22 minute read
Don McMahon: A Career at the Aggie Creamery
By Madison Leak
When Don McMahon and his wife sat down to make a list of pros and cons about leaving their home in Australia to move back to the United States, Aggie Ice Cream was the first bullet point on the “Pros” list.
Perhaps it was foreshadowing his future, as Don McMahon would become one of the most influential professors to oversee the Aggie Creamery.
McMahon completed his bachelor’s degree in applied chemistry from the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology when Tony Ernstrom moved in nearby. Ernstrom, then the head of what is now USU’s Department of Nutrition, Dietetics and Food Sciences, was in Australia on sabbatical. The two became friends, and Ernstrom invited McMahon to complete his graduate studies where the sagebrush grows. McMahon made his first move to the U.S. in 1979 and earned his Ph.D. in food science. Upon completing his graduate studies, he moved back to Australia and began working for Kraft Foods in cheese research and development. A faculty position opened up at USU, and though he and his wife had just purchased a home, they were excited by the opportunity to return to USU and made the move back to Utah in 1987. His research focused on a variety of dairy products, including ultra-high temperature pasteurized milk and improving the performance of mozzarella and cheddar cheeses. McMahon later became more involved with the Aggie Creamery when he became director of the Gary H. Richardson Dairy Products Laboratory.
“We’re not just making ice cream,” McMahon said. “Of course, we want to make ice cream, but really, it’s integral to our teaching and research in food sciences.”
Using the creamery as a resource for graduate students is something that McMahon doesn’t take for granted. “Having staff at the creamery who work with this equipment all the time is very helpful,” McMahon said. “It makes it much easier for a student to come in and get the information, help, and milk that’s available to them to do whatever project they are working on. Whereas, if there wasn’t a creamery, it would take far more time to procure milk from the farm, bring it to the lab on campus, and do all of the other work necessary to even begin a project.”
The creamery’s top-selling Aggie Blue Mint was created under McMahon’s direction as he assisted students in developing the ice cream that embodies Aggie pride.
In 2009, McMahon’s research article Supramolecular Structure of the Casein Micelle received the Most Cited Award from the Journal of Dairy Science, an honor that indicates the importance of research to the industry as gauged by how frequently the article is cited by other scientists. The article was the culmination of almost 20 years of work and to date has been cited more than 270 times by food scientists worldwide.
McMahon also devoted much of his time to the Western Dairy Center, housed at Utah State, serving as the center’s director
until his retirement. McMahon was influential in creating the BUILD Dairy program which stands for building university, industry linkages through learning and discovery. It funds research through the dairy checkoff program, aka DairyWest, with support from companies in the region.
“The thing about BUILD Dairy that I’m proud about is its focus on students,” McMahon said. “It funds student research at Utah State and within the region. Currently, one-to-two million dollars of external funding come into the program every year, which means new food science faculty members have support for their research programs that attract students, develop students’ knowledge and skills, and broaden our graduates’ career opportunities.” In August of 2021, McMahon finished his 34 years on USU’s faculty and happily retired, but it’s safe to say that his legacy will continue through the students he has taught and in the smiles shared and memories made surrounding Aggie Ice Cream. �
By Don McMahon, former director of the Aggie Creamery, emeritus professor of dairy foods technology, Department of Nutrition, Dietetics and Food Sciences
The Aggie Creamery participated in Day on the Quad during the first week of fall semester 2004, scooping free Aggie ice cream for students. Along with Whitney Wilkinson from USU Public Relations and Marketing, we organized a Design an Ice Cream competition and invited students to submit ideas for new flavors.
We received about 300 recipe ideas (including a couple of joke recipes for flavors like ham and eggs and broccoli and carrots) and from those, we chose five: chocolate ice cream with marshmallow swirl and graham crackers, vanilla ice cream with brownie chunks and swirls of chocolate and caramel, peppermint ice cream colored blue with white chocolate chunks, cake batter ice cream with chocolate and brownies, and vanilla ice cream with blueberries and swirls of raspberry and chocolate fudge. The peppermint recipe was submitted by Sarah Casperson with the suggested name of Aggie Iceberg.
The next step was assigning food science students in the dairy technology and processing class that I taught to come up with prototypes of the top suggested flavors. As part of this course, students learn about technologies used in the dairy foods industry to convert milk into a variety of products, and the laboratory segment on freezing and making ice cream is always popular. Part of the learning process is to source ingredients. That meant finding white chocolate pieces designed specifically for ice cream as regular white chocolate becomes too hard when used in ice cream. The white chocolate we use melts more at room temperature, and we have to keep it in our -20°F freezer until it’s ready to be used. We had a good peppermint essence that we used in our Cookie Mint and Chocolate Chip Mint ice creams but we needed a blue coloring that didn’t look too much like bubble gum or candies that make your mouth blue.
My students found that pieces of white chocolate in the blue ice cream did not have enough contrast in color to be obvious. One of the great appeals of ice cream is that we enjoy contrasts in our food. Ice cream provides more contrasts than almost any other food: contrasts in color, texture (smooth ice cream versus crunchy chocolate, nuts, and cookies), temperature (cold ice cream versus hot fudge), and in taste (creamy sweet ice cream versus the added components).
To increase the contrasts in Aggie Iceberg, I suggested adding chocolate cookie pieces.
My students and others evaluated the ice creams, made some additional changes, and Steve Larsen (then our Aggie Creamery technical specialist) made enough of three of the recipes to invite other faculty, staff, and students to a taste-off. The highest scoring ice cream was blue mint with cookies and white chocolate. The three students who originally suggested the recipes were given the remaining buckets of their ice creams to enjoy with their family and friends.
With the addition of chocolate cookies, the concept of icebergs in a sea of blue mint ice cream no longer applied, and it needed a new name. That same year, we were working with USU Public Relations and Marketing (and an outside marketing firm) to update the label design for our half-gallon cartons of ice cream and to introduce single-serve cups. Part of this effort was to display the creamery’s heritage as one of the initial programs when Utah State University was founded in 1888. Whitney Wilkinson suggested the name “Aggie Blue Mint” and it became the first flavor to specifically call out its special association with USU. We have continued that tradition with other flavors developed by the creamery, including Aggie Bull Tracks, True Aggie Night, Aggie ROTC, and Aggie Space Debris. But, so far, Aggie Blue Mint remains the most popular flavor of Famous Aggie Ice Cream. �
ARDESHIR ZAHEDI
October 1928 – November 2021
By Lynnette Harris and Maren Aller
Notable Utah State University alumnus and donor, Ardeshir Zahedi, died on November 18, 2021, at his home in Switzerland. He was 93.
Globally celebrated as a lifelong champion of world peace and understanding, Zahedi had a hand in shaping more than three decades of geopolitical history. Twice he served as Iran’s ambassador to the United States.
“Ardeshir has had an incredible impact on global peace throughout his lifetime,” said USU President Noelle E. Cockett. “He reached across the world and made a difference. We will be forever grateful for his foresight and humility, as well as his generosity to USU.” Zahedi’s widely respected and far-reaching influence and diplomacy were also hallmarks of his service as ambassador to the United Kingdom’s Court of St. James, Iran’s foreign minister, and head of the Iranian delegation to the United Nations General Assembly. He worked closely with seven U.S. presidents, entertained countless iconic artists and celebrities, and yet once proclaimed, “I was born at Utah State University.”
“Ardeshir Zahedi is probably the most internationally distinguished graduate of Utah State University and he truly loved this university and Cache Valley,” said Ken White, dean of the College of Agriculture and Applied Sciences. “He was a remarkable man, and he credited Utah State and his experiences here as the start of many good things that happened in his life. We are grateful for his love and support. His compassionate deeds will live on after him, and I hope that generations of students who experience his generosity through his endowment will appreciate his generous spirit and the extraordinary life that it represents.
Above: Ambassador Ardeshir Zahedi with President Gerald and First Lady Betty Ford.
After leaving his home in Iran to study at Utah State University in 1947, Zahedi later graduated in 1950 with a bachelor’s in animal science. He then returned to tumultuous times in Iran, where he shaped the country’s modern political history while serving as
“In the nine years that I have known him, he has been much more than a donor, he has become a dear friend. But he was like that with everyone. He was like a magnet who just drew people to him, and they went away feeling better and buoyed up from spending time with him.” - Dean Ken White
an aid to his father, the prime minister, and as adviser, confidant, son-in-law, and friend to the last shah of Iran. His maternal grandfather served as the first prime minister of Iran. He received important honors from his home country and governments around the world as well as honorary degrees from 11 universities, including a doctor of law and humanities from USU.
After graduating, Zahedi’s deeply held feelings and support for USU remained constant. He gave back to the university in numerous ways, including creating the Ambassador Ardeshir Zahedi International Endowment in the College of Agriculture and Applied Sciences, and contributing to various additional scholarships across the university. He was inducted into the College of Agriculture and Applied Sciences Alumni Hall of Honor in July 2002 and received a Distinguished Service Award from the USU Alumni Association in 2007. To honor his generosity to the college and impact on the world, the Ambassador Ardeshir Zahedi Atrium was designated in USU’s Agricultural Sciences Building, where a portrait and story of his work are displayed.
“Seeing his portrait in the atrium reminds us that many people around the world know the headlines about the glamourous parts of his life, but the remarkable thing to us is not that he withstood monumental upheavals and challenges, but that he emerged from them with his generous spirit and concern for humanity around the world intact,” White said. “His attachment to USU after so many decades reminds us that the things that happen for our students while they are on our wonderful campus might result in outsized impacts in the world. His portrait captures a nobility that isn’t just the result of a family’s position or wealth. It is an attribute of his incredible character. �
JOE CRUM
Creates Opportunities for Other Kids from Wyoming
By Lynnette Harris
Joe Crum is a paradox. A kid from a small Wyoming town who earned high school first-team all-conference honors in football, basketball, and track, but who doesn’t consider himself a “natural” athlete. The “little Crum” next to older brother Gary who played for the Miami Dolphins, but who worked up to bench
pressing 475-480 pounds in college. A guy who grew up a solid fan of University of Wyoming football and assumed he’d become a Cowboy and follow in his father and brother’s footsteps, but who took an offer to play at Utah State. Joe is so thoroughly an Aggie that he packed a U State flag from his home in Texas to adorn his Logan hotel room the weekend of November’s USU vs. Wyoming game — and hoped that his nephew, Wyoming’s 6’ 7” offensive tackle Frank Crum, would have a great game but that his teammates would not. He’s a former player who sees a neurologist to address memory and cognition problems that stem from having had multiple, severe concussions but recalls details of games and individual plays and players from 40+ years ago. He’s a man who is proud of his commitment to outwork anyone in order to reach his goals yet sees God in the details of his life, even the disappointments. He’s what some might call a gentle giant, but “gentle” isn’t likely to be how the guys who played football with and against him would describe him.
Joe was in high school when USU’s football staff stopped off in his hometown of Rawlins one Friday night before that weekend’s match-up between Utah State and the University of Wyoming. There wasn’t a lot to do in Rawlins, so USU’s coaches went to see that night’s high school game. The next week, USU assistant coach Terry Shea called to say that USU was interested in Joe. “Several colleges offered me football scholarships,” Joe said. “My dad always told us that ‘Sports is a means to an end.’ He’d point out great players like Johnny Unitas and say, ‘He’s got to do something for the rest of his life after football,’ so I thought a lot about where I could get the education I wanted. I also wanted to go somewhere
Photo by McKay Jensen
why i give
1982 Football program courtesy of Utah State University Archives (USU_16.1/2:55).
to make my own way and not be known as Gary’s little brother.”
Joe came to USU and set a very high bar for hard work that first semester, but he nearly lost his football scholarship when he simply dropped everything — including all his finals without notifying anyone — to comfort loved ones back home and be a pallbearer when one of his closest friends died in an industrial accident. When he returned to campus, Joe decided he had to get serious about his classes. He became the guy who sat in the front row of all his classes, went to tutoring sessions almost daily so his assignments didn’t get derailed when he didn’t understand something, studied hard, and trained even harder than before.
“I got a key to the weight room because coach was tired of me knocking on his door at night to get a key so I could go work out,” he said. “Me and my roommate, Clancy O’Hara, would work out about three nights a week during the season and watch Johnny Carson in the weight room on the little black and white TV with tinfoil on the antennae. That was always my thing: I will outwork you. I will out tough you. Therefore, you won’t have a chance.”
The description of Joe Crum in the 1982 USU Football Guide reads, “Capped a strong spring workout season with a selection by his teammates as one of USU’s ’82 tri-captains. Regarded as ‘dirt tough’ by coaches. Likely USU’s strongest football player, bench pressing 475-480 pounds. ‘His attitude is everything’ says line coach Rod Marinelli … exhibits outstanding work habits.” Joe was named to the first-team allleague his junior and senior years and was expected to go in the first or second round of the NFL draft. On the roster of that allWest Coast team, he’s the only one of the 22 players listed who wasn’t selected in the first three rounds. That’s because on draft day he was in traction at a hospital in Salt Lake City due to serious back injuries.
“That was a blessing from God because I’d already had seven concussions, some that required a resuscitator and being in the hospital,” he said. “We just didn’t know the dangers then. One more might have been the end of it.”
Later, he was set to play for the United States Football League’s Pittsburgh Maulers. As he was working out in Logan to prepare for the rigors of pro training camp, news came that the league had folded. It was the afternoon of the last day to add or drop USU classes that quarter. Aggies of that generation remember that adding or dropping classes in the 1980s meant getting a paper form signed by professors and turning it into the registrar’s office by the end of the business day. Joe wasted no time, enrolled for the last eight credits he needed to graduate, and is thankful to this day that he didn’t play more football that would likely have caused additional brain injuries. He earned a bachelor’s degree in finance with a minor in agricultural economics. After starting a career in banking (“but I’m not a suit-and-tie-every-day guy”), Joe worked for Purina Mills, where he helped to launch Purina Livestock Management Services and worked with cattle producers across the southern states. Later, he was with Treasure Valley Business Group, selling potatoes for fries in the U.S. and Mexico. He’s now been with Wilbur Ellis, a Texas-based company involved in agricultural research and agribusiness, since 2005. The experience has shown him even more of what’s possible for people working in agriculture.
“Ag has always been deep and dear to my heart,” Joe said. “I am interested in giving back to ag because it has long been my business. When I was a kid growing up, there just weren’t a lot of opportunities in Rawlins unless you wanted to go into the mining industry, or gas and oil, and those were very up and down. I didn’t want that. I wanted to go to college, and I knew athletics could be a way out.”
Joe is giving back to agriculture and people in and around his hometown by endowing a scholarship in the College of Agriculture and Applied Sciences. The endowment will grow and the scholarship will be available to graduates of Wyoming Indian, Rawlins, and Wind River high schools. His early banking career experiences connected Joe with indigenous people living on the Wind River Reservation, and often with the pervasive poverty and poor living conditions there. More recently, his work with Wilbur-Ellis has included working with the Navajo Nation and its extensive, high-tech farming operations outside Farmington, New Mexico.
“I want to give opportunities to someone on the Wind River Reservation or from my high school to be able to attend Utah State, get a degree, and build a career in the ag sector,” he said. “Utah State came to my game on that Friday night and took a chance on an underweight kid from Wyoming. If they hadn’t, I would not have the kind of life I’ve had. I want to give young people from Wyoming who may be somewhat disadvantaged, or just don’t see what’s possible, the same kind of opportunities that I have had.” �
BIOINFORMATICS
Big Data Pushing the Boundaries of Human Knowledge
By Ethan Brightbill
Imagine you are a scientist studying how the genetics of wheat and a particular fungus interact. The fungus has maybe 5,000 genes. The wheat might have more than 50,000 — 10 times the number of the fungus. But to understand the relationship between pathogen and plant, you need to look at how the fungus and wheat genes affect each other.
That means potentially more than 250 million possible gene combinations.
Until recently, explained Assistant Professor Rakesh Kaundal, that sort of research would have been more than a little time-consuming. “To find the function of those interactions,” Kaundal explained, “it would take a thousand years or even more to do experiments one by one.”
Kaundal — not to mention other scientists — did not have a millennium to spare.
Instead, he taught himself computer programming and earned a postdoctoral degree in bioinformatics on top of his doctorate in plant breeding and genetics. In doing so, he joined a growing number of scientists and engineers who use big data to push the very scope of what human beings are capable of studying.
As a member of the Department of Plants, Soils and Climate faculty and director of the Utah State University Bioinformatics Facility, Kaundal has been instrumental in bringing high-performance computing (HPC) to USU. With money from grants and other sources, he secured a graphical processing unit (GPU) node for students and faculty alike to use in their research.
“It’s almost 500 times faster than central processing unit-based HPC,” Kaundal said. “The machine learning algorithm my students
use for training and testing used to run for one month, two months, even more. With a GPU, it can finish in three days.”
With the ability to process larger amounts of data in record time, researchers are better able to understand whatever subject they choose to study. Sifting through such large amounts of information allows them to spot patterns and relationships that simply wouldn’t be apparent at a smaller scale.
“The mission is how to get from information to inference,” he explained.
The work done at the USU Bioinformatics Facility, also known as the Kaundal Artificial Intelligence and Advanced Bioinformatics Lab (KAABiL), has far-reaching implications. Kaundal and other USU researchers are applying HPC to infectious diseases, plant and animal genetics, soil microbiomes, subcellular functions, and above all, developing more efficient databases and algorithms so that other researchers can better catalogue and understand data. In other fields, the use of algorithms and big data has led to everything from more efficient spam folders to the camera technology in Tesla self-driving cars to the rapid genetic sequencing that created the COVID-19 vaccines. Likewise, the work at KAABiL
Left: Researchers and students all contribute to advances in USU’s Bioinformatics Facility. Pictured here are (back row, left to right) Rousselene Larson, David Guevara, Rakesh Kaundal, Shelby McCowan, and Andrew Jouffray; (seated, left to right): Kartik Saini, Naveen Duhan, Kolton Hauck, Raghav Kataria.
is leading to concrete advances in science and technology. From drones that can weed fields without human supervision to developing salinity-resistant plants needed to combat world hunger, the future will look very different in part because of data science. And while computing power can outpace human capabilities, the work at KAABiL is not done in isolation. While Kaundal is a major force in the lab — his work has been cited almost 600 times and has appeared in publications including Briefings in Bioinformatics, Scientific Reports, the International Journal of Molecular Sciences, and more — both he and his lab group are firm believers in the power of teamwork in science. Kaundal has collaborated on more than 30 projects, including four with United States Department of Agriculture labs and several with outside universities, industry scientists, and international colleagues. The KAABiL website is home to a collection of university-produced software that other researchers can access for free.
When asked what students and others interested in bioinformatics should do to prepare themselves, Kaundal mentioned the importance of learning a computer language, studying biology, practicing public speaking, and learning to work with people from diverse fields and backgrounds. But he also doubled down on the importance of contributing to the greater good of science and society as a whole.
“My advice to students is to think more broadly about how you can serve science or humanity in general,” said Kaundal. “That is true for every discipline. We are not working for ourselves. That’s why we are in academia.”
Researchers like Kaundal aim to make their mathematical models 100% accurate in sorting data. In many fields, nothing less than that kind of precision will suffice. But Kaundal never forgets why his work matters in the first place.
“The major goal,” he said, “is to give back to the community.” �
Office of the Dean 4800 Old Main Hill Logan, UT 84322-4800
NON-PROFIT ORG US POSTAGE PAID UTAH STATE UNIVERSITY
THE BASTIAN AGRICULTURAL CENTER
As more of Utah’s agricultural land is converted to commercial and residential developments, one family has made a gift of $41.25 million to Utah State University to honor and preserve the state’s farming past, present, and future. This gift represents the largest single donation in USU history.
The Bastian family, in concert with USU Extension, has founded the Bastian Agricultural Center, which will be dedicated to educating the public about contemporary agriculture and inspiring future generations through education and programs in science, engineering and technology applied to agriculture. The center will be located at the Salt Lake County Equestrian Park and Event Center in South Jordan. The Bastian family previously gave an additional $6 million toward the initial creation of the center.
The goal of the USU Bastian Agricultural Center is to provide information and experiences to an increasingly urban population, including adults and 4-H youth, local government, constituents, and corporate leaders. The center will provide a space to share the most recent agricultural knowledge and will feature four areas of focus and facilities dedicated to natural resources, STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math), plant production and education, and equestrian, livestock, and animal production.
Learn more at the center’s website: BastianAgriculturalCenter.org
