perspectivesThe Magazine of the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences

Winter 2013

NC STATE UNIVERSITY

Richard Linton

Focusedon the

Future

Ri h d LiNew CALS Dean

Within our Features is an oppor-tunity to get to know Bill and Marsha Prestage of Prestage Farms Inc., whose recent $10 million gift endowed and renamed our Poultry Science Depart-ment as the Prestage Family Depart-ment of Poultry Science. They talk about what motivated their gift that will fund teaching, research and Exten-sion programs, as well as establish a professorship in turkey physiology, nutrition and immunology.

We also show you around a unique and immensely valuable re-

source in our Department of Biological and Agricultural Engineering. It’s the BAE Research Shop, a full-service 7,500-square-foot facility that provides machining, fabrication and assembly of functional items — every-thing from laboratory apparatuses to tobacco balers — requested (and often newly imagined) by faculty mem-bers, staff and graduate students for their lab or fi eld work and research.

Our Features also spotlight student Becky Dobosy, a nutrition major who is already working to address global hunger issues, while our College Profi le highlights the 36-year Extension career of Sharon Rowland.

Our News section includes reports of students travel-ing to Costa Rica as Global Plant Health Interns and a roundup of our latest International Programs activities; tomato breeding and woodland crops research; a new grant for salmonella research; an update on our Agro-ecology Education unit; and an interview with a national award-winning pre-vet student.

And we have an array of outstanding CALS graduates profi led in our Alumni section, along with many new en-dowments announced in Giving.

These stories illustrate what I’ve been learning the past few months: the passion and engagement at the heart of a College with both an extensive reach and grasp.

First Impressionsince Sept. 15, my fi rst day

on the job as dean of the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, I have been in learning mode – learning about the reach and breadth of this great College and getting to know the people who carry out its research, teaching and extension missions, as well as the benefi ciaries of its work. They share a passion and commitment for the vital role the College and N.C. State University continue to play in lives of North Carolina’s citizens.

Since that fi rst day’s experience at CALS Tailgate 2012, my listening and learning itinerary has taken me across the state, from the mountains to the piedmont to the coastal plain and the coast itself and back again to the heart of the Triangle. I’ve now seen fi rsthand how the College reaches into all areas of the state.

I’ve been impressed by the state’s diversity of agriculture and life sciences and the roles CALS research has played in enabling that diversity. I’m keenly aware of our essential role in educating and graduating tomorrow’s agricultural and life scientists, agribusiness leaders and agriculture professionals – those who can change the world through eff orts addressing food security, biotechnology, sustain-ability, environmental impacts of agriculture, water quality and human health. And I’ve encountered in our Coopera-tive Extension Service a network of connections, a culture of responsiveness and a tradition of impacts unparalleled at any other university I know.

Another rich source of information about the College and its work for me has been Perspectives. The CALS magazine regularly showcases and exemplifi es those research, teaching and Extension eff orts, along with news about outstanding faculty, students, alumni and giving. This Winter 2013 issue is a great example.

Richard LintonDean College of Agriculture and Life Sciences

Dr. Richard Linton

Mar

c Hal

l

S

Keep up with CALS strategic planning!Go to: http://www.cals.ncsu.edu/strategicplan

contentscontentsThe Magazine of the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences

Winter 2013

Vol. 15, No. 1

Managing Editor: Terri Leith

Design and Layout: Vickie Matthews

Staff Photographers: Becky Kirkland, Marc Hall,

Roger Winstead

Staff Writers: Dave Caldwell,

Natalie E. Hampton, Terri Leith, Dee Shore,

Suzanne Stanard

Contributors: Erin McCrary, Ramona Herring

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, N.C. State University,

Raleigh, NC 27695-7603.

William R. “Randy” Woodson, Chancellor

Richard H. Linton, Dean and Executive Director

for Agricultural Programs

Sam Pardue, Interim Associate Dean and

Director, Academic Programs

Joe Zublena, Associate Dean and Director,

North Carolina Cooperative Extension Service

David Monks, Interim Associate Dean and Direc-

tor, North Carolina Agricultural Research Service

Sylvia Blankenship, Associate Dean for

Administration

Keith D. Oakley, Executive Director, Advancement

919.515.2000

Celeste Brogdon, Executive Director, Alumni

and Friends Society

Prin

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by T

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, Gar

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N.C

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perspectivesThe Magazine of the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences

Winter 2013

NC STATE UNIVERSITY

Richard Linton

Focusedon the

Future

Ri h d LiNew CALS Dean

NC STATE UNIVERSITY

perspectivesF E A T U R E S

2 Special People, Special GiftBill and Marsha Prestage share memories of the growth of their company – and their reasons for making a

historic gift to N.C. State.

4 Listening, Learning, Leading New CALS Dean Richard Linton has hit the ground running as he gets to know the College, N.C. State and

North Carolina.

6 Super Shop The BAE Research Shop is the custom fabrication place, where designs become real devices and concepts

become fi eld-ready — expertly, quickly and economically.

10 Sustained Eff orts CALS student Becky Dobosy travels near and far to put nutrition, sustainable ag knowledge to work.

12 College Profi le Sharon Rowland retires after a career devoted to the betterment of Cooperative Extension and the people it

serves.

N O T E W O R T H Y

14 NEWS Interns learn valuable life lessons while studying tropical plant pathology in Costa Rica • Ex-

ploring the world: Sabella leads CALS’ opportunity-fi lled international programs • Tradition meets innovation in CALS scientist’s tomato breeding efforts • CALS is omnipresent at 2012 State Fair • Farming the forest: CALS expert helps landowners grow crops beneath the trees • All in the family: 4-H mother and daughter have both been state presidents • Agroecology farm and program have grown and improved • Extension, teaching will play roles in research grant to combat salmonella • Word whiz: CALS student wins national medical terminology contest • Landscape design students capture ‘wild energies’

27 ALUMNI 2012-2013 CALS Distinguished Alumni, Outstanding Alumni honored • Ghostly blooms:

Alum honored for orchid-breeding efforts • Can-do spirit lands Yard-Nique founder on TBJ ‘40 under 40’ list • Persistence pays for alumnus who leads CALS biotech spinoff

33 GIVING Scholarship endowment honors 4-H’s Thearon and Vanette McKinney • New CES

endowments/funds announced at fall meeting • Distinguished service honored at joint foundations meeting • Wayne and Judy Skaggs create endowment for water resources and hydrology research

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

The Cover: Taking the helm, Dean Richard Linton tours the state and prepares to launch a strategic planning initiative for the College. (Story, page 4) Photo by Marc Hall

2 perspectives

On the road from Michigan to South Carolina in 1960 with their three young sons

and family dog packed into the car, Bill and Marsha Prestage never imagined where their journey would lead.

They were off to start a new life in Spartanburg, where Bill had landed a job.

Today, the family owns and op-erates Prestage Farms Inc., a mas-sive operation that employs nearly 2,000 people, contracts with 450 independent farms and produces more than a billion pounds of tur-key and pork annually.

Success has been relatively quick, but certainly not easy.

“I can remember being in the back room of our fi rst offi ce, with the mice scurrying around, trying to fi gure out how to set up our ac-counting systems,” Marsha Prestage remembers with a little laugh. “We’ve worked hard, and we’re so blessed that a lot of the same peo-

ple who helped the company get started are still with us today.”

The Prestage family – longtime N.C. State supporters – recently en-dowed the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences’ Poultry Science Department with a $10 million gift that will fund teaching, research and Extension programs as well as establish a professorship in turkey physiology, nutrition and immunol-ogy. N.C. State Chancellor Randy Woodson announced the new Prestage Family Department of Poultry Science at an event in October.

“There are only six poultry sci-ence departments left in the coun-try, and we think N.C. State is one of the best,” Bill Prestage says. “The department has been good to us, good to our state and good to our nation, and we believe it’s im-portant to help preserve it.”

Marsha Prestage fi nishes her husband’s thought, saying, “We’re also hoping we can encourage

people who might come from an agricultural background and can’t afford to go to school, people from the country who want to get right back out into agriculture, by creat-ing opportunities for them to get a good education.”

Bill and Marsha met as teenag-ers in urban Michigan and, before long, were “young married people” with babies, according to Marsha. They decided to pick up and move south when Bill was offered a sales position with feed company Cen-tral Soya. He quickly climbed the ranks, eventually promoted to a sales territory that encompassed much of North Carolina and Virginia.

It was when Bill met Otis Carroll in 1967 that the company that would become Prestage Farms took root.

“We formed a partnership selling turkeys and hogs in North Carolina and Virginia,” Bill says. “A little while after Otis passed away in 1981, we all decided to go our sepa-

Bill and Marsha Prestage share memories of the growth of their company – and their reasons for making a historic gift to N.C. State.

Special People, Special Gift

by Suzanne Stanard

Bill and Marsha Prestage (above) are shown at their company headquarters in Clinton and (opposite)

with their family and Chancellor Randy Woodson at the October announcement.

Suzanne Stanard

rate ways, which worked out well for everyone. Then Marsha and I started this company, Prestage Farms, in 1983.”

The fl edgling company had 28 employees at the time and quickly began acquiring and supplying other operations. Within a year, Prestage Farms Inc. set up corpo-rate headquarters in Clinton.

“It was hilarious,” Marsha re-calls. “We moved the computer up here in the back of the pickup truck with our CFO sitting with his arms wrapped around it.”

Bill says, “We brought hogs in at the same time with our fi rst contract grower, Norwood Sumner Farms; then we started building our own farms.”

The contract grower relation-ship is a hallmark of the company’s success, Bill says. Prestage Farms furnishes the animals and supplies

to its growers, most of whom are independent farmers who own their own land.

“It’s a cooperative deal,” Bill says. “At the time we got going here in Clinton, a large number of growers in this area were eager to diversify away from tobacco and raise turkeys and hogs. I bet 95 percent of those farmers are still with us today. I like to think of us as a big family.

“The people we deal with in agri-culture are really the greatest people

in the world,” he says. “They’re honest, hard-working, good people, and the work ethic and dedication they have to food production is just unparalleled. People don’t realize how dedicated farmers are. It’s a 24-hour-a-day job, 365 days a year.”

North Carolina also is home to Prestage Foods Inc., the processing arm of the Prestage Farms of North Carolina turkey division. Alongside its corporate offi ces, the Prestage Farms Inc. headquarters boasts two feed mills, a warehouse, mainte-nance department, turkey hatchery and laboratories.

The company has four other di-visions outside North Carolina: in Mississippi, South Carolina, Iowa and Oklahoma.

And it’s truly a family affair. Bill and Marsha’s son Dr. Ron

Prestage, who earned a bachelor’s

degree in poultry and animal sci-ence from the College in 1977, is president of the Mississippi and South Carolina divisions. His wife, Dr. Cindi Prestage, graduated from Auburn University’s Veterinary School in 1982, having been admit-ted there after three years of under-graduate work at N.C. State. But she also is a CALS animal science alumna, completing her degree in 2008. Their daughter, Katie, works in sales and marketing at Prestage Foods, and their son Zack (a 2011

winter 2013 3

graduate of the College’s Animal Science Department) is a turkey service person in the South Carolina turkey division.

Bill and Marsha’s son Scott is vice president of the turkey divi-sion, and their son John, a 1981 graduate of the Animal Science Department, is a senior vice presi-dent with the company.

“Bill used to take the kids out with him on Saturdays calling on his customers,” Marsha says. “This exposed them to agriculture at early ages, which we believe is so important. We need to have more people interested in agriculture and understand its impact.

“We certainly want to enhance the status and impact of agriculture through our company and through our gift to the university,” she says. “We want kids to be able to get practical degrees.”

In addition to hiring local tal-ent, Bill points to university and community college support as a key component of the company’s growth strategy – and a big reason for its success.

“We worked with N.C. State from the get-go,” Bill says. “If we called and asked for advice, they would help with any problem we might have, from animal health to feeding systems. The Extension Service was particularly excellent.”

Marsha adds, “And the latest chapter is that the N.C. State Food, Bioprocessing and Nutrition Sci-ences Department has been help-ing us with product development. It’s a whole new world. We had no experience with processing when we decided to start that side of the business in 2004, and N.C. State has been a huge help.”

While Bill and Marsha say that their sons run the company’s day-to-day operations, there is no resting on laurels for these two. They’ve worked hard to make an improbable dream come true, they say, and now they’re beyond happy to be able to give back. �

Marc Hall

4 perspectives

Dr. Richard Linton, named dean of the College of Ag-riculture and Life Sciences

in mid-September, is in full-bore learning mode and feeling a bit, well, like a sponge, trying to soak in as much as he can.

Linton’s fi rst day on the job – he succeeds Dr. Johnny Wynne, who retired in July after more than 8 years as CALS dean — was Sept. 15, which was also the date for the annual CALS Tailgate celebration. So on the new dean’s fi rst day, he attended Tailgate and met hundreds of College faculty, staff, alumni and friends.

Since then, Linton has been crisscrossing North Carolina and the N.C. State University campus, getting to know CALS better.

Linton comes to CALS and N.C. State from The Ohio State University, where he was chair of the Department of Food Science and Technology, the largest food science and technology program in the country. Before that, Linton, an expert in food microbiology and developing food-safety systems to reduce the risk of foodborne illness, was a professor of food

science, center director and unit leader at Purdue University.

At Purdue, Linton directed the Center for Food Safety Engineer-ing, which provides knowledge to detect and prevent chemical and microbial food contamination. In his 17 years at Purdue, Linton also coordinated interdisciplinary and integrative efforts as an assistant and associate director with the university’s Agricultural Research Services unit.

All the new dean’s degrees — a bachelor’s in biology in 1988 and master’s and Ph.D. in food science in 1991 and 1994, respectively — are from Virginia Tech, which intro-duced him to N.C. State and CALS.

“When I was at Virginia Tech, I visited North Carolina State many times and had a number of differ-ent projects with North Carolina State faculty,” Linton says. “So I’ve been on campus about 20 times during my career, but I never had the opportunity to tour the state.”

While Linton was familiar with N.C. State and CALS, he didn’t really know the College or the

university. Much of his focus since Tailgate and that fi rst day on the job has been on getting to know the College and its many stake-holders around the state.

Linton says his days typically be-gin with a working breakfast, include meetings with various groups and in-dividuals on and off campus through-out the day and end with as many as three evening meal meetings.

He has toured the state, stop-ping at the Mountain Horticultural Research and Extension Center near Asheville, the Morehead City area, the Center for Environmental Farming Systems in Goldsboro, Clinton, Wilson, Greenville, the Eastern 4-H Environmental Edu-cation and Conference Center in Columbia, the North Carolina Research Campus and Plants for Human Health Institute in Kan-napolis, Charlotte, Winston-Salem and the Research Triangle Park.

“I describe it to my wife as every day I’m a sponge,” says Linton. “And at the beginning of the day, I’m a dried sponge that tries to ab-sorb as much information as I can.

Listening, Learning,

Leading

by Dave Caldwell

New CALS Dean Richard Linton has hit the ground

running as he gets to know the College, N.C. State and

North Carolina.

Dean Rich Linton is shown (above) in his Patterson Hall offi ce and (in back-

ground photo) touring the N.C. Research Campus in Kannapolis.

Marc Hall

Suza

nne

Stan

ard

winter 2013 5

Some nights when I get home, that sponge is so saturated with new in-formation, that if you try to pick up anything more, the brain has a hard time processing it all. But that’s OK, there is always a new morning.”

Linton says he has been pleas-antly surprised by the diversity of North Carolina agriculture and life sciences and the connections that link CALS throughout the state.

“I understand the ag and life sci-ences system very well,” he says. “But I come from states that are not nearly as diverse as North Caro-lina. That’s what makes this oppor-tunity so interesting.

“Certainly before coming to North Carolina State to interview, I looked at what was offered rela-tive to agriculture and life sciences. But you really have to come and you really need to visit the state to understand the breadth of all the different commodity groups, the ag biotech industry and the life science-related industries. So, yes, I read about it, but I’ve really come to understand the potential and the possibilities by making visits around the state.”

And then there’s North Carolina Cooperative Extension, the univer-sity’s premier outreach effort.

“I think my biggest surprise — and it’s been a good surprise — is there’s a phenomenal network here with Cooperative Extension and its positive connection to stakeholders and the community,” Linton says. “I think what I’ve been most sur-prised about is when I go out and visit in the state and go to different meetings, how critical the outreach effort of Cooperative Extension is and how connected people feel to the university. At the other land-grant institutions that I’ve been at, I’ve not seen nearly that connec-tion with community and connec-tion with stakeholders. North Caro-lina State is different.”

He has also been impressed by the commitment he has seen on and off campus.

Says Linton, “I think the com-mitment of people here at North

today are more than cows and corn and tractors.

“They (students) don’t realize that agriculture and life sciences in-volve genetic engineering for plant breeding. They don’t understand that it involves high-level science with ag biotechnology. They don’t realize that it means developing new technologies to process food,” says Linton.

CALS must attract the best students, Linton adds, in order to educate and graduate the next gen-eration of agricultural scientists and workers. Without that generation, he points out, “We won’t be able to meet the world’s grand chal-lenge, which is to feed the world in 2050,” when experts estimate food production will need to increase by 70 to 100 percent. “It is our job to meet this challenge.”

Linton’s days are on the hectic, spongy side, but, he says, “That’s what I need to do. In my fi rst six months, it’s all about intensively listening to people and learning about what’s going on, so that I can best prepare myself to lead. And that listening needs to continue throughout my tenure as dean.

“You’ve got to listen and learn before you can lead, and I think leadership is about providing op-portunities, providing opportunities for faculty and staff and students on campus and providing oppor-tunities for us to grow as a state in agriculture and life sciences. And that’s what I think my job should be all about.” �

Carolina State to what they do in research, teaching, extension and international programs is outstand-ing. And I also think that the com-mitment and passion I see through-out the state from stakeholders is the same way.”

Linton is launching a strategic planning initiative for the Col-

lege, and he sees the initiative guid-ing CALS into the future.

“I think the biggest challenge is to be able to understand our capabilities today, to understand the future needs of agriculture and life sciences and to be able to effi -ciently connect the two together so that we can continue to grow upon the really good things we already do and to be able to grow into new areas where we will have the op-portunities of the future,” he says.

He sees strategic planning help-ing “us understand who we are to-day and who we need to be in the future. I think it’s critically impor-tant for us to do this, and I think the time is right for this process.”

Strategic planning will fi ll in the details; however, Linton sees areas where it is clear that institutions like the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences can make a difference in the state’s, nation’s and world’s future.

These areas of opportunity, he says, “are likely to include things like energy and bioenergy, food safety and food security, climate change, water quality and water quantity, foods and human health, sustainability and local foods, ag-ricultural biotechnology and the impacts of agriculture and life sci-ences on the environment.

“I think another opportunity that I hear as I go around the state is this growing interest and need to be able educate potential students about what agriculture and life sci-ences are and the job opportunities in these areas.”

Linton said the College can do a better job of recruiting the best and brightest students by explaining that agriculture and life sciences

In October, Linton, accompanied

by Dr. Anthony LeBude, toured

the Mountain Horticultural Crops

Research and Extension Center.

Dave Caldwell

6 perspectives

‘We’ve built maybe thousands of different items over here. Two

are seldom the same,” says David Buffaloe, instrument shop supervi-sor for the research shop in the Department of Biological and Agri-cultural Engineering in N.C. State University’s College of Agriculture and Life Sciences.

He’s talking about the vast range of products, the devices and designs that come out of the shop where he’s worked for 36 years.

“This shop is very benefi cial to the university,” he says. “People bring their thoughts, designs, stuff they need for the labs, items they thought were irreparable. We can save them some money and get them going.”

The BAE Research Shop, locat-ed in N.C. State’s Weaver Labs, is a full-service 7,500-square-foot facil-ity that provides machining, fabri-cation and assembly of functional items and prototype equipment for clientele in BAE, CALS and throughout the university. Products are requested by faculty members, staff and graduate students to aid

them in their lab or fi eld work and research. For everything from laboratory apparatuses to tobacco balers, the shop fabricates parts and prototypes from ferrous and non-ferrous metals, wood and all types of plastic materials.

While there are some other shops on campus, the BAE shop is unique for a number of reasons. First, size matters: Because the BAE Research Shop is one of the largest work areas on campus, with extra-large garage door entry, projects are not restricted by height

and weight. Then there is the specialized equipment, including the Computer Numerical Control (CNC) vertical milling machine, used for complex 3-dimensional, 3-axis applications, and the multi-axis CNC wire Electrical Discharge Machine (EDM), the only one of its kind operating at N.C. State.

And fi nally there is the staff of highly skilled instrument makers who execute the extreme high-pre-cision machine work that is regu-larly required. Buffaloe works with two fulltime staff members, Ken Coats and Steve Cameron, who are specialized in the fabrication manu-facturing industry. Together they take the device concepts brought in to them and make them reality.

“We’ve had people come in and draw things on a paper towel and say, ‘This is what I want,’” Buffaloe says. “So we sit down with them and design it out and take it to the computer and generate a 3-D work-

The BAE Research Shop is the custom fabrication place, where designs become real devices and concepts become fi eld-ready – expertly, quickly and economically.

by Terri Leith

Terri Leith

Super Shop

Buff aloe displays the wire that per-

forms the electrically charged preci-

sion cutting on the multi-axis CNC

Electrical Discharge Machine (EDM).

Terri Leith photos

Shown (bottom to top) are the BAE

shop woodcut machine, David Buf-

faloe at the CNC lathe, Steve Cameron

at the CNC vertical milling machine,

and a monitor showing a computer-

generated 3-D image of a newly de-

signed tool.

winter 2013 7

research: They shock the water and the fi sh come up; they can study and weigh the fi sh, before releasing them,” he explains. “We took the boat and outfi tted it with outrigger booms and electrical tentacles — it looked like a spider. We had to manufacture the main body that held the tentacles, which were stainless steel cables that dangled into the water.”

Another memorable job was one Buffaloe’s staff did for another shop on campus, the College of Engineer-ing’s Precision Engineering Shop, he says. “They wanted an airplane vacuum wing mold where their cli-ent could cast a wing in his lab.”

colleges for a frac-tion of its retailvalue.

In fact, the shop itself is “a valuable resource for saving money on lab research proj-ects for the whole university,” he says. “For example, early summer we fi nished a simulated river fl ow device for the Biology Department for a post-doc from his sketches. We may do several hundred such projects a year.”

He opens fi le folders and of-fers some random examples of the shop’s work.

“Here’s a neat little project I did with Biomedical Engineering — a rod insert to align the spine of a scoliosis patient, a device to bend the rod to fi t the spine curvature of the particular patient,” Buffaloe says.

“And here’s a shock boat for the Biology Department, for fi sh

ing drawing (via CAD/CAM/3-D software). From that we can gener-ate a machine program that can be fed into our CNC milling machine, CNC lathe and/or our EDM ma-chine.”

The EDM is used to cut intricate shapes in hard and soft metals and “will basically cut or burn anything that will conduct electricity,” says Cameron, who displays an item the shop fashioned on the EDM. It’s a tiny, propeller-shaped valve for a pulse-jet engine, with a material thickness less than the width of a hair.

The EDM uses an electrically charged wire, of .010 in. diameter, to make its cuts by electrically ma-chining away conductive material. It can be used to make multiple angle cuts such as those found in gears and sprockets, or geomet-ric shapes and curved lines, such as specialty surgical and medical tools, as well as parts and equip-ment used in the aerospace indus-try.

To illustrate the precision, Buffaloe holds up a V-notch weir made on the EDM. For this device, which is used in measuring water fl ow in water-control projects, the V-notch has to be a precise point made by the wire on the EDM. “It could not be precisely cut any other way,” says Buffaloe.

And ever mindful of cost effi -ciency, Buffaloe reveals that he was able to get this machine off state surplus from one of the community

David Buff aloe (left) shows a V-notch weir, cut on the

EDM, for use in water-fl ow measurement. Below is a

portion of an airplane wing mold during the milling

process. At bottom is the BAE shop-built garden scooter

designed to give farmers with disabilities more mobility

in the fi eld.

Courtesy David Buffaloe

Terri Leith

Cour

tesy

Dav

id B

uffa

loe

8 perspectives

Appelboom notes that his ex-periences with the BAE Research Shop have been very positive.

“They have never let me down,” he says. “Even if I use my ‘Crayola’ graphics package, as they call it, to draw something up to have made, they seem to be able to interpret it and end up with what I wanted.”

He offers as example a project for which his group is designing a new water control structure. “The

Essentially, he says, once the BAE shop team had created the mold for the wing, the client could lay fi ber-glass material and resin on the mold, which had holes through which a vacuum could pull the material into the mold shape. (Those of a certain generation can perhaps visualize this as a super-sized, sophisticated ver-sion of the 1960s Mattel Toys gadget called the Vac-U-Form.)

Creating that mold “required a 3-axis movement to get that curved shape,” says Buffaloe. “So it re-quired use of our 3-axis CNC mill.”

Other devices they’ve delivered include an adjustable infant car seat frame for a BAE senior design stu-dent; a bone fracture jig (to hold a bone in place while being mended) and a prototype surgical abdominal retractor, both for the College of Veterinary Medicine; and a sweet potato vine snatcher, a biomass tor-refaction unit and a charcoal grind-er, all for the BAE Department’s Dr. Michael Boyette.

A recent project designed by Boyette and built in the research shop is a garden scooter. “The scooter is a collaborative four-year USDA grant project with N.C. A&T State University, East Caro-lina University and N.C. State to give farmers with disabilities a means of being more mobile in the fi eld, garden or around the farm,” Buffaloe says. “Unique features in-clude a sliding rear support frame, which can be adjusted for varying row widths. It’s totally self-propelled and runs on an electric motor in which the battery is solar-charged.”

According to Boyette, he and many colleagues, not only in BAE

but throughout CALS, could not be nearly as productive without the continuing help of the BAE Research Shop. “Agricultural and biological engineering is more than anything the practical application of science to solve real problems. Despite a lot of planning, we often do not know from one day to the next what challenges will confront us,” Boyette says. “Con-sequently, we have had to remain nimble in our responses to the prob-lems that come our way. More often than not this has required us to build something fast. The harvest season is short and comes only once a year.

“Having the great fabrication capability of BAE’s Research Shop, which includes skilled mechanics as well as the most modern machines, has often allowed us to go from concept to fi eld ready in a matter of days.”

Dr. Timothy Appelboom, BAE research associate, also has worked extensively with the research shop as associate team member of the Soil and Water Management Group, working in the areas of watershed hydrology and water quality.

“We are very fortunate to have a fabrication shop affi liated with our department and College,” Appelboom says. “There are many projects where the equipment needed to implement, enhance or monitor a study just does not exist or needs some adaptation to fulfi ll the requirement of the study – or replacement parts are no longer available. There are also cases where a researcher just needs a lot of one item. The BAE Research Shop is more than capable of fulfi ll-ing any of these needs with experi-ence in almost all materials (metal, wood, plastic, etc.).”

Items of all sizes, shapes and require-

ments are machined and built in the

BAE shop for the clients that request

them. Shown here are automatic sam-

ple acidifi ers (left), designed to treat

water samples, as they are taken, to

keep the pH levels within the needed

range; a gasifi er engine generator set

(below) built to demonstrate that it

could be fueled with inexpensive, re-

newable charcoal for the production

of electrical power; and (bottom) a

set of shock boat spider electrodes –

electrical tentacles built and outfi tted

onto a boat used in fi sh research.

Courtesy Mike Boyette

Caro

lyn

Mitk

owsk

i

Courtesy David Buffaloe

BAE Research Shop built a pro-totype for me based on the draw-ings I provided and discussed with them. They had to mill several of the parts because they were of a new design. The milled parts then had to be remilled because the manufacturers of the seals we were going to use had quite a bit of vari-ability in their diameter. Without the BAE Research Shop, this would have been a nightmare to get done,” he says.

“With most research, it takes sev-eral iterations to get a design fi nal-ized. After testing something in the fi eld we fi nd small changes that need to be done to either make the design more effi cient or durable. Having a research shop that can work on the original design to the modifi cations is invaluable to getting things com-pleted to a fi nal design.”

Appelboom says that the great value of the shop for CALS is that “anyone in the College can easily have items needed for research quickly and inexpensively made without a lot of wasted time look-ing for a shop that will: 1) be will-ing to make a single specialty item, 2) have an understanding of its use to know if what they are making will work or not and 3) not charge a fortune due to small specialty work needed. This leads to faster experiment setup and successful completion.

“Having a shop with this type of expertise is really essential to our department. Without their skill and understanding of what we are trying to do, a lot of what we do would either require a lot of time, effort and higher costs working with an outside machine shop, or just not be possible.”

A tour of the shop fl oor gives a glimpse of the diversity and

precision of the work done here. There’s the radial drill, used for drilling holes in large parts; a re-cently acquired CNC lathe for turning cylindrical parts and which has capabilities for short production runs; the precision surface grinder

MAKING USE OF THE BAE

RESEARCH SHOP requires just a few basic steps, says Buff aloe.

“Clients should request a consulta-tion meeting with the shop super-visor to discuss the aspects of the project. If the client does not have a CAD-generated drawing, a sketch with detailed measurements will be needed,” he says. “The client may be advised as to any needed changes in design or material selection that may be needed to achieve the fi nal end product dur-ing the meeting. If needed, we can transfer sketches to ProE CAD/CAM software that can be loaded into our CNC machines.”

To generate the work request, clients will need to provide a six-digit FAS account number and fi ve-digit project ID number, the Project Leader or PI’s name, departmental bookkeeper’s name and the campus box or billing address. The client will be given an estimated time of when the shop should complete the project and it can be picked up.

“Work requests are completed on a fi rst-come basis, unless extreme circumstances arise to warrant moving a job up,” he says. “If needed, a good-faith cost estimate can be prepared on the labor and material.

“The work order is then assigned to one of our instrument makers, who are craftsmen of their trade. Our end result and ultimate goal is a satisfi ed client and successful results of their eff orts.”

that grinds metals perfectly fl at for making molds from heat-treatable metals; and the CNC vertical mill-ing machine, where the airplane wing molds were made. On this, the shop also can do short produc-tion runs of identical items, such as the custom O-ring railings – used for soil and water erosion control – that are currently in process.

In the midst of it all, a computer monitor displays a 3-D visualiza-tion of a newly designed custom tool — a gadget used to remove a sprinkler head without damaging the sprinkler — to be made via lathe and milling operations.

These processes have produced a bin full of plastic orange lab bottle caps modifi ed with tubing holes. They’ve also enabled the slicing of a new type of stainless steel, developed by the College of Engineering, so hard it required the BAE shop’s EDM to cut it.

Buffaloe recalls that when he fi rst began working at the shop “we were doing a lot of commodi-ty-driven mechanization items, for blueberry, cotton, tobacco produc-tion, etc. However, these days, it seems that we’re going more envi-ronmental – soil and water, biofu-els, biomass, that type of thing.”

Still, he believes that more cam-pus staff could and should use the shop. “I often feel that people don’t know we’re over here,” he says.

But Appelboom, a satisfi ed cus-tomer, is doing his part to get the word out.

“I really appreciate our shop and want others to know of its impor-tance to not only our department’s research, but others on campus as well, and the high quality work that they do,” he says. “When appropri-ate, I have them place their shop ‘Custom Fabrication by’ sticker on the item, such as on the new water control structure prototype that they worked on.

“I know they are proud of their work, and I defi nitely want people who see something that they have made to know who did the fabrication.”

winter 2013 9

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10 perspectives

CALS student Becky Dobosy travels near and far to put nutrition, sustainable ag knowledge to work.

by Dee Shore

Sustained Efforts

When it comes to address-ing issues related to hunger in developing

nations, College of Agriculture and Life Sciences nutrition major Becky Dobosy is not sitting still. The junior has traveled near and far to grow her knowledge of nutri-tion and sustainable agriculture and to put it to work. She has helped indigenous people in Guatemala address issues related to food and health. She’s visited world food and agriculture agencies in Rome. And, most recently, she spent a summer serving as intern at the Center for Environmental Farming Systems (CEFS) in Goldsboro.

“My passions don’t lie with nu-trition for optimal performance or athletics but for survival and day-to-day life,” Dobosy says. “I am really interested in international develop-ment as it relates to nutrition and sustainable agriculture, and so I’m trying to fi nd a career where the fi elds of community nutrition and sustainable agriculture intersect.”

Dobosy’s interest in nutrition and agriculture is rooted in child-hood experiences with a family garden. And a church mission trip she took while in high school to a Nicaraguan orphanage sparked her passion for working internationally.

In Nicaragua, she saw fi rsthand the important role that nutrition plays in learning, she says, and she realized that could combine her interests in international develop-ment, nutrition and sustainable agriculture into a career.

Dobosy cites research that shows that malnutrition, especially early in life, slows brain development. “Nutrition not only helps you be healthy, it also helps you learn,” she says. “And people who can learn and are not held back by hunger or diseases are able to do more for their community and overcome problems – or avoid problems altogether – and thus help their communities develop.”

Thus, nutrition education can give “people the tools to make change in their own communities and not rely on food or help from the outside,” she says.

It’s something Dobosy saw at work in Panajachel, Guatemala, where she spent the summer of 2011. The trip, offered through N.C. State University’s social work program, combined classwork with service learning. Dobosy was as-

Becky Dobosy, shown above and opposite at work in greenhouses and orchards, says she plans a career “where the fi elds

of community nutrition and sustainable agriculture intersect.”

Becky Kirkland

Becky Kirkland

signed to work with a nonprofi t group called Mayan Families.

“I worked with their nutritional program, so I worked with women who could not breastfeed. We had a program for diabetics who had to use food-based practices to control their insulin levels. And we had a club for ancianos – a seniors club – and they get meals every Monday through Friday,” she says.

“It was my fi rst experience with fi eld work – hands-on, in relation-ship to the community. And I re-ally loved that, so that’s where I’m hoping to end up someday.

“When every day I could go into my internship and think, ‘Yes, more work!’ — that’s when you know you are in the right place,” she recalls.

Dobosy was also able to merge her interests in nutrition and agri-culture this past summer at CEFS, where she spent eight weeks as one of a diverse group of interns from across the United States and abroad. “Everyone has different interests, but we come together with a passion for sustainable agri-culture,” she says.

CEFS is a joint agricultural research and extension program of N.C. State, N.C. A&T State Uni-versity and the N.C. Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services. Summer interns learn about sus-tainable agriculture concepts and practices from CEFS faculty and staff and through hands-on farm

work, lectures and discussions, community en-gagement, and fi eld trips to local farms and markets.

Dobosy found the community engagement work particu-larly rewarding: She and other interns led a Junior Master Gardeners pro-gram in Golds-

boro, teaching the school-age par-ticipants about agriculture, healthy eating and cooking and working with them in a garden. And she also got to join area high-school students as they worked in a com-munity garden to earn money.

The CEFS experience con-fi rmed for Dobosy the infl uence local, sustainable agriculture can have on nutrition.

“Sustainable agriculture isn’t normally integrated into a nutri-tion education, but for me with the international interest I have, you can’t take it out. If you are working in a community that’s agriculturally based, you can’t improve nutrition, or even suggest improvements, unless you have knowledge of agriculture and you involve agri-culture,” she explains. “And if it’s not healthy for the people and the environment, it’s not going to last.”

As Dobosy looks ahead to the next steps on her journey toward a career in nutrition and community development, she has a full plate: As she works toward her nutrition degree, she’s also tackling minors in agroecology and Spanish. She’s also continuing her involvement in the Christian organization Young Life, coaching cross country at Pan-ther Creek High School in Cary, and planning an alternative spring break trip to international food- and agriculture-related organiza-tions in Rome.

Dobosy participated in that Rome spring break trip last year, getting the chance to visit with the World Food Programme, the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization and the International Fund for Ag-ricultural Development. In spring 2012, she’ll be organizing and lead-ing that trip with another student.

The hard work will be worth it, Dobosy says, if she’s able to help make a difference in even a few people’s lives.

“The problem of hunger in the world is defi nitely bigger than any one person can address, but there are so many efforts out there right now, and I would like to be involved in at least one of them in some way, making it more sus-tainable and more driven by local people,” she says.

“I don’t know if I’m going to look at the world and see my im-pact, but I at least hope to leave my fi ngerprints in a community or two.”

winter 2013 11

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Beck

y Ki

rkla

nd

by Suzanne Stanard

12 perspectives

Beck

y Ki

rkla

nd

From a very early age, Sharon Rowland knew what she wanted to do when she

grew up: work for North Carolina Cooperative Extension and 4-H.

And now, having recently ended an Extension career that spanned nearly four decades, she has made a huge difference in the lives of individuals and communities throughout the state. Rowland re-tired in November as a well-known and beloved leader in Extension advancement who focused more on the relationships she created than the dollars she raised.

“It was never about me,” she says. “It was always about every-one working together.”

Born in Pennsylvania and raised in Bakersville, Rowland is the old-est of fi ve girls. She and her family lived on an apple orchard estab-lished by her grandfather in the early 1900s, after he earned bach-elor’s and master’s degrees in hor-ticultural science and pomology, respectively, from N.C. State. He

also was the fi rst Extension agent in Mitchell, Madison and Clay coun-ties.

During Rowland’s childhood, her father ran the orchard, and her mother taught school. Rowland and her sisters were active in 4-H, and she participated in state con-gress and served a term as state vice president.

Extension was ever-present in their lives.

So it was a no-brainer for Row-land to leave home for college with the goal of joining the Extension ranks. After graduating in 1977 from UNC-Greensboro with her bachelor’s degree in home eco-nomics education, she stepped right into her fi rst Extension po-sition as a 4-H agent in Union County.

“I always knew I wanted to be an agent,” she says. “Our family had had good relationships with agents in the county, and during that era you did a lot of things with your county Extension offi ce. My

College Profi le Sharon Rowland retires

after a career devoted

to the betterment of

Cooperative Extension

and the people it

serves.

Beck

y Ki

rkla

nd

mom was a volunteer, and when you went to State 4-H Congress, your parents didn’t go. The agent took you.”

In her fi rst job, Rowland worked with her fellow agents and a size-able volunteer corps to create spe-cial interest programs and curricula for Union County youth. After six years in that position, she moved to Raleigh to join the state Extension staff as a specialist in 1983. Her primary responsibilities were man-aging the 4-H awards program and helping develop curricula. At the same time, Rowland began work toward her master’s degree in adult and community college education, which she earned from N.C. State in 1986.

“Dalton Proctor and I worked with subject-matter specialists on the N.C. State campus to help them write curricula that was age-appro-priate,” she says. “I also worked closely with Dr. Barbara Garland as a co-chair of the National Network for Health, which gave me an op-

�

portunity to work with specialists from all across the country who were developing educational mate-rials for at-risk children and fami-lies and sharing them in electronic formats.”

While developing those grants and working on program endow-ments for 4-H, Rowland discovered how critical resource development is for an organization such as Co-operative Extension.

“We worked to save programs that would no longer be offered,” Rowland says. “Dr. Mike Davis, former state 4-H leader, and I vis-ited potential donors to share the 4-H story and to encourage gifts for scholarships, awards, camps and innovative programs. We needed to be sure those programs would continue.”

In 1999 she joined the Coopera-tive Extension Foundation in the College of Agriculture and Life Sci-ences as director of development for 4-H. There she established a fund-raising philosophy that has remained the same since day one.

“What you want to do in fund raising is make sure that the do-nors’ needs are being met and you’re fi nding a way to make their passion a reality,” Rowland says. “You have to make sure it’s a good fi t.”

She said if she ever met with a potential donor and realized that his or her goals didn’t match that of the organization, she would help the donor explore other opportuni-ties.

You’d have been hard-pressed to fi nd Rowland at her desk on any given day during her years with Extension. She traversed the state, meeting with donors, prospects and community leaders, assisting with

special projects, hosting events — essentially rolling up her sleeves and digging in.

“In relationship fund raising, you have to go where the people are,” Rowland says. “That’s key.”

In 2004, she was promoted to director of the Cooperative Exten-sion Foundation, which presented a whole new world of challenges and opportunities.

“It was a relatively new founda-tion, so we were really working on helping people understand what Extension is and then helping them fi nd a natural fi t,” Rowland says.

In this position, she and her staff raised millions of dollars for all Cooperative Extension programs. And it is because of her leadership that new facilities have been built throughout the state and all sorts of

new opportunities – from academic scholarships to endowments for nu-trition education – have been cre-ated for North Carolina citizens.

Rowland is most proud of the Campaign for the Counties, a mas-sive grassroots effort she helped launch about six years ago to raise funds at the local level for county Extension offi ces. Through the Campaign for the Counties, Exten-sion has established 357 different funds that provide opportunities for more than 890 educational pro-grams, scholarships and initiatives.

“I’ve always believed that Exten-sion starts locally,” she says, “and the campaign created wonderful opportunities for us to help provide the tools necessary for the counties to be able to raise funds for their own programs or positions.”

Rowland credits much of the success of the Campaign for the Counties to the people around her,

especially her staff and her team of regional development directors who work with communities all over the state.

“It’s also about the volunteers and agents at the county level who are so passionate about their programs and the difference they make,” Rowland says.

“You just smile when you think about these people,” she says. “Especially our staff — they’re phe-nomenal. Everywhere I’ve been I’ve worked with a great team of people. I’ve been very, very blessed to have great mentors from the very beginning of my career … district directors, state specialists, co-workers, and leaders like Keith Oakley, Jon Ort and Joe Zublena.”

Also under Rowland’s leader-ship, new foundations were created for Family and Consumer Sciences (in 2005) and the Extension and Community Association (in 2010). She also helped lead campaigns and celebrations for the 4-H and FCS centennials.

When asked why she decided to retire, Rowland becomes misty-eyed.

“I’ve thought for a long time that it would be very hard for me to re-tire, and I’ve been really concerned and prayed about it,” she says. “And as a result, I just knew that somehow I would know it was the right time. There’s a transition pe-riod for everything in life, and this transition really feels natural.”

Rowland says she most looks forward to spending more time with her husband and two sons, as well as her extended family.

At the fall joint meeting of the Extension foundations, Dr. Joe Zublena, associate dean and Exten-sion director, presented Rowland with a farewell gift and said, “Few of us can say that we’ve made a place better, but Sharon can. Extension is better because of Sharon.”

‘In relationship fund raising, you have to go where

the people are. That’s key.’

winter 2013 13

noteworthynoteworthy N E W S

undergraduate or graduate student with an interest in tropical plant health.

Ristaino said the internship pro-gram not only benefi ts students, it also has implications for U.S. agri-culture and U.S. consumers.

“The program has signifi cance for American agriculture because many of the pathogens that the students are studying are problems both in Central America and the United States,” Ristaino said. “And some are on products, such as ba-nanas, that we import as food into the United States.”

Ristaino began the internship program in 2011. Selected students take a graduate-level tropical plant pathology course in the spring. They learn about diseases of vari-ous tropical crops while also gain-ing an understanding of the politi-

Mary Lewis spent six weeks in the summer of 2012 travel-

ing around Costa Rica working on research designed to shed light on one of the most important diseases affecting bananas. While her focus was the fungal disease black sigato-ka, the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences student says the expe-rience taught her just as much – or more – about what it takes to work in a foreign country and to interact with people from other cultures.

Lewis was one of seven students selected to participate in last year’s Global Plant Health Interns pro-gram. CALS’ Dr. Jean Ristaino, William Neal Reynolds Distingi-ushed Professor in the Department of Plant Pathology, directs the program. The goal, she said, is to immerse students in the subject of tropical agriculture research.

“It’s about getting them excited about doing science and about do-ing work in the developing world,” she added.

Ristaino, who is off campus this year while she serves as a Jefferson Science Fellow at the U.S. Agency for International Development, gets support in running the pro-gram from co-director Dr. Marga-ret Daub, head of the Department of Plant Biology and also a William Neal Reynolds Distinguished Pro-fessor. Three-year grant funding comes from the International Re-search Experience for Students in the Global Plant Health program of the National Science Foundation.

Most of the participating stu-dents are from N.C. State, but the program is open to any upper-level

cal and social issues farmers in the developing world face.

The interns then spend six weeks in a fully funded, hands-on summer research internship in Costa Rica before fi nishing up with a fall special problems research course.

Faculty mentors from the Uni-versity of Costa Rica and N.C. State begin working with the stu-dents before the students set foot in Costa Rica, Ristaino explained. With their mentors’ help, the students write up a research plan before their summer internships begin and then at the end of the internship they write a research report and do a presentation that is shared with their fellow interns and the University of Costa Rica and then posted on the program’s website.

Interns learn valuable life lessons while studying tropical plant pathology in Costa Rica

14 perspectives

Cour

tesy

Jean

Rist

aino

Dr. Jean Ristaino (left) and CALS students in the Global Plant Health Interns

program spent six weeks in Costa Rica, where they joined students and faculty

members from the University of Costa Rica.

The research topics vary, de-pending on the students’ interests and the expertise of their mentors. Topics chosen by the 2012 interns included nematodes affecting Costa Rican crops, Panama disease of bananas, water relations in bean cultivars and downy mildew races on cucurbits.

Ristaino chose to collaborate on the project with the University of Costa Rica because several faculty members and administrators had earned degrees from N.C. State. “I’ve had three graduate students who are on the faculty now, and the dean of the college is an N.C. State graduate,” she said. “We have this Wolfpack South and Central America connection there.”

With the support of her contacts at the university and with agricul-tural companies such as Dole Food Co., Ristaino has for years offered a weeklong study-abroad trip as part of the tropical plant pathology course. The trip includes tours of coffee, banana, pineapple, tropical fruit, cacao and vegetable farms throughout Costa Rica.

More than 50 undergraduate and graduate students, as well as county Cooperative Extension fac-ulty members, have participated in that tour, including, now, the global health interns. For Mary Lewis, the trip was a highlight of her Costa Ri-can experience. So, too, were trips to beaches and other tourist areas away from the university campus in San Pedro.

Lewis spent her internship work-ing with Dr. Luis Gomez Alpizar, who earned his CALS Ph.D. in plant pathology under Ristaino in 2004. With his help, Lewis said, “I learned how to do fungal culturing from infected bananas, which was something I hadn’t worked with before.”

Lewis’ internship came between her May graduation from N.C. State with a degree in plant biology and the start of her graduate degree studies in plant pathology, also at N.C. State.

The other interns are still under-graduates now but all would like to go on to graduate school, Ristaino said. “Through the internship, these students become engrossed in the science, and they really enjoy it,” she said.

As Lewis did, the other students learned life lessons beyond their laboratory work.

“Some of these students have had travel (opportunities) before, but many had not been out of the country before. They learn a lot about the culture and the people of the country, plus they are learning plant pathology and issues involved in doing agricultural research in a developing country,” Ristaino said. “I think it’s a big eye-opener for

many of the students who haven’t left the United States.”

Lewis had done two summer in-ternships before the one she did in Costa Rica, but she’d never been to a non-English-speaking country.

“I thought it would be good to step out of my comfort zone. Now, having experienced the culture shock that comes with going to another country, I feel like I can handle myself better when going other places,” Lewis said. “I know how to cope.” — Dee Shore

For more information on the Global Plant Health Interns program, contact Bridget Lassiter (bridget_lassiter@ncsu.edu) or visit the website at http://go.ncsu.edu/globalplanthealthinterns.

Dr. John Sabella already had a long history of work in inter-

national agriculture when he was appointed last spring to serve as interim assistant dean for interna-tional programs in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. Less than a year into the job, he is turning paper agree-ments with international institutions into boots-on-the-ground working projects involv-ing N.C. State University stu-dents and fac-ulty members.

Sabella, who is a CALS alumnus in agricultural and extension educa-tion, brings to the job more than 25 years of international work. This includes service as a Peace Corps volunteer in Sierra Leone, as a professor of sustainable agriculture

at the Universidad Nacional de Agricultura (UNA) in Catacamas, Honduras, and as international programs director at the Rodale Institute.

He is also co-founder of BIO-Uruguay, a sustainable agriculture

research and extension center in northern Uruguay. In 2007, a group of CALS students, faculty and Extension agents visited BIO-Uruguay as part of a sustainable agriculture tour in the country.

Exploring the world: Sabella leads CALS’ opportunity-fi lled international programs

winter 2013 15

Cour

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John

Sab

ella

Dr. John Sabella (center) works with students on a

sustainable agriculture project in Honduras.

16 perspectives

As associate director of the North Carolina Southern Coastal Agromedicine Institute at East Car-olina University, 2002-2006, Sabel-la worked closely with colleagues at N.C. State and N.C. A&T State universities. He was teaching at UNA in 2011 when N.C. State’s Shelton Leadership Center asked if he would talk with a group of stu-dents preparing for a service trip to Honduras.

Sabella spoke with the group several times and was invited to travel with the students in June 2011. Six months later, as Dr. Paul Mueller prepared to retire as as-sistant dean of CALS International Programs, Sabella was asked to take on the leadership role.

“My job is to make the offi ce useful, important and a clearing-house for the College’s interna-tional efforts,” Sabella said. He also wants to integrate CALS’ interna-tional efforts more closely with the larger university’s international programs.

Now is a good time to move forward, Sabella says, with a new dean – Dr. Richard Linton – in CALS, food security issues becom-ing more important and the uni-versity leading through the Global Health Initiative and Global Train-ing Initiative.

“You don’t have to make a case for interna-tional programs and globaliza-tion at the uni-versity now,” he said. “Our faculty and stu-dents are ask-ing, ‘Where are the opportuni-ties?’”

One answer to that question, Sabella says, is developing action plans around formal

memoranda of understanding (MOU) that N.C. State has signed over the years with universities from around the world.

In 2010, CALS and N.C. State signed an agreement with the Uni-versity of Zagreb, Faculty of Agri-culture in Zagreb, Croatia (FAZ), similar to a “college” at N.C. State. There have been several student and faculty exchanges with FAZ, and the program got a boost when two doctoral students visited this summer to explore additional op-portunities for involvement. In October, Aaron Fox and Suzanne O’Connell presented a seminar to showcase what they had learned about Croatia and how students and faculty could engage in some of the newly developed educational programs being taught in English and other research programs there. They proposed a three-week agri-culture-focused study abroad tour that would begin at the University of Zagreb and include research centers, farms, historic and cultural sites from the country’s diverse geographic regions.

CALS was also a major player in October when N.C. State hosted the U.S. Department of State’s Fulbright Global Food Security Seminar. More than 55 Fulbright students from around the world participated in the fi ve-day seminar at N.C. State. The seminar, orga-

nized by the university’s Global Training Initiative, included guest speakers, tours of research facilities and even a visit to the State Fair.

During the week, the students toured research facilities at N.C. State’s Lake Wheeler Road Field Laboratory education units, includ-ing the new dairy, the feed mill and swine production unit. Sabella said the students were impressed with what they saw at N.C. State.

As leader of CALS International Programs, a signifi cant amount of Sabella’s time is devoted to a partnership with a Wake County church to improve agricultural production in Honduras. In the last year, St. Michael the Archangel Catholic Church came to the Col-lege to ask for assistance with a long-running project.

“The church members realized they wanted to do something in agriculture,” Sabella said. “We have the support of the church, which has been working in this commu-nity for years. And this project is changing our own students’ lives.”

N.C. State is now involved in two projects in the area of Patuca, Olancho, Honduras, with support from UNA, where Sabella taught. One effort involves direct exten-sion work with growers, who are mainly women. Another project involves a farm at a local agricul-tural high school, which is used as a demonstration center for fi eld days and other activities.

“Our own project there – a sustainable agriculture project – is making a contribution in a remote part of the country,” Sabella said.

For N.C. State, the Honduras projects offer the opportunity to share experience in sustainable ag-riculture, helping establish sustain-able grazing practices that protect fragile slopes and waterways, intro-ducing more goats and fewer cattle, as well as valuable trees and cash crops like coffee.

In August, a group of students visited Honduras on a work trip, and another group will participate in an alternative spring break trip

In October, student participants in the Fulbright Global

Food Security Seminar toured the Lake Wheeler Road Field

Laboratory education units.

Nat

alie

Ham

pton

there in March through the univer-sity’s Center for Student Leader-ship, Ethics and Public Service.

In addition to involving campus faculty, Sabella would like to see Cooperative Extension agents also get involved in international work of CALS. “Extension has a lot of of-fer internationally,” he said. “Coun-

tries like Honduras don’t have an extension service.”

Recent agreements signed by the university offer continuing op-portunities, include MOUs with the University of Adelaide in south Australia and with the Indian Council of Agricultural Research. And Sabella is also interested

in reaching out to Sierra Leone, where he was a Peace Corps volun-teer. Students and faculty will have many new opportunities to explore the world, sharing their knowledge and learning from others.

— Natalie Hampton

Using a combination of new tools and time-honored tech-

niques, Dr. Dilip Panthee is car-rying on N.C. State University’s strong tradition in plant breeding, developing hardier, higher-yield-ing plants for North Carolina’s $30-million-a-year tomato industry.

N.C. State’s College of Agri-culture and Life Sciences has the nation’s largest university plant breeding program. Panthee, an assistant professor of horticultural science, proudly follows in the footsteps of Dr. Randy Gardner, a retired breeder credited with developing the cultivars used on some 60 to 75 percent of the vine-ripe tomatoes grown in the Eastern United States.

When Panthee joined the faculty nearly fi ve years ago, he brought skills in molecular marker-assisted breeding that he honed as a doc-toral student and post-doctoral researcher at the University of Tennessee. And he came with a passion for and understanding of tomatoes that he gained during his early career as a breeder in Nepal, his home country.

Working at the Mountain Horti-cultural Crops Research and Exten-sion Center in Mills River, Panthee focuses his efforts on developing tomato breeding lines and cultivars with three traits: disease resistance, fruit quality and stress tolerance. That’s because, in a survey the scientist conducted at the start of

his tenure at N.C. State, these three traits were the ones North Carolina growers reported needing the most.

To help address industry prob-lems, Panthee takes a multifaceted approach — part conventional breeding, part molecular marker-assisted selection (MAS). MAS isn’t genetic engineering; it’s simply a breeding short-cut that’s especially helpful when it comes to develop-ing disease-resistant varieties using DNA-based markers.

In conventional breeding meth-ods, scientists would inoculate plants with a disease to see which ones are resistant, but that runs the risk of spreading the disease, Panthee explains. However, with MAS, scientists can look for what are called markers – sequences of nucleotides that make up a seg-ment of DNA – that are near the genes of interest in the genome.

To develop a tomato resistant to tomato mosaic virus, for example, Panthee has identifi ed the molecu-lar marker that is tightly linked

winter 2013 17

Tradition meets innovation in CALS scientist’s tomato breeding efforts

Dr. Dilip Panthee is focused on devel-

oping tomato cultivars with the traits

North Carolina growers need most.

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Dee Shore

with the TMV resistance gene, so as he breeds successive generations of plants, he selects only plants that contain that marker.

“I keep on selecting plants that contain the TMV resistance genes and discard the plants that do not have TMV resistance,” he explains. “That way I can enhance these generations quickly.”

Panthee expects to begin releas-ing disease-resistant cultivars born of these methods within the next two or three years. Already, in col-laboration with Gardner, Panthee has helped develop Mountain Mer-it, a high-yielding, fresh-market cul-tivar with resistance to late blight, tomato spotted wilt virus and root-knot nematodes , and Mountain Majesty, a large-fruited tomato with improved fruit color and resistance to tomato spotted wilt virus.

Working with his Mills River col-league Dr. Jeanine Davis, Panthee also has developed heirloom tomato

hybrids that are taste-test winners and would work well for organic farmers. And with Dr. Penny Per-kins-Veazie of the college’s Plants for Human Health Institute in Kan-napolis, Panthee is looking at ways to produce tomatoes with high lev-els of lycopene, a health-enhancing antioxidant. They are getting close, he says, to releasing a grape hybrid line with just such qualities.

While Panthee’s work focuses on tomatoes bred especially for North Carolina’s growing conditions, he’s also advancing the science of plant breeding as well as our understand-ing of molecular-level plant-patho-gen interactions.

With scientists from Cornell University, he is collaborating on a $4 million National Science Foun-dation-funded research project de-signed to shed light on the protein-based war that takes place when pathogens infect a plant. The study focuses on what happens when

susceptible and resistant varieties are exposed to Pseudomonas syringae, which causes bacterial speck.

“We want to see what types of proteins are transcribed and how they are expressed and how they behave in resistant and susceptible lines,” Panthee says. “And the ap-proach we are using can be used to explore interactions between other pathogens and other plants – for example, rice or pepper or corn.”

Making sure that such research has practical signifi cance for North Caro-lina growers is, in the end, what Pan-thee’s breeding program is all about.

“The best approach,” he says, “is to develop high-yielding variet-ies while minimizing post-harvest losses. That increases the amount of marketable fruit, which means the cost of production for our to-mato growers will be less. And that means they can be competitive.”

— Dee Shore

18 perspectives

CALS is omnipresent at 2012 State Fair

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The College of Agriculture and Life Sciences again had a signifi cant presence at the N.C. State Fair — whether it was Cooperative Extension

personnel manning a station at the Cultivating a Career exhibit, the always popular N.C. State Howling Cow Ice Cream booth (courtesy of the CALS Department of Food, Bioprocessing and Nutrition Sciences),

CALS students teaching kids about farm animals or fashioning elaborate horticulture displays, Dr. Tom Monaco’s prize-winning

peppers or a plethora of 4-H entries in a range of competitions. Here are samples of the many ways the College contributes to the fair.

Suzanne Stanard Terri Leith

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For property owners looking to fi nd ways to earn money from

their forested land, forest farming can be a promising alternative – or addition – to harvesting the trees. And for years, Dr. Jeanine Davis has been helping these landowners make the most of that promise.

Based at the Mountain Horticul-tural Crops Research and Exten-sion Center, Davis is an associate professor of horticultural science and a Cooperative Extension spe-cialist in N.C. State’s College of Agriculture and Life Sciences.

Davis’ work focuses on opti-mizing organic production and introducing and developing new crops, and she is considered one of the nation’s leading experts when it comes to producing medicinal herbs in the shade beneath a for-est’s treetops.

Davis co-wrote the book Growing and Marketing Ginseng, Goldenseal and Other Woodland Medicinals, and she is among the national Cooperative Extension educators who contribute to a new website on forest farming (http://www.extension.org/for-est_farming). The site focuses on information about high-value non-timber forest products, covering such topics as startup, best prac-tices, markets and policies.

As the site explains, forest farm-ing involves cultivating and manag-ing understory crops in an estab-lished or developing forest. From forest crops, “many parts are har-vested, including the roots, tubers, leaves, bark, twigs and branches, the fruit, sap and resin, as well as the wood,” the site adds.

Medicinal herbs are probably the most popular products of for-est farming, Davis says, because they can bring high prices. Wild-simulated ginseng, for example, can generate more than $20,000 per half-acre after nine years, but

Farming the forest: CALS expert helps landowners grow crops beneath the trees

it is hard to grow, in part because poaching is a signifi cant problem.

There are plenty of other alter-natives, she adds, including foods such as Shiitake mushrooms, creasy greens, honey, nuts, berries, and the wild leek known as ramps. Dec-orative and craft-based products – things such as pine-needle baskets, wreaths made of vines, beeswax candles and evergreen garlands – can also be made from materials produced in a forest.

Davis sees interest in forest farm-ing from three main groups: “There are established farmers who are interested in just fi nding a new crop. For so many of our farmers in west-ern North Carolina, a big portion of the land is in forest, and maybe there’s a big sloped wooded area that they have to pay taxes on so they are wondering if they can make some income from it,” she says.

“We also have new people who have moved into the region, bought some land and are inter-ested in farming but haven’t tried it before. They see this as a way to get involved on a small scale,” she adds. “And then we have folks who own just a small piece of wooded land and who want to make a little bit of income as a sideline to their regular jobs.”

Being successful requires not only knowing how to produce and harvest woodland crops but also a willingness to work hard at marketing. “You have to work on building relationships with buyers, and for some people, that’s a very diffi cult job,” she says. “You have to do some homework. You have to learn about the industry, read some books, go to a few conferences. You also have to network and make connections.”

Growers also need to have pa-tience, Davis says.

“When I do presentations on forest farming, I keep bringing up this point: When you start out in this, you have to look at it as you would any other small business,” she says. “If you were going into small business, how long would you expect it to be before you break even or make some money? Many people will put up their hands and say fi ve years.

“It’s going to be the same way with this: It’s going to take a while, and a lot of people don’t have that kind of patience or the fi nancial resources to wait that long.”

Those who do venture into for-est farming can produce income while they are waiting on trees to become mature enough to harvest

winter 2013 19

Research assistant

Allison Dressler

(right) and Dr. Lijing

Zhou study forest

crops, such as the

goldenseal (above).

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for lumber, or they can choose to focus solely on understory crops and preserve the trees for their eco-system benefi ts, Davis says.

Forest farming is distinct from – and, in most cases, preferable to – wild crafting, the harvest of woodland plants that occur natu-rally. With forest farming, growers can provide more control over the quality and, in the case of bo-tanicals, the potency of the plants, Davis says.

Cultivating woodland crops also takes some of the pressure off of rare and endangered plants. Indeed, when Davis started her work with woodland botanicals in the late 1980s, goldenseal was con-sidered an endangered species in North Carolina, but it was taken off the state list about two years ago.

“I like to think we were some-what responsible for taking the pressure off the wild populations,” Davis says. “We worked really hard with that plant to get consumers and manufacturers to understand that cultivated material is more valuable than the wild, because when we grow it we have more control over the quality and the potency of those plants, whereas if you just harvest from scattered wild populations, there will be inconsistencies.

“Wild plants growing in one lo-cation might not get good nutrition, while plants growing in another location might not get very much light,” she adds. “With forest farm-

ing, you have more control over the growing conditions and can get a product that’s more uniform.”

Forest farming is one aspect of western North Carolina’s natural products industry. With funding from Golden LEAF, Cooperative Extension is working with a num-ber of agencies to help brand the region’s natural products.

“We want people to understand that if they are buying branded prod-ucts from this region, they are buy-

ing high quality products,” she says.

With that grant fund-ing, Davis has two projects, one involving Chinese herbs and the other, woodland herbs. Exten-sion’s “major part of that is training farmers – teaching them how to grow

these crops, how to harvest them and how to dry them,” Davis says.

When it comes to promoting and supporting forest farming and the larger natural products industry in Western North Carolina, Davis and Cooperative Extension have

plenty of partners, especially the North Carolina Natural Products Association, a non-profi t organiza-tion dedicated to conserving, culti-vating, sustainably harvesting and producing N.C. grown medicinal plants. Other key players include Asheville-Buncombe Technical Community College, Advantage West, the Bent Creek Institute, the U.S. Forest Service, and companies such as Gaia Herbs.

In part because of these organi-zations’ impetus, interest in forest farming in Western North Carolina has risen since Davis expanded her program from commercial veg-etable production to include herbs in the late 1980s.

“For so long, the woodland bo-tanical industry in this area was all wild harvesters. You see photo-graphs of old mountain men sitting next to a big pile of wild ginseng,” she says. “That’s the industry I came into when I started.

“But that industry is maturing. Today, we have a cultivated herb industry that’s providing high qual-ity, standardized products. It’s an industry that’s been hidden, but it’s becoming an upfront industry that’s very evident in Western North Carolina,” she adds. “I’m re-ally curious to see what the next 10 years are going to bring.”

— Dee Shore

“My family does 4-H like a lot of families play baseball.”

So said Allyson Brake, 18, a Wilson County 4-H’er who started her fi rst livestock project after be-ing given a lamb named “Peanut” for her fi fth birthday.

Allyson “dove headfi rst into citizenship” after winning her fi rst 4-H club offi ce in middle school, she said. She went on to become a County Council offi cer at the age of 14, Southeast district president and County Council president at 16, and

All in the family: 4-H mother and daughter have both been state presidents

she served as state 4-H president last year as a college freshman.

“It has been the hardest job I’ve ever had that I think I could have the most fun at,” said Allyson, 18. “It is a lot of work and a lot of time and a lot of miles to travel, but the people you meet and the connec-tions you gain through this pro-gram are something you can’t gain doing anything else.”

She never considered not joining 4-H. In fact, her presidency seemed to be written in the stars.

20 perspectives

Dr. Jeanine Davis leads the forest farming research eff orts.

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winter 2013 21

“The skill set that 4-H provides these young people and the op-portunities for public speaking and travel are exceptional,” she said. “A lot of kids don’t have an op-portunity to get outside their comfort zone. 4-H makes it possible.

“The friend-ships are one of the most im-portant things,” she adds. “I have friends from 4-H whose kids are now friends with my kids. It’s really neat.”

Allyson agrees. “The connec-tions, the friendships are the most important thing to me,” she said. “Also, to be able to take what I’ve learned and share it. I feel like be-ing state offi cer was my way to give back to the program that has given me so much.

“4-H is such a great opportunity, and it opens so many doors,” Ally-son added. “You just have to choose which door to walk through.”

After college, Allyson said she plans to become an advocate for agriculture.

“I really want to make sure the future is secure for farmers and farmland because the need for our farmers is only going to grow the bigger the world gets,” she said. “I also really want to be able to do something that would allow me to give back to this program.”

Although she offi cially stepped down as state 4-H president last summer, Allyson said she’ll be in-volved for life.

“This isn’t goodbye,” she said with a little laugh. “You can’t get rid of me that easy! It’s hard to be-lieve it’s over. I wouldn’t trade this past year for all the money in the world.” — Suzanne Stanard

In Clover All Over: North Caro-lina’s First 4-H Century, author Jim Clark predicted that Allyson’s mother, Kristina (Bass) Brake, would produce the next 4-H presi-dent 25 years later. His guess was off by only one year.

Kristina, who served as state 4-H president from 1985 to 1986, comes from a long line of 4-H’ers.

“I got involved at age nine, and my father and grandfather were both 4-H’ers,” she said. “My grand-father was a member of the second Honor Club, and my father par-ticipated in local, district, state and national competitions. My sister also was a state offi cer and the fi rst national winner in beef.

“We’re a 4-H family,” she said. “Allyson is part of the same 4-H club that my granddaddy was in, and we’ve had four generations in the same Lucama community club.”

Today, Kristina is an active lead-er in the Lucama 4-H club, along with her husband, James, who has helped start a new and very popu-lar 4-H shooting club.

As state 4-H president, Allyson traveled the state to participate in events, give speeches and “market the 4-H brand,” as she said.

A communications/pre-law ma-jor at Campbell University, Allyson juggled her 4-H presidency with her fi rst year of college, a feat that she said was diffi cult at fi rst. “Once I got myself into a routine, it wasn’t really that bad,” she said.

Kristina accompanied her on a few speaking engagements, but, she said, “Allyson really took the ball and ran with it. She’s gone so many places in the last year, and she’s done a really good job.”

She said the program has changed a lot since she was an of-fi cer, now giving the young leaders more responsibility and depend-ing on them as spokespeople for 4-H. But, according to Kristina, the heart of the organization remains unchanged.

Just three years ago, the agroecol-ogy unit off Lake Wheeler Road didn’t have as much as a tool shed. Water, when available, was brought in on a truck. In fact, the fi rst sum-mer graduate student Stephen Ratasky managed the unit, he spent most of his time driving the water truck back and forth to hand-water a half acre of student plots there.

Flash forward to 2012: The Agroecology Education Farm, part

Agroecology farm and program have grown and improved

of the Lake Wheeler Road Field Laboratory education unit, has its own toolshed and a new well that provides drip irrigation to plots that advanced agroecology students planted in the spring. The farm has access to electricity, there are new vermicomposting and composting bins, and it even has its own trac-tor.

Many improvements at the Agroecology Education Farm were

Allyson Brake (left) and Kristina Bass Brake peruse historic

photos of fellow 4-H offi cers.

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22 perspectives

the result of student efforts and support from a new Agroecology Education Farm Advisory Commit-tee, as well as production efforts by Green Planet Catering, a local busi-ness focused on local and sustain-ably produced food.

In October, this student farm held a Farm to Fork reception to connect the various agroecology and sustainable agriculture educa-tion student efforts at N.C. State and to identify future collabora-tions in agroecology across cam-pus. For the event, the agroecology farm partnered with Rave Cater-ing, a division of N.C. State’s Uni-versity Dining to provide food and funding for the event.

Much of the credit for the farm’s transformation goes to Dr. Michelle Schroeder-Moreno, associate pro-fessor of agroecology in the Crop Science Department. She has been the driving force behind the devel-opment of the farm, and she has an even bigger vision for the farm down the road.

“With all we’ve done at N.C. State with sustainable agriculture research, outreach and education, we’re kind

of behind the curve without a student farm. Across the na-tion, there are a lot of them,” she said.

The College of Agricul-ture and Life Sciences cur-rently offers a minor and concentration in agroecol-ogy. Schroeder-Moreno teaches two core agro-ecology courses – two sections of an introductory course in the fall and a smaller advanced agroecology course in the spring for graduate and under-graduate students. Popularity of the introductory class has grown, attracting students from many dis-ciplines, as well as other Triangle universities, among the 80 students enrolled in the fall. An online ver-sion of the introductory course is offered in the spring to about 35 students.

Schroeder-Moreno sees the Agroecology Education Farm as more than just N.C. State’s student farm, but as a place where school groups and members of the com-munity can come to learn about sustainable and organic crop pro-duction, as well as preparing and preserving food.

“It’s in a unique setting; it’s an urban setting. And I think by com-bining the university’s resources and faculty expertise with the sur-rounding community, you give students not only opportunities to learn about sustainable agricul-ture in a hands-on way, but also opportunities to learn leadership and communication skills through engagement with the community,” she said.

The idea for developing an agro-ecology farm was born in 2007, when Dr. Mike Linker, integrated

pest management specialist in crop science, talked with Schroeder-Moreno about establishing an agroecology teaching unit. He was interested in further developing the agroecology program, which he and other faculty at the Center for Environmental Farming Systems (CEFS) had initially envisioned.

CEFS, a partnership of N.C. State, N.C. A&T State University and the N.C. Department of Ag-riculture and Consumer Services, conducts research, education and outreach related to sustainable ag-riculture.

It took time for the idea to take hold. The land in question was ad-jacent to Yates Mill County Park, another advantage for easy access. At the time, it was used to produce corn and alfalfa used by the Col-lege’s dairy.

A benefi cial insect border was fi rst established on the site in 2008 and has been used as a teaching resource.

An advisory committee, made up of sustainability faculty on cam-pus, has helped create the vision for the agroecology farm.

Most of the six-acre agroecology farm is still planted in winter and summer cover crops and used by agroecology classes for learning about soil analysis and sustainable agriculture practices. Soil samples taken over time indicate that the

Dr. Michelle Schroeder-Moreno

addresses the Farm to Fork reception

at the Agroecology Education Farm.

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The October reception served up local and sustainably

produced food.

winter 2013 23

richest soil on the site is located on lowlands near the park property, the site where advanced agroecol-ogy students develop gardens in the spring.

In 2010, student Stephen Ratasky came to N.C. State to earn his master’s degree in crop science’s sustainability concentration. As an undergraduate at Clemson Univer-sity, he had been involved with the student organic farm there, and he saw in N.C. State a place where he could continue that involvement. He was excited about the opportu-nity to work with Schroeder-Moreno on developing N.C. State’s farm.

“I thought it was interesting and intriguing to take on this new site,” Ratasky said. “It was almost like having a blank slate.”

Ratasky spent the past two sum-mers as farm manager at the agro-ecology farm, helping maintain gardens that students had planted in the spring. The fi rst year, with limited equipment and no water on the site, he spent much of his time – up to fi ve hours a day – hand-watering the gardens to keep plants alive.

Last summer, things improved greatly at the farm, with the addi-tion of a well and irrigation system. Students from even a few years back would be surprised to fi nd that the farm now has a tool shed, a tractor with implements and elec-tricity on site.

Schroeder-Moreno has acquired these new resources slowly, with support from CALS, the Crop Sci-ence Department and colleague Paul Mueller, who helped her fi nd affordable equipment.

Last summer, several other gradu-ate students in addition to Ratasky worked at the farm. Their projects ranged from a vermicomposting bin, to educational signage to commu-nications outreach, including social media and a student farm blog. Per-haps the biggest advancement was water for a drip irrigation system.

The irrigation system required spring students to rethink their gar-dens some somewhat from curves and mounds to rows that could be fed by drip lines. In addition to the student garden plots, Daniel Whita-ker of Green Planet Catering has planted plots that provide produce for his catering operation. When students planned their gardens in the spring, they looked for inspira-tion from Green Planet’s menu.

Summer 2012 was a great production success, with lots of produce going to Green Planet Ca-tering, and extra produce was do-nated to Raleigh’s Interfaith Food

engaged with the community, offer-ing workshops, tours and other edu-cational opportunities. He believes that there is a captive audience in the Triangle, with so many new community gardens developing.

What is Ratasky’s personal wish list for the farm? “A fully function-ing teaching pavilion equipped with a kitchen, where we could hold outdoor demonstrations and classes, with an area where you can wash, prepare, and store food,” he says.

“When I think about what I want to develop, I want to take it to a whole new level,” said Schroeder-Moreno. “I’d like to develop a new model for student farms that engage with the community, and hopefully provide a resource for the surrounding urban community. The education has to be the focus.”

The demand for the agroecology courses suggests the time is right to expand the program from a mi-nor or degree concentration to an agroecology major, and a vibrant student farm is a critical piece to meeting that goal, Schroeder-More-no said.

“University Dining will also be a strong partner in making this hap-pen, and we can think about how to incorporate this agroecology educa-tion in more visable efforts on cam-pus such as sourcing produce from the farm to the cafeteria and bring-ing the compost produced from dining food waste back to the farm,” she said. “This creates food system education that comes full circle.

“The farm is a fundamental and critical component for developing an agroecology major program,” said Schroeder-Moreno. “If we’re going to the take education to the next level for agroecology, for the undergraduate or graduate level, we need a facility near campus to be able to explore hands-on educa-tion and research and develop a community for students, a place where they can share similar inter-ests and get together.”

– Natalie Hampton

Natalie Hampton

Locally produced beer was featured

at the six-acre agroecology farm’s fall

event.

Shuttle. The irrigation system also freed Ratasky to focus on other projects, such as building picnic tables and compost bins tables for the farm.

But the story doesn’t end there. For his master’s project, Ratasky is helping shape a vision for the stu-dent farm’s future. He conducted an in-depth study of 24 student farms on college campuses to help devel-op a plan for N.C. State’s farm.

Like Schroeder-Moreno, Ratasky wants the farm to become more

24 perspectives

Drs. Hosni Hassan and Matt Koci, from N.C. State’s depart-

ments of microbiology and poultry science, respectively, are leading the charge on a new fi ve-year, $2.5 million grant from the United States Department of Agriculture National Institute of Food and Ag-riculture (USDA-NIFA) to stamp out salmonella.

But this isn’t your ordinary research grant. Their approach – along with partners at UNC-Chapel Hill, the Kenan Fellows program and North Carolina 4-H – involves research, teaching and extension.

“The research is aimed at trying to develop new ways of prevent-ing poultry from getting colonized by salmonella, so then the poultry products the consumer comes in contact with are less likely to be capable of causing foodborne ill-ness,” said Koci, associate professor of poultry science in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences.

Through the Kenan Fellows pro-gram and 4-H, Hassan’s and Koci’s research eventually will be deliv-ered to youth throughout the state and nation.

“The K-12 teachers will spend time in each of our labs learning a different area of science,” said Has-san, CALS professor of microbiol-ogy. “Then they will develop lessons that will be made available to schools statewide, in essence carrying re-search from the lab all the way to the consumer and future farmers.”

And, according to Koci, 4-H will work to adapt the curricula for their clubs throughout the state and also will ensure that it meets national 4-H standards so that it may be taught to young people all over the U.S.

The seed for the project “started with a lunch” about fi ve years ago, Hassan said.

In 2007, Hassan’s lab patented a gene mutation that attenuates sal-

Extension, teaching will play roles in research grant to combat salmonella

monella. He teamed with Koci that same year to begin experiments on a potential salmonella vaccine. In 2011, they won a Chancellor’s In-novation Fund award for this work. The awards were created by N.C. State Chancellor Randy Woodson to provide additional support to faculty, staff and students who de-velop technologies or ideas with commercial potential. Hassan and Koci also received a grant that year from the North Carolina Biotech-nology Center (NCBC).

“This USDA project is an exten-sion of the work we’ve been doing for the Chancellor’s Innovation Fund and the NCBC grant,” Koci said. “Our work up until now has largely focused on using the mutant strain that Hosni developed as a vaccine in chickens, and now we’re expanding our work to try to ma-nipulate the normal bugs that live in the gut in a way that provides more resistance to salmonella. So we’ll try that in combination with the vaccine or by itself to fi nd the

best way to drive salmonella num-bers as low as we can get them.”

It comes down to good bugs and bad bugs, Hassan said. “You fi nd some people who can eat the same dish and one gets sick and the other doesn’t get sick, so there must be something about the gut fl ora that causes this dichotomy. So we’re trying to defi ne that fl ora in the chicken and see if we can do more to enhance this fl ora and fi nd out if that will resist salmonella.

“We’re also looking at how the vaccine will interact with natural microfl ora,” Hassan said. “So we’re really looking at both the health of the chicken and of the consumer.”

The Kenan Fellows program will bring nine K-12 teachers from area schools to campus this summer to work alongside Hassan and Koci in their labs. The teachers then will de-velop curricula that they eventually pilot in their own classrooms. At the end of the program, their curricula will be published so that teachers throughout the state can use it.

Hassan (left) and Koci are working to prevent foodborne illness. They hope to

adapt their research into K-12 lessons and 4-H curricula to be made available

throughout the state and nation.

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At the same time, 4-H profession-als will work with the Kenan Fellows to adapt the curricula for 4-H clubs statewide. Hassan and Koci estimate that the curricula – which likely will focus on topics like food safety, dis-ease prevention and immunization – should land in classrooms within the next two to three years.

“There’s also a neat component in the grant through the computer engineering department to develop a computer game to be part of the 4-H and Kenan Fellows teaching tools,” Hassan said.

Words like retinoblastoma, dysphonia and hepatologist

may be more than a mouthful for most, but for College of Agricul-ture and Life Sciences sophomore Erin Beasley, knowing words like these landed her a trip to Orlando, Fla., where she became a national champion with Health Occupations Students of America.

HOSA is an organization for high school and college students in-terested in working in health care, and its annual medical terminology contest is designed to test students’ ability to identify, spell, defi ne and

Word whiz: CALS student wins national medical terminology contest

“Piecing all that together and being able to compete in it is really fun.”

Beasley earned her way to the national competition by coming in fi rst place in the state-level medical terminology contest held as part of North Carolina’s HOSA leader-ship conference in Greensboro last spring.

Through HOSA, Beasley is in-volved in numerous health-related service projects. It is just one of the many activities she has been involved in as an N.C. State stu-dent. Last year, she was an intern for Reptile Rescue of the Carolinas, and she’s also an active member of the pre-vet club and a volunteer with Operation Catnip, a monthly spay-and-neuter clinic for feral cats.

Over spring break 2012, she traveled to Costa Rica to help with spaying and neutering of dogs and cats. And this year she’s serving as an intern with CALS’ VetPAC, or Veterinary Professions Advising Center.

As she looks ahead, Beasley says she’s eager to gain all the animal and veterinary experiences she can, including taking on HOSA’s veterinary medicine competition next year. Gaining such experienc-es is all part of fulfi lling her dream, she says, of attending N.C. State’s doctoral program in veterinary medicine.

“I’ve always loved animals, and I’ve always loved science,” she says. “But over the years I’ve found

“Our goal is to educate the public about salmonella and how to avoid it,” Hassan said. “People need to be educated about food safety and proper food handling, but they also need to understand how salmonella works and how it can make them sick.

“We’re also working to develop a safe product, so that what’s applied to the chicken can be applied to other farm animals as well,” he said.

Salmonellosis (the disease caused by salmonella) is a largely prevent-

able disease that could be avoided if people were to practice better food safety, Koci said.

“We can do everything we can to minimize risks as much as pos-sible, but food production happens on such a scale that even a small fraction of people will continue to get sick,” Koci said. “The only way we’re ever going to stamp it out completely is to focus on both the science and consumer education and attack it from both angles.”

— Suzanne Stanard

apply the prefi xes, suffi xes, roots and anatomy, physiology, patho-physiology and occupations related to the fi eld. The event took place at HOSA’s annual conference in June 2012.

Beasley, an animal science stu-dent and aspiring veterinarian, says her interest in words and her pas-sion for anatomy were key to her championship win.

“I’ve always liked the origin of words and the history of words. Be-ing able to piece certain word parts together was really fascinating for me. I also love anatomy,” she says.

winter 2013 25

CALS animal

science major

and pre-

vet student

Erin Beasley

displays the

gold medal she

won as national

champion in

the Health

Occupations

Students

of America

competition.

Cour

tesy

Erin

Bea

sley

Students put the fi nal touches on a

bamboo frog and wolf (above) before

placing them with the deer on the

larger structure (right).

that the veterinary medicine career does really fi t me. Of course I love animals, but it’s also fascinating to help animals with medical is-sues. I like learning about different body processes. And I like to solve puzzles and problems.”

And, speaking of puzzles: If those words in the fi rst paragraph have you perplexed, Beasley can explain: A retinoblastoma is a malignant tumor of the eye that is

The fall semester N.C. State students in Prof. Will Hooker’s

landscape design studio created a colorful bamboo sculpture – with a hint of Saturday morning cartoon whimsy — that they installed on an urban farm in Matthews, just east of Charlotte.

The piece, “Wild Energies,” in-cludes fi gures of a blue-eyed deer, at one end of an elevated turning bamboo bar, being chased by a green-eyed wolf, while a benignly beaming sun watches – and balanc-es the structure — at the other end. Below this action, a portly bamboo frog crouches on the ground, his tongue thrusting to catch a hover-ing bee. The scenes humorously suggest the dynamic tension of the chase in nature.

The students built the various components of the sculpture in the courtyard of Kilgore Hall be-fore taking it all to Matthews for fi nal assembly.

Each semes-ter, Hooker’s students design a bamboo sculpture as part of HS 400, Residential Landscape Design Studio, a course in the College

Landscape design students capture ‘wild energies’

26 perspectives

Beasley is an intern in the College’s

VetPAC program.

known to be hereditary, dysphonia is a voice disorder and a hepatolo-gist is a physician specializing in treating patients with liver diseases.

— Dee Shore

of Agriculture and Life Sciences’ Horticultural Science Department. The goal of the class is for students to develop the design skills and sensibility to pragmatically solve spatial problems in ways that add “magic” to the lives of users of the spaces. The sculpture pro-ject is one of a series of design activities that expose students to the range of problems typi-cally encoun-tered in a small-scale landscape design/build practice.

Previous studio sculp-

tures have been installed by CALS students at the JC Raulston Arbo-retum, the N.C. State Fairgrounds, local elementary schools and nu-merous regional gardens and pub-lic areas. — Terri Leith

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Photos courtesy of Will Hooker

noteworthynoteworthy A L U M N I

The College of Agriculture and Life Sciences has announced

Dr. Charles W. Stuber and Jessie Thomas “Tommy” Bunn as its 2012-2013 Distinguished Alumni. The two were honored at the Col-lege’s annual Alumni Awards Re-ception Nov. 2. Dr. Richard Linton, College dean, and Josh Starling, executive director of the North Carolina FFA Foundation, presided at the reception held at the N.C. State University Club, where the College’s Outstanding Alumni, Outstanding Young Alumni and Outstanding Staff Member for 2012 were also announced.

Stuber and Bunn were recog-nized for their outstanding career achievements, which have brought honor to the College, and for their commitment to the land-grant prin-ciple of service to community, state and nation.

Stuber, who was raised on a farm in Nebraska, earned his bach-elor’s degree in technical science in agriculture and his master’s in plant breeding and genetics at the Uni-versity of Nebraska. He received a Ph.D. in genetics and experimental statistics at N.C. State University.

In 1962 Stuber was hired by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Agricultural Research Service (USDA-ARS) as a research geneti-cist, with a joint appointment as a professor of genetics at N.C. State. He taught genetics at N.C. State until his retirement in 1998, and he has continued to serve on the

faculty as an emeritus professor of genetics since then. In 2006, Stuber was asked to develop the Center for Plant Breeding and Applied Plant Genomics at N.C. State, and he became the center’s fi rst director, a position he still holds. As the cen-ter’s director, he is actively involved in raising funds for graduate student fellowships and in recruiting and advising graduate students.

During his career, Stuber was ac-tive in a number of professional so-cieties and received awards for his pioneering research accomplish-ments in the development of DNA marker-based selection technology that now is used in all major plant-breeding programs worldwide.

In 2010, he was named a College of Agriculture and Life Sciences Outstanding Alumnus. In 2012, he received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Associa-tion of Plant Breeders.

Stuber is a member of several honorary societies and has pub-lished more than 215 scientifi c papers and book chapters. His pro-fessional travels have taken him to much of Europe, Egypt, Israel, Brazil, New Zealand, Mexico, England and Canada.

Bunn, a native of Zebulon, is a 1966 graduate of N.C. State with a degree in agricultural business/crop science. He has served as president of the U.S. Tobacco Cooperative

2012-2013 CALS Distinguished Alumni, Outstanding Alumni honored

winter 2013 27

Bunn (left) and Stuber unveil the CALS Distinguished Alumni Awards display to

which their names have been added.

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28 perspectives

since 2008 and managed govern-ment affairs for the cooperative for two years prior to being appointed president.

Bunn’s career includes 21 years as executive vice-president of Leaf Tobacco Exporters Association and Tobacco Association of the United States. He served the U.S. Depart-ment of Agriculture in Washington, D.C., for more than six years as deputy director and acting director of the Agricultural Marketing Ser-vice, Tobacco Division. He served nine years with the North Carolina Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services as a tobacco marketing specialist under Com-missioner Jim Graham.

Bunn has led and participated in numerous international trade missions to China, Southeast Asia, Europe and South America, repre-senting the U.S. tobacco industry on trade issues and developing market access for U.S. agriculture.

Bunn, who resides in Raleigh, serves on the board of visitors at N.C. State University and is a char-ter member of the board of direc-tors of Golden LEAF.

In 1988, the North Carolina State Grange recognized Bunn as Man of the Year. And in 1995, he was honored as “Tobacco Great” by the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences.

Following the Distinguished Alumni Awards presentations, Starling announced the 2012 CALS Outstanding Alumni and Outstand-ing Young Alumni:

2012 CALS Outstanding Alumni (listed with their nominating departments)

Gerald K. Barlowe, Department of Ag-ricultural and Extension Education

Dr. Robert E. “Bob” Cook, Prestage Family Department of Poultry Science

Dr. Godfrey Alexander Gayle, Depart-ment of Biological and Agricultural Engineering

William A. “Bill” Hobbs, Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics

E. Allen James, Department of BiologyDr. Randy Jones, Department of

Animal ScienceWilliam M. “Billy” McLawhorn,

Department of Crop ScienceDr. Steven Shafer, Department of Plant

PathologyDr. Giles Shih, Department of Micro-

biologyRoy L. Vick Jr., Department of Soil

ScienceJeremy Smearman, Department of

Horticultural Science Mary Ellen Sanders, Department of

Food, Bioprocessing and Nutrition Sciences

Wendell H. “Dell” Murphy Jr., Agricul-tural Institute

Outstanding Young Alumni

Kurt H. Bland, Department of Horti-cultural Science

Kathryn P. “Katie” Davis, Department of Molecular and Structural Bio-chemistry

Said Linton, “The alumni gath-ered here tonight represent the fulfi llment of the promise of our land-grant mission in academics, research and extension. Through their professional achievements and service to N.C. State and their communities, the alumni we are honoring today exemplify what makes N.C. State and the College a leader among peers. These alumni serve as extraordinary role models for our students, who are our future alumni and leaders.”

Finally, a new award was given to recognize the contributions made by those who dedicate their careers to the College. Honored as Outstanding Staff Member was Gary D. Cartwright, director of the Dairy Enterprise System in the Department of Food, Bioprocessing and Nutrition Sciences. – Terri Leith

Dean Richard Linton (right) joins the honorees at the CALS Alumni Awards reception.

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Keith Davis was teaching

horticulture in 1980 at a Corpus Christi, Texas, high school, when a chance encounter at a local estate sale set him on a course of becom-ing a life-long orchid breeder. Among the items at the estate sale were a variety of orchids priced at $1 each.

“I saw these orchids, and I didn’t really know much about them,” said Davis, a 1979 College of Agri-culture and Life Sciences graduate in forestry and horticultural sci-ence. With a new greenhouse to fi ll at his high school, he purchased a dozen orchids growing on a variety of strange materials.

Davis repotted his new plants in dark, rich soil. “I was sure that any plant in such luxurious soil would ex-plode in new growth and shower me with blooms,” Davis wrote in Orchids magazine. “In just a few short weeks, all but one of the 12 plants had gone to compost heaven.”

The experience piqued Davis’ interest in orchids, and he became involved with the local orchid soci-ety. Over the years, his knowledge and skill at breeding orchids grew. He was recently honored by the American Orchid Society for his efforts to breed the rare and endan-gered ghost orchid, native to south Florida.

In October, Davis brought samples of the ghost orchid to N.C. State University for a seminar in

the CALS Horticultural Science Department. The orchid’s ghostly blooms had ceased for the season, but the plant had produced a val-ued seed pod that would soon be en route to a colleague eager to try his hand at cultivating the plant. Davis was invited by Dr. Dennis Werner, Raulston Distinguished Professor of horticulture, who taught Davis as an undergraduate student during Werner’s fi rst year at N.C. State.

“Keith has solved the riddle of growing this unique and special plant in domestication. His accomplish-ment is a refl ection of his passion for orchids and horticulture, his creativ-ity, inquisitiveness and excellent ob-servational skills,” said Werner. “His work will have far-reaching impacts in developing future strategies to pre-vent extinction of this beautiful and remarkable species.”

Davis fi rst heard of the ghost orchid, an almost legendary plant, while he was just beginning to study orchids. He had never seen as much as a photo of the orchid’s bloom – only a painting.

“It’s so gorgeous, especially when you have more than one bloom, and it blooms all summer,” Davis said.

Several years later, while visiting greenhouses at UNC-Charlotte, Da-vis saw an orchid that looked very similar to the one in the painting. The greenhouse curator later told him that the horticulture staff had tried many times to cultivate the or-chid, but only the one specimen had survived long enough to bloom one time, then died the next year.

Davis later described the bloom as, “a cross between an albino frog and a ghost with bowed legs, two sets of wings, a green head with two red eyes and a long arching tail. What in the world was Nature thinking when this thing was de-signed?”

Thus began Davis’ quest to cultivate the ghost orchid. At the time, he had moved to Reidsville to be closer to his wife’s family and was working as the horticulture director for Chinqua-Penn Planta-tion, the opulent home of Jeff and Betsy Penn. The Penns, who col-lected artifacts, art and horticultural specimens from around the world, donated their home, collection and gardens to the UNC system to be used for education, agricultural re-search and as a museum.

Chinqua-Penn was initially man-aged by UNC-Greensboro in 1965, and N.C. State University assumed the role of caretaker in 1986. When Davis worked there, the director of Chinqua-Penn Plantation also had an extensive orchid collection, and the combined orchid collections were used to decorate throughout the home.

Davis studied the ghost orchid to learn how it grows in nature. In the Fakahatchee Strand Preserve State Park in south Florida, the orchid grows on trees. “I had to get it to grow on something that wouldn’t rot,” Davis said. “In nature, this leafl ess orchid grows on a living plant such as on the trunk or limbs of trees.”

winter 2013 29

Alum honored for orchid-breeding effortsGhostly blooms:

Keith Davis is helping to save the ghost orchid (shown

blooming above) from extinction.

Becky Kirkland

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While splitting fi rewood for his home, Davis noticed that the bark of mockernut hickory (Carya tomen-tosa) came off a log nearly intact, even after a year of aging. The mockernut hickory bark looked right for growing orchids, but Davis wondered how long it would last.

After experimenting and failing with over a dozen different materi-als to try and grow the ghost orchid on, he planted a baby, seed-raised ghost orchid on the mockernut hickory bark. The orchid took root and began to grow.

Davis believes the bark holds some type of preservative proper-ties – the fi rst orchid he successfully grew nearly 20 years ago is still holding fast to the original piece of bark. Some species of trees have bark containing chemicals that can actually kill plants that try to grow on it. However, the mockernut bark appears to have no destructive properties, only long-term preser-vative qualities that keep it from rotting.

The next challenge was getting

the orchid to bloom. When one of Davis’ ghost orchids reached blooming size without produc-ing blooms, Davis again turned to nature to determine what might promote blooms. A fellow orchid grower and native south Florid-ian told Davis that in nature the ghost orchids live in an area that is typically dry in winter. Orchid enthusiasts had observed that wet winters produced fewer ghost or-chid blooms.

So Davis moved his ghost orchid to a drier area of the greenhouse and watered it sparingly through the winter. By the end of February 2007, he was rewarded with the or-chid’s fi rst ghostly blooms.

In May 2007, Davis entered his prized ghost orchid in the Ameri-can Orchid Society judging in Greensboro, packing the fragile plant for its 40-mile journey to the show. To his surprise, the AOS presented him with the highest possible award for fl ower quality — “like winning the Kentucky Derby of orchids,” Davis said.

Davis’ quest to grow the ghost orchid came out of his desire to preserve this endangered plant. There are only a few dozen plants growing in the wild, and many can only be seen on risky treks through waist-deep waters, home to poi-sonous snakes and alligators. The orchid was also known to grow in Cuba many years ago, but limited access to Cuba has left orchid en-thusiasts wondering.

“I was trying to preserve it,” Davis said. “I wanted to learn how to keep it alive so orchid growers could raise it and grow it.” Being able to artifi cially reproduce en-dangered species greatly reduces the illegal collection of wild plants from nature.

Today, Davis raises orchids at his home near Reidsville, conduct-ing sales over the Internet. The ghost orchid is mainly a hobby for him now. After 20 years’ effort, he feels satisfaction in fi nding a way to keep this ghostly orchid alive for others to enjoy. — Natalie Hampton

Brian DuMont describes the start of his company as the “perfect

storm.” As a senior pursuing a degree in

horticultural science at N.C. State in 1997, DuMont was assigned a class project about business owner-ship. He came up with a plan for a landscaping company and received one of his best grades ever.

Later that spring, Yard-Nique became offi cial.

DuMont deferred graduation for a year, working 14-hour days with a crew of one or two people and a single truck. Today, Yard-Nique is a full-service landscaping company with more than 250 employees and locations in Raleigh, Creedmoor, Jacksonville, Wilmington, Fayetteville

Can-do spirit lands Yard-Nique founder on TBJ ‘40 Under 40’ list

30 perspectives

and Greensboro, as well as in Richmond, Va.

The company provides com-prehensive landscaping services, from design/build to maintenance. DuMont calls it a “one-stop shop.”

And for his accomplishments as a young entrepreneur, DuMont

was named to the 2012 class of the Triangle Business Journal’s esteemed “40 Under 40” list.

“Every dollar I made, I put back into the business,” DuMont says. “Early on, through word of mouth, our business began to snowball, and the company would double in

Brian DuMont poses proudly with his Yard-Nique staff .

Becky Kirkland

size every year. The economy also was good at the time, and the mar-ket was booming.”

Despite the economic downturn of the last few years, DuMont and his team have managed to expand the company’s market share into Fayetteville, Jacksonville, Wilm-ington, Greensboro, and across state lines into Virginia. He speaks animatedly about continuing to grow the business into areas like Charlotte, while also maintaining growth in existing markets.

“Our diversity of services en-ables us to succeed,” DuMont says. “When one sector is down, the oth-ers tend to do well.

“And our people are the best,” he says. “I don’t micro-manage. To grow a company, you have to let go, and I let our folks do what they do best. We wouldn’t be where we are today without such an incred-ible staff.”

DuMont says he also receives great support from his family. In fact, his father, Bill DuMont, came on board in 2003 to help out with the company’s bookkeeping. Today he serves as CFO.

He also points to his experience as a student in the College of Agri-culture and Life Sciences’ Depart-ment of Horticultural Science as

When College of Agriculture and Life Sciences alumnus

Dr. Giles Shih talks about the suc-cess of his company, BioResource International (BRI), he sometimes mentions the Louis Pasteur quote “chance favors the prepared mind.”

It was a prepared mind that led Shih’s father, N.C. State University poultry scientist Dr. Jason Shih, to understand that something he observed in a chicken house could have important implications for poultry nutrition.

And it has been a prepared – and persistent – mind that has allowed Giles Shih to lead the com-

Persistence pays for alumnus who leads CALS biotech spinoffpany commercializing his father’s discoveries through a tough start-up phase into a period of growth and expansion both here in North Carolina and abroad.

Jason and Giles Shih founded BRI in 1999 to develop and sell enzymes to enhance animal and human health. The company got its start after the elder Shih noticed that feathers found in chicken ma-nure disappeared over time. He and a graduate student tracked down the enzyme responsible for breaking down keratin, the tough protein in the feathers, and BRI now produces supplements that

winter 2013 31

one of the keys to his success.

“My profes-sors, especially Stu Warren and Bryce Lane, are a huge inspira-tion to me,” DuMont says. “They were such a big help when I was try-ing to start this company, and they’ve been there for me every step of the way.”

The company is committed to hiring graduates of the College’s Horticultural Science Department, DuMont says. A number of his cur-rent employees are CALS gradu-ates, some of whom were interns who stayed on with the company.

To say DuMont is driven is an understatement.

“I’m 37 now,” he says. “I want to continue to grow this company as long as I’m proud to be here. My favorite part of all this is the chal-lenge.”

He also takes great pleasure in giving back to his community. Yard-Nique has participated in educational programs with school children, donated labor for a school

beautifi cation project, and most recently, the Yard-Nique team won the “Bike MS Evolution Award” for raising more than $20,000 for mul-tiple sclerosis research.

DuMont and his wife Aaren (a 2005 graduate of the N.C. State College of Veterinary Medicine) welcomed their fi rst child, Dylan, last year, which presented DuMont with what he describes as his great-est challenge yet: achieving bal-ance.

Whether in parenthood or busi-ness, DuMont says he strives to do his best every single day.

“When people say, ‘You can’t do this,’” DuMont says, “I say, ‘Let’s do it.’” — Suzanne Stanard

use the enzyme to allow poultry to more easily digest proteins and ab-sorb nutrients in animal feed.

Today, BRI has 18 employees, an offi ce in Research Triangle Park and a manufacturing building in Apex. What’s more, its products are sold in some 25 countries worldwide. The company is also looking at other natural products that could help increase agricultur-al productivity and sustainability.

Because of its own growth, the company is gaining notice in North Carolina and beyond. In October, BRI made it onto the Inc. 500 list as one of the fastest-growing

Brian DuMont (right), his son Dylan, and his father (and

company CFO), Bill.

Becky Kirkland

32 perspectives

private companies in the United States, and in November the Trian-gle Business Journal honored BRI as a Fast 50 company, an award that’s based on a company’s revenue growth and profi ts over three years.

Earlier in the year, the U.S. Pan Asian American Chamber of Com-merce named BRI a “Fast 50 Asian American Business” based on rev-enue growth over the past three years, and the Greater Raleigh Chamber of Commerce gave the company its second consecutive Pinnacle Business Award for steady growth and profi tability.

Meanwhile, Giles Shih received a CALS Outstanding Alumni Award in November. He also was named to the board of directors of the CED, or Council on Entrepre-neurial Development, based in Re-search Triangle Park. And he serves on the state Biotechnology Center’s Agricultural Biotechnology Advi-sory Council.

Shih comes to those positions

well prepared. A microbiolo-gist by training, Shih earned a bachelor’s de-gree in microbi-ology from Cor-nell University in 1989, then came to N.C. State University in 1991 to study under Dr. Eric Miller, now the Microbiology Department head.

At the time, he was trying to fi gure out if he wanted to become a researcher or pursue a medi-cal degree. He decided to go for a Ph.D. in microbiology and molecu-lar genetics at

Emory University in Atlanta. While at Emory, Shih did con-

sulting work that led him to meet “a lot of passionate and enthusiastic scientists who were trying to start up their own companies around some-thing they had discovered in the lab,” he said. “So it got me thinking, wow, maybe there are some other opportunities outside of the lab after I fi nish my graduate research.”

He and his father started talking about building a company around the six patents that Jason Shih had been granted while he was a fac-ulty member at N.C. State, and the two founded BRI in 1999. Giles became the company’s president and chief executive offi cer, and to prepare himself for the challenges of being an entrepreneur, he soon enrolled in the master’s of business administration program at Duke University.

Those early years of the com-pany were hard, he says. “We ran the company on a shoestring; we

just bootstrapped our way through … until things started to go in our favor.”

It was around 2008 that the Shihs got what Giles calls “our lucky break.”

“Oil prices hit their high. And as a result, corn and soybean prices also spiked up, and so all of a sud-den people were looking for ways to save on their costs on feed, because feed ingredients are one of the ma-jor costs for poultry producers and pork producers,” he explains. “So we were at the right place at the right time with this enzyme.”

That year, BRI signed a distribu-tion agreement with Novus Inter-national, a global animal nutrition company based in St. Louis. “They saw the opportunity to work with us to be a global distributor for our product,” Shih says. “We were very well placed at that time to take ad-vantage of that opportunity.”

In the past four years, Shih adds, the company has “grown tremen-dously” because of increased de-mand for poultry in countries such as Brazil, India and China. And as the world population continues to climb and demand more food, there are opportunities for BRI to continue to grow.

Shih attributes some of BRI’s growth and its prospects for the future to its relationship with N.C. State and its Research Triangle location.

“What we have achieved is not due to just me and my father but also to the environment in which we’ve grown,” he says. “We have been successful because of the sup-port we’ve gotten from N.C. State, from the Poultry Science Depart-ment on through the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences and also, in the early days, the [tech-nology] incubator on Centennial Campus.”

As Shih looks to the future, he believes BRI will be a “much big-ger, diversifi ed company with lots to offer animal production, animal nutrition, animal health as well as other food-related areas, such as functional foods.” — Dee Shore

Dr. Giles Shih and his father, Jason, founded BRI in 1999.

Today its products are sold in 25 countries.

Becky Kirkland

winter 2013 33

noteworthynoteworthy G I V I N G

As Dr. Thearon McKinney retired from N.C. State

University’s College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, a new scholarship endowment was created by his friends and family to honor McKinney and his wife, Vanette. The Thearon and Vanette McKinney American Youth Foundation Leadership Conference Scholarship Endowment was announced Sept. 7 at a retirement celebration for McKinney at the university’s JC Raulston Arboretum. The endowment is being created in the N.C. Agricultural Foundation Inc. in the College.

The new scholarship celebrates McKinney’s 34 years of service. He retired as professor and associate state 4-H program leader from CALS and the North Carolina Cooperative Extension Service. During this time he has overseen the NCCES initiative for developing responsible youth and led the Youth Program Development and Delivery Team. Vanette McKinney has also been active over the years as a volunteer for N.C. 4-H events and the American Youth Foundation.

The scholarship will provide opportunities for N.C. 4-H members to attend the American Youth Foundation Leadership Conference. The McKinneys

Scholarship endowment honors 4-H’s Thearon and Vanette McKinney

have been affi liated with the AYF since their own college days.

The 4-H program is the youth education program of North

Carolina Cooperative Extension, based at N.C. State and N.C. A&T State universities. – Terri Leith

The contributions to 4-H of Vanette and Thearon McKinney were celebrated

Sept. 7 at the JC Raulston Arboretum.

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34 perspectives

• Durham County Welcome Baby Enhancement Fund

• Gates County FCS Enhancement Fund

• Rockingham County Coopera-tive Extension Volunteers En-dowment for Family and Con-sumer Sciences Programs

• Rockingham Cooperative Exten-sion Volunteers Enhancement Fund for Family and Consumer Sciences Programs

North Carolina Extension and Com-munity Association Foundation:

• Kathleen Scott Family Extension and Community Association/Family and Consumer Sciences Endowment for Wilson County

• Macon County Extension and Community Association En-hancement Fund

• Sarah Nixon Extension and Community Association Endow-ment for Lincoln County

North Carolina 4-H Foundation:

• Dave and Gina Goff 4-H Presen-tation Endowment for Cabarrus County

• Durham County 4-H Enhance-ment Fund

• Eloise Cofer 4-H Scholarship Endowment for Family and Con-sumer Sciences

• George and Linda McAuley 4-H Dairy Foods Presentation Endow-ment

• Jones County 4-H Program En-hancement Fund

• Sampson County 4-H Program Enhancement Fund

• Thearon and Vanette McKin-ney American Youth Foundation Leadership Conference Scholar-ship Endowment

• Warren County Buck Springs 4-H Camp Endowment. — Suzanne Stanard

director of the North Carolina Cooperative Extension Foundation.

Through the Campaign for Counties, led by Rowland and her team, Extension has established at least one fund in all 100 of the state’s coun-ties. To date, 357 different funds provide opportunities

for more than 890 educational pro-grams, scholarships and initiatives.

The new endowments and funds are North Carolina Cooperative Exten-sion Foundation: • Durham County Extension

Master Gardeners Enhancement Fund

• Durham County Kids Voting En-hancement Fund

• Durham County Project Build Enhancement Fund

• Gates County Cooperative Exten-sion Service Enhancement Fund

• Joe and Lisé Zublena Coopera-tive Extension Service Awards Endowment

• Rowland Family Cooperative Ex-tension Internship Endowment

• Sampson County Cooperative Extension Service Learning Complex Enhancement Fund

North Carolina Family and Con-sumer Sciences Foundation:

• Carolyn J. Lackey Foods and Nutrition Endowment for Agent Professional Development

• Durham County Family and Consumer Sciences Enhance-ment Fund

CALS Dean Rich Linton (left) joins Wanda Denning, Reba

Green-Holley, Travis Burke, Dr. Joe Zublena and Marshall

Stewart at the fall CES foundations meeting.

The foundations that support North Carolina Cooperative

Extension celebrated a whopping 23 new endowments and enhance-ment funds at their annual fall meeting.

Dr. Joe Zublena, associate dean and Extension director, presided over the September gathering of the North Carolina Cooperative Exten-sion Foundation, the 4-H Develop-ment Fund, the Family and Con-sumer Sciences Foundation and the North Carolina Extension and Com-munity Association Foundation.

In his remarks at the luncheon, Zublena told the audience, “It is because of your vision and leader-ship that Extension has the resourc-es to carry out so many programs that improve the quality of life of people throughout this state.”

Zublena also welcomed new College of Agriculture and Life Sci-ences Dean Richard Linton, who, at the time, had been on board for just 12 days. Linton said during brief remarks at the luncheon, “I get Ex-tension. I’m one of you. And I look forward to working with each of you as we move Extension forward.”

The foundations also said good-bye to Sharon Rowland, who re-tired at the end of November after many years of service as executive

New CES endowments/funds announced at fall meetingBe

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The executive director of one of the most successful and ac-

tive statewide local government associations in the nation was honored Nov. 13 during the fall joint meeting of the North Carolina Agriculture, Dairy and Tobacco foundations at N.C. State Univer-sity. David Thompson, executive director and CEO of the N.C. Association of County Commis-sioners, received the Distinguished Service Award presented by the North Carolina Agricultural Foun-dation Inc. This year’s event also included a special presentation to Sharon Rowland, retiring executive director of the N.C. Cooperative Extension Service Foundation in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences.

Dr. Joe Zublena, CALS associ-ate dean and director of the North Carolina Cooperative Extension Service, presided during the lun-cheon awards event at the Univer-sity Club. Also participating were featured speaker Steve Troxler, commissioner of the North Caro-lina Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services; Jim Smith, chairman of the N.C. Agricultural Foundation, who presented the award to Thompson; and Dr. Bill Collins, director of the CALS Agri-cultural Leadership Program, who

delivered the invocation.Thompson received his 1979

bachelor’s degree and 1981 mas-ter’s degree from the College of Humanities and Social Sciences at N.C. State.

He was recognized for “provid-ing truly outstanding support of the College and university,” said Zublena. “The NCACC serves as the counties’ advocate before the executive, legislative and judicial branches of state government, and David’s leadership of the NCACC has been outstanding. He’s been particularly supportive of Coopera-tive Extension, including Extension leaders as part the environmental and agricultural steering commit-tees.

“As a result of this relationship, one of the NCACC Agricultural Steering Committee legislative goals is to support legislation to increase agricultural research and extension services and maintain ex-isting research stations at current levels.”

Smith then presented Thompson the Distinguished Service Award “for outstanding advocacy efforts promoting the partnership between

Distinguished service honored at joint foundations meeting

winter 2013 35

Shown with award-winner David Thompson (center) are Dr. Joe Zublena (left)

and Jim Smith of the North Carolina Agricultural Foundation.

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the North Carolina Association of County Commissioners, the North Carolina Cooperative Extension Service, the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at N.C. State University and all of the citizens of North Carolina.”

Zublena announced that Jimmy Gentry, president of the N.C. State Grange, had also been selected to receive the Distinguished Service Award but was unable to attend the awards event and so would be hon-ored at the group’s spring board meeting.

In the special presentation to Rowland, Zublena noted that she “is our fi rst director of the Exten-sion Foundation. She has a per-sonal passion for Extension and for making a difference. She is a giving person who has enriched the lives of citizens of the state.”

In his remarks, the recently re-elected Troxler thanked “the citizens of the state for having the confi dence in me to re-elect me” and then focused on what’s ahead.

“The future is bright. I see so much opportunity in agriculture in this state,” he said. “We’re dedi-cated in North Carolina to agricul-

Zublena made a special presentation

to Extension’s Sharon Rowland.

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36 perspectives

Dr. R. Wayne Skaggs, a National Academy of Engineering mem-

ber and retiring William Neal Reyn-olds Professor and Distinguished University Professor of biological and agricultural engineering, with his wife, Judy, has created an en-dowment to support the continued research in his fi eld of water, soil and plant systems management. The Wayne and Judy Skaggs En-dowment for Water Resources and the Hydrology of Poorly Drained Lands was created Nov. 9 at N.C. State University’s McKimmon Cen-ter. The endowment was signed as part of festivities in commemoration of Skaggs’ career.

Skaggs entered phased retirement in July, after more than 42 years on the BAE faculty in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. During his career, he has made contributions to the advancement of agricultural and biological engineer-ing as a teacher, mentor, researcher and national leader. He is recognized globally as the expert in drainage and subsurface water management.

Skaggs’ work includes the 1978 development of the water manage-ment model, DRAINMOD, which effectively combines fundamental methods derived over several decades by soil physicists and en-gineers to create a tool that quan-titatively relates drainage design parameters to the actual objective of the water management system. This model has bridged the gap that existed between theory and

practice and is now used globally by consulting engineers, research-ers and government agencies to predict the performance of drain-age and related water management systems.

A native of eastern Kentucky, where he was raised on a farm, Skaggs earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees at the University of Kentucky and his Ph.D. from Purdue University. In 1970 he joined the faculty at N.C. State, where he was named William Neal Reynolds Professor in 1984. He was elected to the National Acad-emy of Engineering in 1991 and named Distinguished University Professor that same year. In 1994, N.C. State presented Skaggs its

highest faculty recognition, the Al-exander Quarles Holladay Award. And in 1997, he received the O. Max Gardner Award, the UNC system’s highest award.

The creation of the Wayne and Judy Skaggs Endowment was made possible through the generosity of the couple and the support of colleagues and industry partners. It will enable CALS to support ac-complished faculty members who will contribute to the department’s overall teaching, research and ex-tension mission. Research in drain-age water management and the hydrology of poorly drained, shal-low water table soils will continue to receive priority and emphasis through the endowment.

Wayne and Judy Skaggs create endowment for water resources and hydrology research

tural research. When I hear what worldwide demand for food will be in the next 20, 30, 50 years, I know it’s incumbent on us to provide it effi ciently and safely.”

Citing the upcoming implemen-tation of the Food Safety Modern-ization Act, Troxler said, “We’ve got a lot to do at the state level

and national level,” adding that it’s fortuitous that CALS Dean Rich Linton, a food scientist and food safety specialist, “should come in at this time.”

In closing, Zublena reminded the group that the university is “cel-ebrating our 125th anniversary, as well as the 150th anniversary of the

Morrill Act that created land-grant institutions such as N.C. State. As a national and international leader in research, teaching and exten-sion, the College looks forward to continuing to work with you, our stakeholders, to address statewide, national and global challenges.”

— Terri Leith

Wayne and Judy Skaggs sign the memorandum of understanding for the new

endowment, along Dr. Robert O. Evans (left), head of the CALS Biological and

Agricultural Engineering Department.

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2012 Celebrates the TRADITION

A pre-game pep rally featuring the Wolfpack

mascots and band. An abundance of great food.

Fun and fellowship with CALS alumni, friends

and faculty. Generous scoops of Howling Cow

ice cream. And an array of College exhibits with

everything from face-painting to reptile encounters.

It was all there Sept. 15 as the Wolfpack faithful

fi lled Dorton Arena on the N.C. State Fairgrounds to

“Celebrate the Tradition” at the 21st annual College

of Agriculture and Life Sciences Tailgate event.

Hundreds of CALS alumni and friends gathered

for what has become traditionally the best and

biggest N.C. State University tailgate event, hosted

by the CALS Alumni and Friends Society and the N.C.

Agricultural Foundation Inc.

The tailgate also featured a silent auction, with pro-

ceeds benefi tting the CALS Alumni and Friends scholar-

ship endowment.

New CALS Dean Richard Linton was on hand to

meet and greet tailgaters as they enjoyed the many

event attractions before crossing the road from the

fairgrounds to nearby Carter-Finley Stadium, where

the N.C. State football team took on South Alabama

and gave the fans something else to celebrate: a

31-7 victory.

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A $10 million gift from the Prestage family creates a professorship, funds teaching, research and Extension programs — and renames the CALS Poultry Science Department. (Story, page 2)

Special people, special gift

NONPROFIT ORG.U.S. POSTAGE

PAIDRALEIGH, NC

PERMIT #2353

perspectivesCollege of Agriculture and Life SciencesCampus Box 7603North Carolina State UniversityRaleigh, NC 27695-7603