economics from UNCAsheville and her master’s at Duke before coming to NC State for her doctorate. “I’m a proud graduate of North Carolina universities,” she says. “I’ve grown to appreciate how much the state of North Carolina gave to me and my family by supporting higher education, so I can have the life that I have now.” It was at UNC-Asheville that she found her calling. “I took an economics class, not really knowing what that would be like, thinking that it would help me manage the money that I was destined to make one day! I quickly learned that is not at all what it’s like or about. It’s a social science; it’s about how people make decisions. And it was because of a fantastic

teacher, Dr. Pamela Nickless, that I just fell in love with the subject area. Actually all the faculty at UNC-A were so supportive.” It was their mentorship “that led me to the path of going to grad school in economics and truly changed my life,” she says. “Then, here at NC State, Kerry Smith, my dissertation adviser, also was an incredible mentor. He taught me not just about economics; he was a role model in how you mentor students, how you put your heart and soul into the work that not just you are doing but what others are doing. I try to live up to his example daily.” After earning her Ph.D., she moved to Atlanta and worked for 12 years at Georgia State University in the Andrew Young School of Policy Studies. Then, “I was honored to be able to come back to NC State,” says Taylor. Since returning, she has won the prestigious Leopold Leadership Fellowship, one of just 20 environmental researchers to win the award in 2013. Now, her ever-busy slate includes participation in the college’s 2015 Stewards of the Future conference, speaking on “Quantifying the Economic Benefits of Water Quality Improvements in North Carolina.” She’s also co-lead on the Sustainable Energy Systems and Technology cluster at NC State that aims to hire four interdisciplinary researchers over the next two years, and the center is taking part in the Global WASH (Water, Sanitation and Hygiene) cluster, as well. “That’s really an important topic, when nearly a billion people don’t have access to safe water for just basic human needs,” she says. “This also will be an interdisciplinary group when the hires are completed.” And that, of course, is right in her wheelhouse. “Economists so often can be such great connectors amongst the disciplines. We’re quantitative social scientists, skilled in both statistics and modeling, and we often dovetail very well with our natural science and engineering colleagues,” she says. “Think about a Venn diagram: As we each think about an approach to answer environmental questions, our little circles overlap. We begin with a little bit of overlap, and that’s our common ground to start on. Then we work hard to build the bigger overlap.” And come full circle to smart solutions for the environment.

Another center project she highlights is a recent $800,000 award from the U.S. EPA to estimate the economic benefits of stream water quality improvements in urbanizing watersheds – such as the Upper-Neuse watershed that includes the rapidly growing RaleighDurham metropolitan area. “We are teaming up with faculty in the departments of Civil, Construction and Environmental Engineering to use an ‘ecological production function’ approach for valuing instream water quality,” she says. “A lot of researchers are very interested in our ability as environmental economists to value ecosystem services in a dollar-context.” Dr. Roger von Haefen, the associate director of CEnREP, is the lead investigator of this project, where, she says, “we go beyond predicting changes in ecosystem services that people care about to actually placing a dollar value on improvements in those ecosystems. Only by understanding how people value water quality in the streams near their homes can we do a complete benefits-assessment for any policy designed to improve lake water quality, since ancillary benefits always come from cleaning up the streams that feed the lakes.” The center is also committed to preparing the next generation of leaders in environmental economics. CEnREP faculty members teach a variety of natural resource and environmental policy courses at the undergraduate and graduate levels both in CALS and the university’s College of Management. “We offer five sections each year of environmental economics and policy at the undergraduate level, a master’s class, and we have a Ph.D. field with very successful students,” Taylor says. “Our students are doing state-of-the-art economic analysis that matters and has realworld impact.” And, with a focus on mentoring graduate students, CEnREP’s Camp Resources is an internationally known summer intensive workshop where graduate students present their work to each other and to senior faculty members and mentors from universities, government agencies and think-tanks from around the country. While the first one was held in Beaufort, typically the camp is held in Wilmington or Asheville. Camp Resources was founded by Kerry Smith, Taylor says, “and he purposely set it up to

noteworthy

NEWS

Marc Hall

2015 class of William Neal Reynolds Distinguished Professors honored at special celebration

he newest William Neal Reynolds Distinguished Professors were welcomed at a special reception Sept. 8 at the NC State University Club. The event celebrating the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences’ most distinguished professorship was hosted by CALS Dean Richard Linton. Seven CALS faculty members joined the ranks of colleagues who have earned the named professorship, established 65 years ago by William Neal Reynolds, the longtime president and board chair of the R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. Since that time, 92 outstanding CALS faculty members have been named WNR professors, and more than 30 of them were in attendance at the reception to honor the new group, as well as celebrate the program. The new class of WNR professors includes Dr. Dennis T. Brown, Molecular and Structural Biochemistry; Dr. W. Gregory Cope, Applied Ecology; Dr. William L. Flowers, Animal Science; Dr. William F. Hunt III, Biological and Agricultural Engineering; Dr. David L. Jordan, Crop Science; Dr. Ken H. Pollock, Applied Ecology; and Dr. G. Craig Yencho, Horticultural Science. “The William Neal Reynolds Distinguished Professorship program was created to enhance recognition of the college’s leadership in the advances of agricultural sciences and technology,” Linton said. “For 65 years, this has been a wonderful legacy, as William Neal Reynolds Professors have distinguished themselves as scholars, leaders, teachers and mentors.” Those eligible for the professorship include CALS professors in the fields of agricultural biochemistry, agricultural economics, animal industry, entomology, horticulture, plant pathology, poultry or rural sociology. (Reynolds

From left are William Neal Reynolds Distinguished Professors Ken H. Pollock, William L. Flowers, G. Craig Yencho, William F. Hunt III, David L. Jordan and W. Gregory Cope, along with CALS Dean Richard Linton. (Not pictured is WNR Professor Dennis T. Brown.)

himself suggested that the original 10 professors be distributed across various disciplines of agriculture.) Linton noted that the WNR endowment which supports the program enables the college to retain and attract prominent scientists. It is “designed to strengthen teaching, research and extension programs in various fields of agriculture to improve the quality of life in rural North Carolina,” he said. After presenting award certificates to each of the WNR professors in the 2015 cohort, Linton announced something new being added to the program. “The college wants to do all that we can to accelerate the potential for this cohort to be interdisciplinary team leaders for our college,” Linton said. “Therefore, I am pleased to announce a new leadership initiative that we are designing to support the two most recent cohorts of William Neal Reynolds Professors. These individuals will be invited to participate in a yearlong program of short workshops in

partnership with the General H. Hugh Shelton Leadership Center.” Linton said that the program will enhance the group’s skills for addressing key leadership challenges for interdisciplinary work, strengthen the cohort and enhance the program’s legacy as the group “builds a pipeline for the future.” When William Neal Reynolds established the endowment creating the distinguished professorships in 1950, it was one of the greatest gifts that had been made to a single CALS program. The gift, one of many made to NC State University by the Reynolds family in Winston-Salem, has benefitted not only the recipients but the many others who have gained from the research, teaching and extension efforts of those who bear the title of William Neal Reynolds Professor. Said Linton, “We have confidence that all of our new WNR professors will continue this outstanding tradition of scholarship and service.” – Terri Leith

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Extension helps spread word about avian flu threat ith authorities on high alert for avian influenza this fall and winter, North Carolina Cooperative Extension reached out across the state with educational programs aimed at helping owners of backyard poultry flocks keep the virus at bay. The state’s Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services held educational meetings in each of Extension’s five districts in September and October. During those meetings, Dr. Donna Carver, a veterinarian with NC State University’s Prestage Department of Poultry Science, joined NCDA&CS veterinarian Dr. Mandy Tolson and others to get the word out about the state’s response planning and preparedness and what flock owners could do to reduce the risks. The two agencies also published information online on the disease, its symptoms and how to help prevent its spread. Carver worked with others to develop a poster aimed at helping low-literacy audiences and those

State officials urged caution to poultry owners and vigilance in watching for flu symptoms.

without the internet recognize the symptoms. And extension agents across the state wrote newspaper and newsletter articles geared for both flock owners and the general public. Last year, an outbreak of highly pathogenic avian influenza called H5N2 devastated flocks in the nation’s Midwest and Northwest regions, and authorities feared that ducks, geese and shorebirds would spread the disease to North Carolina and other parts of the country when they moved through during their fall migrations. When this issue of Perspectives was

going to the press, North Carolina had not had a case of highly pathogenic avian influenza, but officials were urging caution. This strain has not infected people, and officials say that there’s no danger of getting the virus from eating cooked eggs or poultry meat. Still, the stakes are high, not just for the backyard flocks but for a commercial poultry and egg industry worth billions of dollars annually in the state. North Carolina is considered the nation’s third-leading state when it comes to poultry and egg production, and broilers are the state’s top agricultural commodity. Because of the threat, the state department of agriculture cancelled live bird shows and sales through Jan. 15, and Cooperative Extension’s 4-H program suspended its popular school embryology projects. The agriculture department also urged all flock owners to register at http://ncagr.gov/ ncfarmid. Officials indicated that registration is necessary for state officials to communicate with poultry owners if an outbreak does occur. – Dee Shore

Bonanno named extension director The North Carolina Cooperative Extension Service at NC State University has a new director. Dr. A. Richard Bonanno of Methuen, Mass., joined extension on Feb. 1. To the position of director and associate dean for the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, Bonanno brings strong experience in and commitment to agriculture, extension education and leadership, according to CALS Dean Richard Linton. Before coming to NC State, Bonanno owned and operated a farm just north of Boston specializing in fresh market vegetables, bedding plants and vegetable transplants. In addition, he had been an adjunct professor and extension educator with the University of Massachusetts since 1989. With UMass, Bonanno’s focus was on vegetable and small fruit weed management for the six New England states. He also pro-

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Dr. A. Richard Bonanno

vided leadership for New England in training efforts related to fresh produce food safety. Bonanno also has significant administrative and leadership experience, having served for six years as president of the 6,000-member Massachusetts Farm Bureau Federation. In that volunteer position, his work focused on local, state and national regulatory and leg-

islative issues affecting agriculture. He has also served on the American Farm Bureau Federation board of directors. While Bonanno has spent much of his life in Massachusetts, he is not a stranger to North Carolina. In fact, after earning his Ph.D. in plant physiology and horticultural crops from Oregon State University in 1982, he joined the faculty at NC State, serving as a Cooperative Extension weed specialist and CALS researcher for vegetable crops from 1983 to 1989. Bonanno succeeds Dr. Travis Burke, who has held the interim position since July 2015, following the retirement of Dr. Joseph Zublena. N.C. Cooperative Extension is the university’s largest outreach program, with centers serving every county and the Eastern Band of the Cherokee Indians. Programs focus on agriculture, food and 4-H youth development. – Dee Shore

odium hexametaphosphate. Acesulfame potassium. Cellulose gel. Sucralose. These are just a few of the tongue-twisting ingredients in a bottle of chocolate-flavored Muscle Milk. How about, instead, another beverage made from real milk from cows grazing happily at a dairy farm just down the road? With real cocoa, pure cane sugar and 24 grams of protein? Seems like a no-brainer. And thanks to the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences’ Dairy Enterprise System, this alternative muscle-building/exerciserecovery beverage recently became a reality. Meet PowerPack, the newest member of the Howling Cow family of dairy products. Produced in the Feldmeier Dairy Processing Lab in the college’s Department of Food, Bioprocessing and Nutrition Sciences (FBNS), PowerPack has quickly become a favorite on campus. In early 2013, Carl Hollifield and Gary Cartwright, assistant director and director, respectively, of the NC State Dairy Enterprise System, developed the concept and created an initial formula for PowerPack. “There are formulas for these types of beverages that involve processes that we don’t have in our dairy plant, with ingredients we don’t use,” Hollifield said. “So we knew it had to be a fresh milk beverage, not water based, and it had to have pure cane sugar, not high fructose corn syrup, in order for us to make it.” Hollifield and Cartwright next reached out to Dr. Craig Sherwin, who conducted undergraduate research in Dr. Allen Foegeding’s lab and graduated from NC State in 1994 with a bachelor’s degree in food science. Sherwin, technology director at Davisco Foods International Inc., helped Hollifield and Cartwright determine the best type of whey protein to use in the beverage. They settled on a product called BiPro, which is made by Sherwin’s company. “BiPro is a whey protein isolate at the highest purity available, and it contains only the protein fractions in whey that have the most complete essential amino acid content,” Sherwin said. “This means you can use less

Marc Hall

PowerPack is the newest Howling Cow dairy product

From the Barnyard to the Brickyard comes PowerPack, a new beverage produced by the CALS Department of Food, Bioprocessing and Nutrition Sciences.

of it and still get the amino acid leucine that is recommended for muscle protein synthesis. The purity and the gentle ion exchange process also leads to an exceptionally clean flavor, and it tastes particularly good just straight in water without any fillers. In a fitnessoriented chocolate milk, these nutritional and functional properties make it ideal.” With their formula complete, Hollifield and Cartwright next submitted the concept for consideration as a spring 2013 FBNS senior design project. A group of four students – Audrey Caster, Katrina Connor, Merrie Levi and Erin McMurtrie – jumped at the chance to develop the beverage. “I thought it sounded really interesting,” said McMurtrie, who earned bachelor’s degrees in food science and chemistry in 2013. “It was a great concept, and I liked that we could help create a mutually beneficial relationship between the dairy and the athletic program. Besides, who doesn’t like chocolate milk?” While the student team was busy working on everything from nutrition analysis to production, Hollifield forged agreements with University Dining and NC State Athletics. PowerPack hit the shelves of campus dining halls and c-stores during the summer of 2013. After a tweak to the formula that made the protein-to-calorie ratio compliant with NCAA regulations, PowerPack also became a key component of the nutrition plans of NC State student-athletes. “PowerPack is an additional recovery drink that is unique to NC State, and our studentathletes love it,” said Diana Nguyen,

NC State director of sports nutrition. "What sets PowerPack apart is that it is made here on campus, and you can’t find it anywhere else.” Low-fat chocolate milk is considered to be a good base standard for a recovery beverage, Hollifield said, but adding protein to it also makes it a muscle-building beverage. One 14-ounce serving of PowerPack delivers about 300 calories and 24 grams of protein. After two years in production, PowerPack sales on campus are going strong. For the students – now alumni – who helped develop it, seeing those cartons for the first time was a moment they’ll not soon forget. “It’s hard to explain how exciting it is to see your hard work pay off,” said Katrina Connor, who received bachelor’s degrees in food science and bioprocessing in 2013. “Seeing it on the shelves was cool, but seeing people enjoy it was even better. I knew we had made something awesome, and I was so proud to be part of the amazing team that had made it.” For Sherwin, being part of the PowerPack process was a full-circle experience. “This project started with student research using our protein in chocolate milk, which is an activity I’m really proud to support and encourage,” he said. “To think that not only are thousands of students enjoying this product on my old campus but also that some of my favorite athletes might be as well, that makes it particularly cool for me as an alumnus. Go Pack!” – Suzanne Stanard

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s North Carolina State University advances in its quest to make the Research Triangle a global hub for plant-related innovation, it recently launched a unique consortium to explore the soil microbiome – the largely unknown world of microscopic organisms living in soil along plant roots. The new partnership, known as the Plant Soil Microbial Community Consortium (PSMCC), brings the university’s Center for Integrated Fungal Research (CIFR) together with stakeholders from industries and organizations vested in improving agricultural production. The consortium’s goal is to identify biological indicators of soil health and to determine how to use naturally occurring beneficial microorganisms to modify soil in ways that improve plant health and increase crop yields. According to CIFR’s associate director and plant pathology professor Dr. Marc Cubeta, the NC State consortium brings CIFR’s broad knowledge and expertise in bioinformatics, climatology, fungal and evolutionary biology, ecology, mathematics, microbiology, and plant and soil sciences to better understand the interaction of soil microbial communities with plants. While bacteria, fungi, insects and nematodes can cause crop damage, the majority of microbes are neutral or even beneficial to plants. For example, mycorrhizal fungi are associated with the roots of 80 percent of all plant species and critical for providing them with nitrogen, phosphorus and water. And scientists believe these beneficial relationships between plants and microorganisms will provide clues that can lead to agricultural innovations by reducing the need for synthetic fertilizers and pesticides. Dr. Ignazio Carbone, CIFR’s director and a plant pathology professor, said, “The goal is to help us leverage microbes to increase plant yield, suppress disease – to essentially complement what we are doing with current agricultural practices to develop new approaches that are sustainable and environmentally friendly.” Developing such approaches begins, he said, with a greater understanding of microbial biodiversity and how it evolves in response

Becky Kirkland

New NC State consortium to study microbes at the root-soil interface

perspectives

As the consortium conducts groundbreaking research, it will provide educational opportunities for students. Here, Dr. Marc Cubeta, Plant Pathology professor, (center) examines fungi cultures with NC State students Martin Pettersson (left) and Megan Miller.

to farming practices and stressors such as drought and insects. “The soil is teeming with microbial life, yet relatively few studies have mapped that diversity,” he said. “It’s estimated that there are upwards of 5 million species of fungi, but we have described less than 5 percent of them. There are fungi and other microbes in nature that have applications in agriculture, can be used as biopesticides and have yet to be discovered. And our mission is to do that – to understand how the communities of soil microbes interact and how to augment these communities to improve crop vigor and yield.” The consortium’s work will fall into an emerging multidisciplinary field coming to be known as agri-symbiotics – the study of beneficial biological interactions between plants and other organisms. This field is one ripe for industry-university collaboration, according to an economic impact study of the university’s Plant Sciences Initiative to increase agricultural yields and profitability. Some of the world’s leading ag biosciences companies, several of which have research headquarters in the area, have expressed particular interest in the field, the study says. Dr. Deborah Thompson, the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences’ director of research partnerships, said the consortium will focus on precompetitive research, which is initiated early enough in the research-and-de-

velopment process that collaboration benefits companies that might otherwise compete. Dr. Thomas Schäfer, vice president at Novozymes, one of PSMCC’s founding member companies, said, “Microbes are one of the promising new tools to boost crop health and productivity while reducing the need for pesticides and fertilizer. This is a welcome proposition at a time when the world needs to move towards improved sustainability and beyond heavy-input agriculture while feeding a growing global population with less available land. “The scientists at PSMCC have complementary expertise to identify fungi and bacteria in the soil and to study plant-microbe interactions. Novozymes looks forward to working with NC State researchers to better understand the complex interplay between millions of microbes and their host plants,” he said. “Together with our BioAg Alliance partner Monsanto, we expect this research will inform our development of microbialbased products to help farmers grow healthier and more resilient plants capable of withstanding drought and a range of pests.” In addition to conducting research, the consortium will provide educational opportunities for NC State students and extend knowledge gained through research to stakeholders, the public, farmers, regulatory agencies and the scientific community. Such “translation is an integral part of this,” Carbone said,

to consortium research, results, new initiatives and proposals, and consortium membership allows companies to leverage their research funds by pooling funds with other members to increase research productivity. Members of the consortium will also have an opportunity to provide critical input in developing new research initiatives. When research developments are made, members benefit from first access to intellectual property. Members also can interact closely

with the faculty, students, technicians and post-doctoral researchers, as well as identify potential new hires. Students, postdocs and other university researchers will also have opportunities for industry internships and sabbaticals with consortium industry members. For more information or to get involved, contact Thompson at 919-515-2717 or deborah_thompson@ncsu.edu. – Julie Long and Dee Shore

Courtesy DFNCF

“because at the end of the day, our goal is to address the grand challenges of agriculture. We want to leverage new technologies such as deep genome sequencing and modeling complexity within ecosystems to make significant advances in our knowledge that lead us to develop better agricultural management practices.” The consortium actively invites membership, Thompson said. Members will benefit from university resources and have first access

Wanted: Future Farmers

C State University student Rebecca Falkner spent the better part of summer 2015 working as an intern at White Rock Farms in Peachland. There she acquired, she said, “a well-rounded knowledge of the many types of animal agriculture,” as she learned all aspects of the farm’s business – including finance, daily operations, marketing, supplier partnerships, employee management and more. This fall, Falkner, a College of Agriculture and Life Sciences senior in animal science, has been equally busy preparing an in-depth report on the internship, attending biweekly workshops and creating her proposal for an agricultural business venture. It’s all part of Developing Future NC Farmers (DFNCF), a new two-year pilot program funded by the N.C. Tobacco Trust Fund Commission to identify, support and graduate new agricultural entrepreneurs. According to the 2012 Census of Agriculture, the average ages of U.S. and North Carolina farmers were 58.3 and 58.9 years, respectively. “To meet the challenges of the future, innovative perspectives and insights must come from a new generation of agricultural leadership,” said Dr. Sam Pardue, CALS associate dean and director of Academic Programs. DFNCF aims to help answer that leadership need. Pardue spearheaded the creation of the unique two-year pilot program, based on a concept originated by state Sen. Brent Jackson. DFNCF is intended “to identify, support and graduate a group of new agricultural entrepreneurs to sustain and enrich North Carolina agricultural industries,” Pardue said. “The program combines a rich university

DFNCF program participant Katelyn Thomas had the opportunity “to submerge myself in an organic and agritourism operation” at Vollmer Farm in Franklin County.

experience with robust mentoring from external businesses to nurture creative thinking in combination with an academic foundation needed for each student to succeed.” The first eight DFNCF students were selected in December 2014, and activities began this past spring. The chosen students receive many benefits, including scholarships, transportation and housing reimbursement, and internship wages; mentoring by an established agri-business leader; experience in the development of a business plan; and three hours of course credit. Sara Lane, CALS Career Services coordinator and a graduate of the Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics, is director of the program. “Part of the objective of the program was to bring in students who are not from agricultural

production backgrounds in order to grow the number of new agriculture producers,” she said. “To be eligible for the program, the students’ parents had to make less than 50 percent of their income from agricultural production.” Lane explained that the basic components of the program are a workshop series in the spring to get the students ready for the internship (workshops on topics such as farm safety, agricultural Spanish and operating farm equipment), the 12-week internship in the summer and the fall workshop series to help the students complete their business plans. “The overall goal of the program is to give students from non-ag backgrounds the opportunity to work on a successful farming operation with a successful Ag-Mentor and the guidance to create a business plan, with the hope that the students will pursue careers

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mentor.”

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Courtesy DFNCF

was through the N.C. Pork Council’s internship program, which funds a portion of the wages for students who intern on hog farms.” The group of interns and their mentors include Falkner, the senior in animal science, working with Roddy Purser at White Daniel Miller, a junior in agricultural business, operates a tractor under the direction of Scott Taylor at Cross Creek Dairy. Rock Farms; David Johnson, junior in ag business, with Russell Wood at Wood Angus; she is to have spent the summer on the Cory Levings, junior in ag business and ag Thurman Burleson and Sons Farm and said, science, with Chuck Stokes and Evan Stokes “My agriculture knowledge, experience and Caudle at Little Creek Hog Farms; Selena appreciation were expanded, and I cannot McKoy, junior in horticulture and poultry sciimagine a career for me in another industry.” ence, with Dana Massey at Plantworks NursThomas found “working at the Vollmer ery; Daniel Miller, junior in ag business, with Farm this summer gave me an opportunity to Scott Clayton at Cross Creek Dairy; Katelyn learn about things I did not have much knowlThomas, junior in ag business, with Russell edge about. I come from a small grain farm in Vollmer at Vollmer Farm; Dené Vann, junior in Lee County, and to go to Franklin County and animal science, with John Langdon at John M. submerge myself in an organic and agritourLangdon Farms; and Abby Whitaker, junior in ism operation was a huge step for me.” ag science, with Andrew Burleson at Thurman McKoy called her time at Plantworks “a Burleson and Sons Farm. truly incredible experience.… I was able to see “Six of the eight students learned how to how an agribusiness is run, the day-to-day opdrive a tractor for the first time during their inerations, the teamwork needed to keep things ternships,” Lane said. “The students have been going and how product is sold and shipped.” overwhelmingly positive about the program.” And Falkner concluded that “working at Their rave reWhite Rock has expanded my knowledge on views can be found the subjects I have been taught in the classamong the internroom. … I am eternally grateful to be given ship reports: the opportunity to learn about industries that Said Levings, I love and to be able to participate hands-on in “My time at Little the field and in the barns. I thank those menCreek Hog Farms tors for putting their faith in me and for gifting Inc. met my expectame with information that I hope to take onto tions and solidified my own operation one day in the future.” my choice of agriLane recalled that Ag-Mentor Langdon culture as a career. “had some reservations about joining the I saw things I had program, especially after meeting his intern, never seen before Dené Vann, who is a very petite woman. He and performed tasks was concerned she might not be up to the I had never done challenges of working on a hog farm.” before.” Animal science student Dené Vann (center) was undaunted by the But by the end of the internship, Vann had challenges of working with the large equipment and animals at John Whitaker spoke proven her value, Lane said. “Mr. Langdon M. Langdon Farms. Vann called Langdon (shown at right) a “wonderful of how grateful called me on the penultimate day of her in-

in agriculture, and more specifically launch their own production agriculture operations,” Lane said. “We try to pair the students with successful Ag-Mentors in their production areas of interest.” Meanwhile, to serve as Ag-Mentors, the program looked for “for both successful business people and great communicators and teachers,” she said. “This year, Dr. Bill Collins was helpful in identifying many of our mentors through their participation in the CALS Agricultural Leadership Development program.” The Ag-Mentors reap benefits, as well, including the opportunities to build a legacy by helping a young farmer start a business; build industry community by bringing in young farmers to take over for retiring farmers; pass on knowledge and values to the next generation; gain new ideas and perspectives from a student trained in the most innovative technologies and knowledge available through NC State’s academic programs; have additional labor for daily operations as needed (the student is expected to spend about 80 percent of time on farm labor and 20 percent on learning and job shadowing); and work with a program coordinator who oversees the internship experience. This year Ag-Mentors contributed $2,500 to the students’ summer wages, but next year this amount will be covered by the grant, Lane said. “Because of this, the N.C. Pork Council assisted in sponsoring three of the students this year who worked with hog farmers. This

that are currently owned by her family; Whitaker’s plan to build a small beef herd that she can manage in addition to a full-time job (possibly as an extension agent); Vann’s proposal, not for a production operation but to open a mobile large animal Rebecca Falkner put her CALS animal science courses to good use at veterinary practice White Rock Farms. in northeastern N.C., after completing vet school; and McKoy’s plan to create an organic create a community of Ag-Mentors who may produce farm, with a focus on pick-your-own be able to provide mentorship even outside of blackberries, plus egg production. the program,” she said. “With this being the Lane noted that McKoy’s farm would also first year, we’ve learned a lot about what the have a strong agritourism/education bent, and students need and how we can best get that that “she wants to create internships for miinformation to them. nority high school students to introduce them “If the program receives funding after next to agriculture.” year, I’d like to be able to bring more students Looking ahead, Lane hopes to enhance into the program and grow its reputation with future workshops to provide the students the student population, so it becomes a go-to with even greater training. “I’d also love to opportunity.” – Terri Leith

Courtesy DFNCF

ternship and said that he didn’t know what he was going to do without her. ... He said that if we could find another student like Dené, he would happily participate in the program again.” And Vann is especially grateful for the opportunity. “I would like to thank Senator Jackson, the Tobacco Trust Fund and the Pork Council for creating and sponsoring my internship with Mr. Langdon and the DFNCF Program. Mr. Langdon was a wonderful mentor,” she said. “This internship has served to reinvigorate my passion for agriculture.” Following the group’s internships, the fall series of program workshops focused on how to develop business plans, with the students presenting their plans in November. “We’ve had loan officers from AgCarolina Farm Credit come in to talk with the students about the different parts of a business plan and what students should include in theirs,” Lane said. “The business plans are very basic plans for operations the students may choose to start after graduation or later on.” Some of the presentations include Levings’ plan to take over two farrowing houses

Roger Winstead

Program brings bright minds together to solve some of society’s most complex challenges

s an entomologist working on the fringes of NC State University’s main campus, Dr. Fred Gould didn’t have cause to set foot in the 1911 Building for the first three decades of his career on the NC State faculty. Now nearly every week he finds himself in the iconic home of some of NC State’s social science departments and its interdisciplinary studies program. That’s because he and other faculty members come together with students from across campus for regular colloquia focusing on some of society’s most challenging issues: those that swirl at the intersection of molecular and population genetics, ecology, policy and ethics. It’s all part of a shift in campus culture that Gould has seen evolving in recent years – a shift that has crystallized in what’s known as the Chancellor’s Faculty Excellence Program. The program is drawing national attention for its tradition-busting approaches to what is actually one of the university’s strongest tradi-

Dr. Fred Gould and Dr. Jennifer Kuzma stand near the 1911 Building, where they meet for regular colloquia as part of the Chancellor’s Faculty Excellence Program. The program has spurred the creation of faculty clusters in 20 multidisciplinary areas – including Gould and Kuzma’s faculty cluster on Genetic Engineering and Society.

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for environment, health and industrial applications. Also playing key roles in the cluster are two other newly hired faculty. Dr. Zachary Brown focuses on the interactions between economic and biological systems, including the implications of biotechnology innovation in economic development. And Dr. Jason Delborne explores how policymakers and members of the public interact on controversial science topics. The Global Environmental Change and Human Well-Being cluster has also added new CALS faculty members: Drs. Becky Irwin and Craig Layman, both associate professors in the Department of Applied Ecology. It hired Scott Mills, a forestry and environmental resources professor. William Neal Reynolds Distinguished Professor Dr. Nick Haddad, who recently joined the CALS faculty from the College of Sciences, co-leads that cluster. Dr. Heike Sederoff, also a CALS faculty member, leads the Integrated Synethic and Systems Biology cluster. In this cluster molecular biologists, chemists and engineers collaborate closely to understand and modify living organisms to help eradicate disease and address the globally increasing demands for food and energy in a sustainable environment. The cluster has hired the Department of Plant and Microbial Biology’s Dr. Ross Sozzani, who recently received an NSF career award; the College of Veterinary Medicine’s Dr. Belinda Akpa, who uses mathematical modeling to understand and improve the effects of pharmaceuticals on human physiology; and the College of Engineering’s Drs. Adriana San Miguel and Albert Keung, who use new synthetic approaches to understand the genetic basis of complex traits. Cluster members also are teaching an innovative new course in systems biology for students in biology and engineering. Three other clusters are led by CALS faculty members. The Microbiomes and Complex Microbial Communities cluster aims to set up an internationally recognized center focused on the analysis and engineering of the microbial communities associated with crops, farm animals, insect pests and the environment. Coled by Dr. Michael Hyman of the Department of Plant and Microbial Biology, this cluster’s

Becky Kirkland

tions – bringing bright minds together to solve big problems. What’s different now is the university’s emphasis on bringing those bright minds together not just within their areas of expertise but across departments, disciplines and even colleges. The program has spurred the creation of faculty clusters in 20 multidisciplinary areas. It also is bringing 77 new faculty members at NC State to work in these areas. The new faculty members, established and emerging leaders in their fields, all have a strong commitment to interdisciplinary collaboration. Search committees for these positions include representatives of multiple departments and colleges, and as the candidates are hired, they follow a slightly unconventional path to tenure and promotion. Gould says that these changes should help faculty members overcome some of the key challenges that they had traditionally confronted when taking on issues requiring complex, multidisciplinary solutions. “In the past, we thought we were interdisciplinary if we had an entomologist and a geneticist working together,” Gould has said. Today, the faculty cluster he leads, Genetic Engineering and Society, includes not just entomologists and geneticists but scholars in communication, rhetoric, public administration, history, development and environmental economics, biomathematics and molecular biology. The work of bringing together those diverse disciplines started nearly a decade ago, Gould says, when it became clear that science, especially when it relates to a subject as controversial as genetic engineering, can’t realize its best potential if the general public is left out of the conversation. With biological scientists and social scientists working together, Gould says, NC State was able to win a major National Science Foundation grant for training graduate students interested in genetic engineering to effectively collaborate across disciplines. That grant helped position Gould and his colleagues for success in the Faculty Excellence Program. Furthering the cluster’s work will be a new Genetic Engineering and Society Center, coled by Gould and Dr. Jennifer Kuzma, who was hired through the Faculty Excellence Program. She’s one of the world’s experts on emerging technologies, especially genetic engineering

Dr. Jean Ristaino of Plant Pathology leads the Emerging Disease Biology and Global Food Security cluster.

research spans molecular microbial ecology; metabolic/proteomic studies of microbial communities; modeling of complex microbial systems; and microbial community engineering. In the Emerging Disease Biology and Global Food Security cluster, led by Dr. Jean Ristaino of the Department of Plant Pathology, faculty members are working to improve both local and global efforts to manage emerging pests and pathogens that threaten crop production and lead to food insecurity. The cluster builds on the university’s strong history in international agricultural research and outreach, says Ristaino, a William Neal Reynolds Distinguished Professor. “Many emerging armed-and-dangerous plant diseases and pests threaten U.S. and global agriculture, and reported outbreaks have become more severe with trade and changing climate,” she says. “We are wellpositioned to tackle these challenges with NC State faculty experts, U.S. government regulatory experts and industry experts in the Triangle area.” The cluster is bringing leading scholars from around the world to Raleigh in March to synthesize new developments in bioinformatics, geospatial modeling of disease outbreaks and disease biology, as well as the development of new tools, such as drones and cell-phone technology for pathogen detection. Ristaino says that scientific experts in diverse disciplines will strategize with government, industry and global development policy makers to develop the way forward in combating emerging plant diseases.

NC State a hub for transdisciplinary research that informs key energy decisions at the state, federal and international levels. The goal is to link technical research with policy, economics and environmental impact assessment to de-

liver actionable energy solutions, says cluster co-leader Dr. Laura Taylor, of the Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics. –Dee Shore

Courtesy Bradley Glover

The cluster is hiring faculty members in four new positions, as will the Sustainable Energy Systems and Policy cluster. In the latter cluster, engineers, economists and policy scholars will work together to make

Giant opportunity

Courtesy Bradley Glover

ach year during the Super Bowl, the competition on the field is matched closely by the competition among advertisers to create the most original and impressive TV commercials. And usually the most heart-warming (or tear-inducing) are those commercials featuring the Budweiser Clydesdales. Last summer, NC State University student Bradley Glover essentially got to inhabit that soft-glow pastoral world of the gentle giants in the ads. Glover, who is from Goldsboro, is a senior in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, double majoring in animal science and agricultural education. And this past summer, he took part in the once-in-a-lifetime internship, traveling the western part of the country caring for the Clydesdales. “This internship was perfect for me because I was able to travel, meet new people and work with draft horses,” Glover says. He was one of two interns who were chosen from among 300 applicants to travel with the hitches. A recent graduate from Kansas State University traveled with the East Coast Hitch, and Glover traveled with the West Coast Hitch. The term ‘hitch” refers to a whole outfit of harnessed Clydesdale horses hooked to the famous draft wagon. “In this case, we have

The hitch traveled with three semi-trucks – one with 6 horses, one with 4 horses and portable stalls, and the third with the wagon and harnesses, he explains. “We also had a passenger van to act as a shuttle to and from the hotel where we were staying and the barn.” Altogether, he visited 10 different states, including Oregon, Idaho, Montana, North Dakota, Wyoming, South Dakota, Colorado and Nebraska.

That’s CALS student Bradley Glover in the driver’s seat of the famous Budweiser draft wagon.

an eight-horse hitch because we travel with 10 horses, hitch eight and have two extras that are switched out from day to day,” Glover says. “We worked six days a week, starting at 6:30 a.m. and sometimes not ending until 9 or 10 p.m., depending on whether or not we had a night show.” Glover’s morning routine consisted of feeding breakfast to 10 horses, cleaning out stalls, and grooming and then exercising the horses every day. “A lot of what we did after that depended on our show schedule. We would usually set up camp in a different city every week and have three to four shows Wednesday through Sunday. A lot of washing went on as well, everything from the stalls, harnesses, trucks, wagon, horses and even the dogs,” he says. “It is really neat to think about the first time I was around the 10 ‘gentle giants’ and how they Glover was one of two interns who were chosen from among 300 appli-

all looked the same. After a couple of weeks, I was able to distinguish between each one and even tell the public about specific tendencies of each one. It is amazing to think about how each horse has its own personality. The crew of seven people I worked with taught me a lot, too, as their history with the company ranged from five months to 27 years.” His road west began in late January of 2015 with a posting he saw on BuschJobs. com, where he had been directed by one of the Clydesdale handlers he met when the horses were in Raleigh in the fall of 2014. Glover says, “I filled the online application out just like any other job posting, included a resume and waited for a phone call.” In March, he was notified that he had been selected as one of six applicants who would receive a Skype interview. “There were over 300 applicants altogether. I reserved a room in Hunt Library and had my interview on a Monday. The following Friday, I got a phone call from St. Louis offering me the opportunity of a lifetime,” Glover recalls. “I flew out of RDU on May 31 and returned home on Aug. 11.” After two days of orientation at the Anheuser-Busch InBev Headquarters in St. Louis, Missouri, Glover traveled to Vancouver, Washington, for his first stop.

cants to travel with the Budweiser Clydesdales. winter 2016

“My favorite stop was in Cody, Wyoming, during the week of Fourth of July,” he says. “Everywhere we went, people were generous, but in Cody, the whole town seemed to come together and be genuinely happy that the horses were there. I also loved the Western United States’ atmosphere, history and, of course, Yellowstone National Park.” Glover says he has come to realize that “when it comes to finding a job and thinking about the future, we put ourselves at a disadvantage when we limit our options to just North Carolina, or even just the South. We have this whole world to explore and enjoy.” Moreover, he says, “I believe my experiences at NC State have allowed me to arrive at this realization. I also believe that my coursework, along with other experiences outside of NCSU, enabled my passion to flourish.” He lists his classes in Introduction to

Equine Science, Equine Evaluation and Equine Farm Management as having provided a strong foundation. “Although I knew I wanted to work with animals, specifically horses, livestock or exotics, one day, I was able discover that draft horses interest me the most.” Now, he says, “My career goal is to either work with Budweiser Clydesdale Operations, or draft horses in general, or even in the animal agriculture industry.” Since returning to Raleigh he has found he is constantly reflecting back on his internship experiences “and trying to savor each memory.” Among those memories are attending the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally in South Dakota and the country’s largest charity softball tournament in North Dakota; meeting people like Sen. John McCain’s wife, Cindy, and the Clydesdale trainer for the Super Bowl Commercials; and working day-in and day-out with the world’s

most famous equines – memories that “are still hard to wrap my mind around,” he says. The internship also provided many life lessons, which he lists: “You never know how your work will end up impacting others; always appreciate the smallest aspects of life; no matter where you come from or might go, people are just people, and you can learn something from each one of them; work hard and always try to do your best; seek advice and suggestions on how to do better; never stop learning; and always follow your passion.” And it’s an experience Glover enthusiastically recommends. “The work was constant, the hours were long and the road life isn’t for everyone, but I don’t regret a single second of it,” he says. “This internship has been a pivotal part of my undergraduate experience, and I can’t wait to see where it leads to in the future.” – Terri Leith

Becky Kirkland

NC State wins $6.7 million grant to curb devastating fruit pest

orth Carolina State University has won a $6.7 million grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to undertake research and grower education efforts aimed at better managing a major new pest that causes hundreds of millions of dollars in annual agricultural losses. Under the four-year specialty crop grant from USDA’s National Institute for Food and Agriculture, NC State University scientists will join with researchers and extension specialists from across the nation to conduct on-farm tests aimed at finding new ways of effectively dealing with spotted wing drosophila, a tiny fruit fly that’s been causing big problems since it was first detected in North America in 2008. They’ll also develop tactics and tools for predicting risks from the pest, along with educational materials to help growers make the most economically and environmentally sound management decisions. NC State’s collaborators in the effort are from Michigan State, Oregon State, Cornell and Rutgers universities, as well as the universities of Maine; Notre Dame; Georgia; California, Davis; and California, Berkeley; and the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Agricultural Research Service.

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Dr. Hannah Burrack (left) and Ph.D. student Katharine Swoboda Bhattarai are studying how to deal with the spotted wing drosophila, to help fruit growers make economically and environmentally sound pest management decisions.

Guiding the initiative is Dr. Hannah Burrack, an associate professor of entomology with NC State’s College of Agriculture and Life Science and specialist with the North Carolina Cooperative Extension Service. Others from NC State who are participating in the project are

Dr. Max Scott of the Entomology Department, Dr. Zack Brown of the Agricultural and Resource Economics Department, Rhonda Conlon of Extension Information Technology, and Dr. Jean-Jacques Debois of the Southern Integrated Pest Management Center.

Monitoring for spotted wing drosophila (SWD) infestations is a key first step toward economical and sustainable management of the damage that the pest does to soft-skinned fruits, and finding effective ways to do that monitoring is one goal of NC State University entomology student’s research. Since 2012, Ph.D. student Katharine Swoboda Bhattarai has been working with Dr. Hannah Burrack to learn more about the highly invasive fruit fly and where best to place traps to monitor for their presence. Her first experiments were designed to determine if rates of infestation with SWD larvae were higher in areas closer to non-crop habitats – places like wooded areas and streams – than they were in other parts of fields at two Western North Carolina blackberry farms. “It’s been suggested that woods and these non-crop habitats can provide Drosophila suzukii with places to hide – a refuge from management treatments. So I really wanted to get an idea of the risk posed by these areas,” Swoboda Bhattarai said. “The idea was to give growers ideas of where they should monitor. Should you monitor close to non-crop habitat? Or should you monitor in the middle of your field?” She set up traps baited with sugar and yeast along transects that ran from wooded edges and water sources into crop fields, and then regularly examined those traps for adult insects and fruit in the fields for larvae. While she didn’t see a correspondence among larval infestation, trap captures and

Burrack explained that spotted wing drosophila, or Drosophila suzukii, lays eggs in such valuable soft-skinned fruit as raspberries, blackberries, blueberries, strawberries and cherries. The eggs develop into larvae, leaving the fruit unmarketable.

Becky Kirkland

Student’s research sheds light on monitoring for spotted wing drosophila

A single berry with a drosophila larva can cause a grower’s entire fruit load to be rejected.

distance from streams or ponds, she did when it came to wooded edges. At certain times of the season, when infestation rates were high overall, berries collected closer to a wooded edge were infested at higher rates than berries collected farther away from the woods, she said. Based on her findings, Swoboda Bhattarai recommends that once growers find flies in traps, they should pay close attention to fruit along wooded edges if they want to monitor for larval infestations. That’s because a single fruit with larvae can cause inspectors to reject a farmer’s entire shipment, she said. In more recent experiments, Swoboda Bhattarai has noted that despite big differences in how they reproduce, SWD behave a lot like other fruit flies when it comes to the times of day when they are most active and are likely to move in and out of fields. And that, she said, could have significant implications as she and other scientists continue their work to develop effective integrated pest management strategies for SWD. – Dee Shore

Marketers who buy fruit from growers to sell to grocery stores “have zero tolerance for spotted wing drosophila infestation in fruit,” Burrack said. “If they find a single larva in a fruit, the entire load from that grower will be rejected. Nationally, we estimate that these

economic losses to growers on an annual basis are over $700 million a year.” Spotted wing drosophila has been recognized as a pest in Asian fruits since the 1930s. “In just seven short years, it’s gone from initial detection in California to globalrange phenomenon,” Burrack said. “It’s found everywhere we grow the crops it feeds on in North America, it’s widely distributed in Europe, and it’s been found in South America. That’s a shocking rate of expansion for a pest organism.” Right now, Burrack added, growers have found only two ways of dealing with the insect: They use insecticides, or they cut their growing season short. In the United States, insecticide use has grown in host crops by at least 30 percent in response to spotted wing drosophila’s threat, she said. “Some berry crops rarely received any insecticide applications during harvest, and now they may receive at least weekly insecticide treatments,” she said. Still, even the best insecticide treatments may be rendered ineffective under adverse environmental conditions, such as rainy periods, she added. Not only that, spotted wing drosophila is such a prolific reproducer that scientists are concerned that the pest may develop resistance to the currently used treatments. These are among the reasons that Burrack and others involved in the grant-funded project want to help growers reduce their reliance on insecticides for managing spotted wing drosophila. “The economic impact is important. Berry crops and cherries are worth more than $4.37 billion annually in the United States and are grown on close to 42,000 farms. These crops are high value per acre, and for this reason, they are particularly important components of local-food systems,” she said. “Our biggest goal is to have things return to a management program that is sustainable both economically and environmentally for our growers, where all the tools effective against spotted wing drosophila are being utilized, and pesticide use occurs only when absolutely necessary.” – Dee Shore

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CALS takes next steps in improving innovation and efficiency he College of Agriculture and Life Sciences’ organizational chart will undergo major changes July 1, as the college’s departments, centers and programs align around four focus areas: Plant Systems, Animal Systems, Human and Resource Systems, and Food, Biochemical and Process Systems. The changes are designed to allow for more strategic, interdisciplinary decisionmaking across the college, according to a memorandum Dean Richard Linton sent to college faculty, staff, alumni and other stakeholders in December. In announcing the changes, Linton also shared news that NC State University’s provost Warwick Arden has agreed to help fund 40 new CALS faculty positions over the next four years. “This is an unprecedented investment and is a real game changer for the work we do, with a lasting impact for decades to come,” Linton noted.

perspectives

The investment, in conjunction with a new organizational framework, “will better position faculty, staff and administration to think, work and invest more strategically across all disciplines,” Linton said. “This combination will help CALS achieve our mission of interdisciplinary discovery, learning and engagement to create agricultural and life sciences opportunities that benefit our state, the nation and the world. “It recognizes that while our opportunities are boundless,” he said, “our resources are not.” The reorganization will reduce the number of departments in the college from 16 to 12. The departments of Entomology and Plant Pathology will merge, as will the departments of Crop Science and Soil Science and the departments of Agricultural and Extension Education and Youth, Family and Community Sciences. The plan also calls for CALS’ phased divestiture in the Department of Statistics,

which is currently shared with the College of Sciences. The chart below illustrates how departments, centers and programs will be organized. Each system will be guided by a CALS associate dean along with a rotating center head or department head. Linton said that the systems “will provide the needed flexibility for department heads, center directors and program leaders to work more closely together across disciplines.” It will also allow them to develop collective goals and make systemwide budget and hiring recommendations to CALS administration, he added. Linton and associate deans held two forums in December to outline the changes, answer questions and hear from the college’s faculty, staff and stakeholders. A website at go.ncsu.edu/livingourvision has more information.

noteworthy

ALUMNI

ersistent rains and looming off-coast Hurricane Joaquin didn’t deter more than 160 guests from coming to celebrate the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences’ annual Alumni Awards event Oct. 2. The reception and ceremony took place at the NC State University Club, as Dr. Wanda Collins and North Carolina Agriculture Commissioner Steve Troxler were named the college’s 2015-2016 Distinguished Alumni. Also receiving awards on this Friday night before CALS Tailgate and Ag Day weekend were 12 Outstanding Alumni and seven Outstanding Young Alumni. Dean Richard Linton presided over the awards presentations, assisted by George Simpson, president of the CALS Alumni and Friends Society. “The alumni here tonight represent the fulfillment of the promise of our land-grant mission in academics, research and extension,” Linton said. “Their professional achievements and service to NC State and their communities exemplify the extraordinary possibility of achievement to our current students, who are our future alumni and leaders. Thank you all for your commitment to excellence.” The CALS Distinguished Alumnus Award, established in 1974, annually honors individuals who have made a commitment to service and outstanding contributions in their respective careers. Chosen by the college’s administration, the awards honor excellence in implementing progressive state, national and/or international programs; development of improved technology or science; or other outstanding achievements in the field of agriculture and life sciences. Thus, Collins and Troxler join a select group of top scientists, physicians, business and political leaders, agriculturalists and public servants who have been named CALS Distinguished Alumni. Collins is an expert in international agricultural research and development. From 2001

until her retirement in 2012, she served as director of the Plant Sciences Institute, Agricultural Research Service, USDA, Beltsville, Maryland, and was acting director of the Beltsville Agricultural Research Center from September to December 2012. She earned her 1974 master’s and 1976 Dr. Wanda Collins and N.C. Agriculture Commissioner Steve Troxler Ph.D. degrees from NC State in plant pathology and genetics. In 1976 she became a also surprised her with a video he had taken CALS assistant professor of horticultural sciduring on his recent trip abroad. It featured ence and advanced through the ranks to full congratulations from some of Collins’ colprofessor. leagues in Africa, including CALS’ Dr. Craig In 1995, Collins joined Environmentally Yencho and Dr. Robert Mwanga, one of her Sustainable Development/Agricultural Reformer students, who are involved in sweet search and Extension at the World Bank to potato research in Kenya. promote the development of a global agriculTroxler, who holds a 1974 CALS degree tural research system. She joined the Interin conservation, took office as commissioner national Potato Center (CIP) in Lima, Peru, as of the N.C. Department of Agriculture and deputy director general for research in 1997. Consumer Services in 2005. Since then he While at CIP she oversaw a global research has focused on developing new markets for program on potatoes, sweet potatoes and the state’s farm products, preserving working Andean root and tuber crops; led the Global farms and protecting the state’s food supply. Initiative on Potato Late Blight Disease and He was raised in the Guilford County comwas instrumental in developing CIP’s Vitamin munity of Browns Summit. He has spent his A for Africa program, as well as Urban Harentire career in agriculture as founder, owner vest, a global program on urban horticulture. and operator of Troxler Farms, where, over the She has also consulted and served as a years, the family farm has produced tobacco, technical adviser and scientific liaison officer wheat, vegetables and soybeans. for USAID, with experience in Latin America, Also active on the national level, Troxler is the Caribbean and Nigeria. She is currently a past president of the National Association chairman of the board of trustees of the Interof State Departments of Agriculture (NASDA) national Center for Tropical Agriculture, headand former chairman of NASDA’s Food Reguquartered in Cali, Colombia. Collins resides in lation and Nutrition Committee. Additionally Emerald Isle. he was president of the Southern Association While presenting Collins her award, Linton of State Departments of Agriculture.

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Marc Hall

Troxler, Collins honored as CALS Distinguished Alumni at Alumni Awards event

Marc Hall

Outstanding Alumni (with degree years and departments)

Front row, from left: Mullen, Clark, Collins, Troxler, Jackson. Middle row: Harrington, King, Easton, Sepanski, S. Smith, Coronel. Back: Morris, R. Smith, Lane, Godwin, K. Jordan, N. Jordan, Armstrong, Barger, Olsen, Hipps.

The commissioner serves on the boards of the N.C. Foundation for Soil and Water Conservation, the Rural Economic Development Center and the N.C. Biotechnology Center. He is a member of various organizations, such as the N.C. Tobacco Research Commission and the Southern United States Trade Association. Troxler has been recognized with numerous awards, including the 2014 Public Service Award from the N.C. Travel Industry Association. Other recent honors include the 2013 Forest Conservationist of the Year Award from

the N.C. Wildlife Federation, the Meritorious Service Award from the N.C. Soybean Producers Association, the Elliot O. Grosvenor Food Safety Award from the Association of Food and Drug Officials, the Distinguished Service Award from the N.C. Agricultural Foundation and a leadership award from the Western North Carolina Livestock Center and WNC Communities. Joining Collins and Troxler as event honorees were the college’s Outstanding Alumni and Outstanding Young Alumni for 2015-2016:

Gwen Clark, 1986, Agricultural and Extension Education Dr. Barry Goodwin, 1988, Agricultural and Resource Economics Charles Easton, 1962, Agricultural Institute Richard D. Smith, 1967, Agricultural Institute Dr. Karen Jordan, 1981, Animal Science Norman Jordan, 1978, Animal Science James Hipps, 1973, Biological and Agricultural Engineering Dr. Laura Harrington, 1993, Entomology Dr. Pablo Coronel, 2001, 2005, Food, Bioprocessing and Nutrition Sciences Dr. Richard Olsen, 1998, 2006, Horticultural Science Dr. Kate Barger, 1998, Poultry Science Dr. Mike Mullen, 1987, Soil Science Outstanding Young Alumni Tara King, 2003, Agricultural and Extension Education Sara Lane, 2001, Agricultural and Resource Economics Sterling Smith, 2001, Agricultural Institute Dr. Todd Armstrong, 2000, Animal Science Dr. James Morris, 2009, Applied Ecology Tiffany Sepanski, 2006, Food, Bioprocessing and Nutrition Sciences Dr. Brian Jackson, 2002, Horticultural Science – Terri Leith

CALS alumnus addresses agricultural challenges from farm to fork as a PepsiCo R&D director

mentor once told Gabe Gusmini, “You and I have the same problem: We see something broken, we’ve got to fix it.” And fix things, Gusmini does. A plant breeder by training, the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences alumnus is a junior executive and research-and-development director with PepsiCo, a multinational corporation responsible for such brands as Pepsi, Frito-Lay, Quaker Oats and Tropicana. Working in the Agro Discovery and Sustainability Research unit, based in St. Paul, Minn., he focuses on solving agricultural challenges and on building stronger teams to accomplish that work. The team addresses production problems faced by farmers growing PepsiCo’s ingredients

perspectives

while striving to improve the crops’ processing abilities and nutritional and flavor qualities. “What we are doing is building an organization that works with agriculturally derived raw materials so that we can drive innovation in the finished product, based on what comes into the processing plants to begin with,” Gusmini says. Gusmini’s research unit often works with external partners with unique research capabilities, he says. Through a master agreement with NC State, for example, PepsiCo funds more than $1 million of CALS research in the departments of Crop Science, Horticultural Science and Food, Bioprocessing and Nutrition Sciences. A key project involves noted plant breeder Dr. Todd Wehner, who taught Gusmini as he

pursued graduate degrees in plant breeding at NC State in the early 2000s. Gusmini credits Wehner with preparing him for career success. “Nothing in my career would have happened if I hadn’t met Dr. Wehner. He not only gave me opportunity, but he also gave me the skills to be effective from day one in my job,” he says. Out of gratitude, Gusmini strives to give back, serving as an adjunct faculty member at both NC State and the University of Minnesota. He regularly speaks at the universities, meets with students to help them prepare for their careers and serves on their graduate advisory committees. Working with graduate students is rewarding on two levels, Gusmini says. “First, gradu-

the world as he continued his efforts to globalize breeding programs and fasttrack them into the genomic era. During these years, he developed a penchant for managing teams and helping them adapt to change. “I build organizations, I catalyze the shift to new R&D Dr. Gabe Gusmini (left) represents PepsiCo in a research project partapproaches, I emnership with CALS Dr. Todd Wehner, who taught Gusmini at NC State. power and develop people to take over, then I move on and go to making a breakthrough contribution that leads do something else,” he says. to a well-fed, healthy population worldwide. After Syngenta Gusmini joined a former “I haven’t set aside the idea of owning a farm boss at PepsiCo to help him build the new one day – I may do that,” he says. “But right Agro Discovery and Sustainability Research now, I’m driven mostly by my desire to make unit. “That was August 2013, and I’ve been a bigger impact on global food security and there ever since,” Gusmini says. quality in a shorter period of time than done He sees himself continuing to work toward before.” – Dee Shore

CALS’ Sam Pardue to become UGA dean

r. Sam Pardue, College of Agriculture and Life Sciences alumnus and associate dean and director of academic programs, has been named dean of the University of Georgia’s College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences. Pardue’s appointment is effective March 14. Dr. John Dole, currently head of the CALS Department of Horticultural Science, will succeed Pardue as CALS associate dean on an interim basis. Pardue holds a bachelor’s degree in poultry science and a master’s and doctorate in physiology, all from NC State. “I came to NC State in August of 1973 as an 18-year-old freshman from a small town in the foothills of North Carolina. Since that time I have spent all but eight years affiliated with the university as a student, faculty member and administrator,” Pardue said. “Like so many of my fellow alums, NC State profoundly influenced my life. It provided enumerable opportunities and helped shaped who I am. It is, and forever will be, a special place.” During his time at NC State, Pardue received national teaching and student recruitment awards, was granted three patents, received

more than $2.5 million in external grants and contracts, and published nearly 100 journal articles, book chapter and abstracts. He also facilitated donations in Sam Pardue excess of $13 million for academic programs, helped double the number of poultry science majors, expanded distance education offerings and served as the co-principal investigator on a U.S. Department of Agriculture grant to increase the multicultural diversity of agriculture students. Dean of NC State’s College of Agriculture and Life Sciences Richard Linton shared, “Sam has done an exceptional job leading our academic programs office, and I am thankful for his leadership and passion for NC State. … We have already discussed potential ways for UGA and CALS to work together in the future, and I look forward to exploring increasing the partnership between these universities.” – Janine Brumfield

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Becky Kirkland

ate students are very innovative. They look at problems in a different way – without pre-fixed ideas and concepts and so they can really drive disruptive discovery,” he says. Second, helping prepare the next generation of workers helps PepsiCo reach its talent sustainability goals. Gusmini realized his passion for managing corporate research-and-development teams through a rapidly-evolving career. Growing up in a suburb of Milan, Italy, he dreamed of having his own farm someday. While attending the University of Milan to earn a bachelor’s degree in agricultural sciences, he joined a group of agronomists with their own consulting firm. He also launched a few small agricultural and environmental ventures with others. In 2001 he came to North Carolina following his life partner, then a post-doc scientist in genetics. Interested in pursuing a graduate degree from NC State, he went door to door around campus looking for opportunities. In his first conversation with Wehner, the professor asked if he liked plant breeding: “I said, ‘You know, I only failed one class, and that was plant breeding. But it’s science, and I kind of like the subject,’” he recalls. Wehner then asked if he liked watermelon. “I said, ‘I like it as a plant, but I can’t eat it because it bothers me.’” Still, Wehner offered him a watermelon breeding assistantship, and Gusmini accepted. In 2005, he graduated with a Ph.D. He’d studied watermelon’s resistance to gummy stem blight, a disease caused by Didymella bryoniae, and he’d found genes related to flesh and rind color, yield and other important watermelon characteristics. After graduation, he went to work in Naples, Fla., with Syngenta, a global agribusiness company. While he was responsible for breeding zucchini and summer squash varieties for the United States and Mexico, he and a colleague in France began to see value in globalizing breeding programs “to leverage more germplasm and avoid genetic and resource redundancies between programs,” he says. “The company liked a lot what we were doing. It was a new approach in the vegetable division, and so they gave both of us the opportunity to advance careers. In my case, I was offered the worldwide leadership role for breeding sweet corn, garden beans, and peas, and that’s what brought me to Minnesota,” he says. The next five years took Gusmini around

perspectives

Dr. Matt Bertone (above), at work in the Plant Disease and Insect Clinic, is also an accomplished photographer. Below, his shot of a crab spider. Matt Bertone

ou could call Dr. Matt Bertone a pest detective. If a farmer needs to know what kind of unusual caterpillars are munching on his corn crops, if a gardener wants to know what’s taking out her tomatoes or if a doctor wonders whether the spider that bit a patient was a dreaded brown recluse, Bertone is there to help. Bertone is an entomologist with NC State University’s Plant Disease and Insect Clinic. Each year thousands of North Carolinians turn to the clinic, mainly to find out what’s damaging their crops or gardens, and it’s his job to handle the cases involving insects and related creatures. Getting the proper pest identification, he says, is the key first step to helping clients figure out how best to control the damage. Bertone has been building his encyclopedic knowledge of insects and arthropods since he was just 5 years old. As a child, he says, he was too busy drawing pictures of scorpions, reading books about insects and looking at puddle water under microscopes to care much about what other kids considered cool. And for as long as he can remember, he wanted to be an entomologist. “That’s part of the reason why I love my job. To be good at it, you have to have broad experience,” he says. “And I’ve been looking at insects basically my whole life.” Born in New York and raised in Pennsylvania, Bertone earned a bachelor’s degree in biology from Salisbury University in Maryland. Wanting to specialize in entomology, he ended up at NC State for graduate studies. With Dr. Wes Watson, now interim head of CALS’ Department of Entomology, Bertone collected and counted almost 90,000 dung beetles to determine which times of the year each of the 30 species he encountered were present in cattle pastures. Then, with Dr. Brian Weigmann, a William Neal Reynolds Distinguished Professor of entomology, Bertone looked at the genetic and evolutionary relationships among the most primitive flies – creatures such as the crane fly and the mosquito, which have been around for some 250 million years. The Ph.D. work was part of a National Science Foundation-funded project to map the entire evolutionary tree of life for Diptera, an order of more than 150,000 species. From there, Bertone took a post-doctoral

Becky Kirkland

Bertone helps solve insect mysteries

research position that called for him to learn more about wasps, then another in which he looked at every arthropod he could find in 50 local homes. Through the latter project, he ended up identifying more than 10,000 insect specimens, including what he calls “bits and pieces” of dead arthropods. Bertone says that having such diverse experiences positioned him well for the job he’s held in the Plant Disease and Insect Clinic for the past two and a half years. Whether he’s answering questions “for clients with commercial operations needing good answers to keep their businesses afloat or for homeowners who find something weird and interesting in their homes,” he says, Bertone is happy to help. Bertone also frequently helps out students or other scientists who need insect IDs. “For their research, they want the best identifications possible, so they’ll bring specimens to me, and in maybe 10 seconds I can usually tell them what it might take them hours to determine,” he says.

In addition to identifying arthropods, Bertone serves as a guest lecturer in CALS classes and presents an every-other-month webinar for Master Gardeners and Cooperative Extension agents. He also frequently speaks at workshops and other events. For example, last fall he led a workshop in Washington, D.C., to teach public garden employees to identify pests. And he delivered a presentation titled “The Most Interesting Critters You’ve Never Heard Of” at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences’ annual BugFest. In the winters, when work in the clinic typically slows down, Bertone devotes some time to curating specimens, both ones he collected and ones that are part of NC State’s Insect Museum. He also publishes fact sheets and scientific papers, such as one he co-wrote in 2014 in the journal Clinical Pediatrics about the first two reported cases of brown recluse spider bites in North Carolina. Although those spider bites were nearly fatal, Bertone is quick to calm fears that recluses are spreading. “Brown recluse spiders have a bad rap. They are probably the most feared spiders, but they are also among the ones least likely to be encountered here,” he says. In North Carolina, they are native to only the western tip of the state, and they are, as their name implies, secretive and not aggressive. Getting to dispel misconceptions about spiders and insects is one of the most compelling aspects of Bertone’s job. And so, he says, is the variety. “Every day is different,” he says. “One day someone might want to know how to preserve butterflies for collections, and another day I might be asked where insects that were found in industrial shipping containers came from.” As if his job didn’t bring him face-to-face with enough insects, Bertone spends a good bit of his free time creating striking, super-close-up photos of some of the most interesting subjects, which for Bertone means most all of them. “All of these insects and critters are really important to people’s lives, whether they are agricultural or medical pests – or even if they are doing beneficial things like returning nutrition to the soil,” Bertone says. “It’s great to be able to answer people’s questions and help them find ways to manage the ones that are pests. It’s a perfect job.” – Dee Shore

noteworthy

GIVING

Terri Leith

he fall joint meeting luncheon of the N.C. Agricultural, Dairy and Tobacco foundations on Nov. 10 was charged with excitement over news of a potentially impactful future for NC State University, the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences and the state. “It’s an exciting time for agriculture in North Carolina,” said Dr. Richard Reich, associate commissioner of the North Carolina Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, who brought greetings from Steve Troxler, state agriculture commissioner, as well as news about the successes of the recent N.C. State Fair. “There could not be a more exciting time for N.C. agriculture,” said Dr. Richard Linton, CALS dean, who updated the foundation board members on the college’s Plant Sciences Initiative (PSI). The initiative aims to include an interdisciplinary research and collaborative systems approach that builds on the strengths of academe, industry and government to increase agricultural yields and profitability – and to make North Carolina the global hub for plant-related innovation. “It is indeed a very exciting time,” said Richard Campbell, CALS’ new chief communication officer, as he outlined strategic efforts to

Virginia Yopp, executive director of Extension development, and Richard Campbell, CALS chief communication officer, meet before Campbell delivers news about the Connect NC Bond Package.

engage college stakeholders and inform audiences about a new bond package that will, among other things, enable the plans for the PSI and needed research facilities to come into being, without incurring new taxes or tax increases. Dr. Travis Burke, former interim Extension director, (left) and foundaThe Connect NC tions members Nelson Powell and Paula Woodall attend the joint founbond, announced in dations luncheon. October by N.C. Gov. stituents in what the bond can mean for the Pat McCrory, NC State Chancellor Randy state’s citizens both rural and urban. Woodson and Troxler, along with other state “Agriculture built North Carolina,” he said. leaders, is a $2 billion package that citizens “The N.C. Plant Sciences Initiative will keep it across the state will vote on March 15. The progrowing.” posed Plant Sciences Research Complex is one Returning to the podium, Linton said that, of two university projects for the NC State Cenif asked the biggest potential impact of the tennial Campus that the bond would benefit. PSI, he might say it would be the innovaThe bond would also provide for a new tion that grows the state’s biosciences jobs, NCDA&CS lab, enable projects in 76 counties markets and businesses, or it could be the and enhance vital infrastructure investment, economic dividends of increased productivas well as funding building and repairs for ity and profitability. Or perhaps the promise parts of the UNC system and modernizing the of educational opportunities and of ongoing state’s community colleges. significant basic and applied research. Or “We’re very blessed to have the partnerperhaps healthy, safe, affordable food. Or the ships with these three foundations and the generation of public and private partnerships NCDA&CS,” Campbell said. “And with the among multiple disciplines. PSI, we have a chance to revolutionize how However, he said, “I truly believe I’d like plant science is done.” us to say in the future that this was the first Thus, he said, the challenge now for the time North Carolina came together to push foundations members and other college stakesomething like this forward. And this can be holders “is to be ambassadors and educate an example, a template of what we can do not your communities on what Connect NC is.” only in plant sciences but in other research While asking those present “to fire up your areas to grow North Carolina.” ag base,” he reminded them that “this is in fact As a screen image near the podium proa historic agriculture investment in our state.” claimed, “It’s a new day in North Carolina He called upon the group to help mobilize Agriculture.”– Terri Leith local community efforts to help educate con-

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Terri Leith

New day in North Carolina agriculture heralded at joint foundations meeting

n Sept. 9, Dr. H. Robert “Bob” Horton, William Neal Reynolds Distinguished Professor and professor emeritus of molecular and structural biochemistry, and his wife, Roberta, signed a memorandum to establish a new biochemistry scholarship endowment at NC State University. The H. Robert and Roberta A. Horton Biochemistry Scholarship Endowment was created in an agreement between the Hortons and the N.C. Agricultural Foundation Inc. in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. The endowment will support awards to CALS students based on both merit and need. Horton is an international authority on protein processes and enzyme systems. A native of St. Louis, Missouri, he received his 1956 bachelor’s degree in chemistry from the Missouri School of Mines and Metallurgy. His 1958 master’s and his 1962 Ph.D., both in biochemistry, are from the University of Missouri. He came to NC State in 1964 as an assistant professor of chemistry, transferring to the Department of Biochemistry in 1966. He rose in the ranks to full professorship in

CALS Advancement

Horton endowment created to fund biochemistry scholarships

Dr. H. Robert Horton signs the agreement creating the new scholarship.

1972. He was named an Alumni Distinguished Professor at NC State in 1979. In 1981, he was one of three CALS professors honored with the college’s most distinguished professorship, when he was named a William Neal Reynolds Distinguished Professor. Presiding at the September signing celebration, held in Polk Hall on the NC State campus, was Dr. E. Stuart Maxwell, interim head of the CALS Department of Molecular and Structural Biochemistry. Dr. Sam Pardue, CALS associ-

ate dean and director of academic programs, brought a message of appreciation from college administration. Bob Horton, endowment donor, also spoke at the signing event. Horton reminisced about meeting his wife, the former Roberta Geehan, at the University of Missouri, where she earned her master’s degree in medical microbiology. He recalled his arrival at NC State in 1964 and the formation of the Department of Biochemistry in 1965. In 1974 he moved his family to Sweden where he was a guest professor in the lab of Dr. Klaus Mosbach. And in 1989 he wrote the first draft of Principles of Biochemistry, an internationally translated text now in its fourth edition. Among his NC State students was Pardue, who took Horton’s biochemistry graduate course. “Not only was Dr. Horton an outstanding teacher,” Pardue said, “but he was a truly kind person who cared about helping his students learn and be successful.” – Terri Leith For more information about this and other endowments for the department, please contact Chris Cammarene-Wessel, cwessel@ncsu.edu or 919-515-7678.

uby Vann Crumpler McSwain, or “Miss Ruby” as she was known at NC State University, where she was a generous benefactor, died Aug. 30 at age 97. Among her donations to and support of the university is her gift funding the Ruby C. McSwain Education Center building and complex at the university’s JC Raulston Arboretum. Designed to enhance the educational activities at the arboretum, the center houses the York Auditorium, staff offices, volunteer office, membership office and headquarters for the Garden Club of North Carolina. It also features the first green roof at NC State University. A native of Sampson County, where she was born March 31, 1918, the youngest of six children, she grew up in Salemburg and then attended Pineland College. She married Ernest P. McSwain in 1945, and over the years the two conducted entrepreneurial ventures in Sanford and in Ontario, Canada.

perspectives

Becky Kirkland

Remembering Ruby C. McSwain, philanthropist and JCRA benefactor She was a garden and horticulture enthusiast, as was her husband. Among their businesses were florist and greenhouse operations in Lee Ruby C. McSwain County. The center at NC State that is named for her is nestled among the extensive gardens of the JC Raulston Arboretum, a place beloved by Miss Ruby and where she was regularly a guest of honor at the arboretum’s annual Gala in the Garden. She also served on the board of the N.C. Agricultural Foundation Inc., in the university’s College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, and was a member of NC State’s William Joseph Peele Society, a lifetime giving society for those having given $1 million or more. She was awarded an honorary doctorate in hu-

mane letters by the university in 2005. She also was honored in 2001 with the Order of the Long Leaf Pine, awarded by the governor of North Carolina. Her generosity to CALS and Cooperative Extension included her support of the building of the Ernest and Ruby C. McSwain Education and Agriculture Center in Lee County. She was likewise a longtime supporter of Meredith College in Raleigh, as donor to its library, its scholarship programs and its grounds, and as a trustee. She was a donor to and trustee of the North Carolina Museum of Art, as well. Speaking of Miss Ruby to The Sanford Herald, Keith Oakley, CALS assistant dean for College Advancement and president of the N.C. Agricultural, Dairy and Tobacco foundations at NC State, said, “She was really one of the most prolific philanthropists in the last 20 years.” He added that her gift to establish the Education Center at the JCRA is “still the largest gift in the history of the arboretum.”

either high winds nor pouring rain could dampen spirits at the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences’ 24th annual Tailgate, which took place Oct. 3 before kickoff of the NC State-Louisville football game. While the event featured popular Tailgate staples like barbecue, college exhibits and a visit from Mr. and Mrs. Wuf, there also were a number of new elements. For starters, Tailgate took place in two locations for the first time in the event’s history. The outdoor experience, featuring CALS exhibits and a DJ, was held under a large tent at the east side entrance of PNC Arena. Among a number of different interactive exhibits, visitors could “meet” live tarantulas at the Entomology Department booth, sample fresh sliced North Carolina apples at the Department of Horticultural Science booth and check out the award-winner quarter-scale tractor built by Biological and Agricultural Engineering students. The tent remained crowded and festive, despite the less-than-favorable conditions whipping at its sides. The arena’s club level was host to the indoor experience, which included a traditional Tailgate meal, sponsor exhibits, entertainment and giveaways. Participants could snap a selfie in a photo booth with cardboard likenesses of CALS Dean Richard Linton and North Carolina Agriculture Commissioner Steve Troxler, sample Howling Cow ice cream and chat with students in the Warren Fellows Program, among many other activities.

Becky Kirkland

Traditional tailgate activities enhance scholarship support

Becky Kirkland

During the barbecue lunch, Linton gave brief remarks, along with George Simpson, president of the CALS Alumni and Friends Society Board, and NC State Chancellor Randy Woodson. “This is a great day for CALS and NC State,” Linton said. “Tailgate is one of my favorite events of the year, along with last night’s CALS distinguished alumni awards event, and I am proud to be dean of this college. I want to thank each of you for all that you do to support CALS and advance North Carolina agriculture.” Also new at Tailgate this year was the unveiling of a limited-edition CALS T-shirt featuring a unique student design that celebrates agriculture. Proceeds from sales of the T-shirts, which were produced in North Carolina with cotton grown by North Carolina farmers, will benefit the CALS Alumni Enhancement Fund ScholarTailgaters queue up for the ever-popular Howling Cow ice cream from the college’s Department of Food, Bioprocessing and Nutrition Sciences. ship.

Becky Kirkland

CALS Tailgate, which took place in areas inside and outside PNC Arena, was again held in conjunction with the annual NC State Ag Day at Carter-Finley Stadium.

The Entomology Department’s exhibit was a big hit.

Tailgate was held in conjunction with the third annual NC State Ag Day, which is hosted in partnership by NC State Athletics, Wolfpack Sports Properties and the college. Located in the Fan Zone outside PNC Arena, Ag Day featured family-friendly interactive exhibits, agriculture machinery displays and entertainment. As the rain tapered off, visitors crowded the Fan Zone for a chance to sample local foods, play games and take selfies in the TapSnap photo booth. During the football game, Elizabeth Walsh, a freshman animal science major from Greensboro, was recognized on field as the inaugural recipient of the Ag Day Scholarship. In addition to this annual scholarship, an endowment was introduced during the 2014 event that will leave a lasting legacy for this significant partnership between athletics and agriculture. winter 2016

Throughout the course of the game, individuals involved in the North Carolina agriculture industry were featured in video board segments. “Through Tailgate and Ag Day, we’re proud to celebrate and honor those individuals who dedicate their lives to improve the health and economy of our state – on and off the farm,” Linton said. “What better way to celebrate North Carolina’s nearly $80 billion agriculture and agribusiness industry than with these two fantastic events?” – Suzanne Stanard

More scenes from Tailgate 2015

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