Summer 2011NC STATE UNIVERSITY

P e r s P e c t i v e s

Just ahead: A dairy technology

showcase

T H E M A G A Z I N E O F T H E C O L L E G E O F A G R I C U L T U R E A N D L I F E S C I E N C E S

Johnny Wynne, Dean College of Agriculture and Life Sciences

TDedication

ing: He served as interim director of the University Honors Program in 2002-2003, spent 2005-06 in the role of interim department head of Zoology and then fashioned and direct-ed a new university Office of Undergraduate Research. He published dozens of research articles and book chapters, as well as mystery novels. Royalties from the novels support the George T. and Marina T. Barthalmus Life Sciences Scholarship Endowment in the College.

George and Jon were extraordinary university leaders and colleagues who will be missed. They both also were instrumental in the creation of this magazine and were consistent supporters of and contributors to its mission of sharing the news of the College’s research, extension and teaching activities. We thus dedicate this issue of Perspec-tives to their memory.

his past spring the College of Agriculture and Life Sci-ences experienced the untimely loss of two former as-sociate deans, Dr. Jon Ort and Dr. George Barthalmus.

Jon, who came to N.C. State as a poultry science faculty mem-ber in 1979 and later served as director of the North Carolina Cooperative Extension Service from 1995 until his retirement last year, passed away in April. George, who joined the CALS Zoology Department in 1970 and later served as director of the College’s Academic Programs until his 2001 retirement, passed away in May. Both deaths were sudden and unexpect-ed and are greatly mourned by our College.

As CES director, Jon led the way in ensuring that citizens in rural, suburban and urban communities had direct access to the research-based knowledge of N.C. State University. Under his watch, North Carolina Cooperative Extension emerged as a leader in educational and applied research programs for alternative agricultural crops and enterprises, childhood nutrition and physical activity, school-age care and disaster preparedness. His emphasis on partnerships, entrepreneur-ship and results-oriented programming allowed Cooperative Extension to sustain a network of some 1,300 staff members and upwards of 80,000 volunteers and 20,000 advisers, mak-ing 2.5 million face-to-face contacts annually to enhance the state’s economy, environment and quality of life. A member of N.C. State’s Academy of Outstanding Teachers, Jon, with his family, created the Dr. Jon Ort Family Scholarship Award in the College.

George was a distinguished teacher and scientist who made immense contributions to N.C. State and the College. During his career at N.C. State, he taught more than 16,000 students. He won three University Outstanding Teaching Awards, the NCSU Distinguished Alumni Undergraduate Pro-fessor Award and the CALS Outstanding Academic Adviser Award. Even after George retired in 2001, he didn’t stop work-

Dr. Jon F. Ort Dr. George T. Barthalmus

summer 2011 1

2 Real Results for Real People CALS brings North Carolina the AgAdvantage.

8 Rising to the Top A new ‘showcase for the modern dairy industry’ adds luster to the FBNS Department’s golden anniversary.

13 Unleashing the Power of Extension Joe Zublena brings experience and strategy to bear as state Extension director.

15 Choice Cuts Concord conference serves up lessons in niche meat handling.

17 College ProfileWhether he’s the ‘cockroach guy’ or the ‘bed bug guy,’ entomologist Coby Schal is the go-to guy in the battle to control insect pests.

21 N E W SExtension’s 4-H team perseveres in robotics competition • Award-winning 4-H agent creates civics program to introduce high-school students to local government • Library exhibit tells the story of 4-H • Animal Science Club builds good fence for good neighbor • NUTS for nutrition • Better berries for a better economy • Gould elected to National Academy of Sciences • CALS will support agricultural education in Liberia • International AgriBusiness Law course launched • BritParis trip is a special spring break experience • Low-impact development project wins state award • New degree program focuses on business … and land • Graduate student examines invasive fish species and their ecosystem impacts • Surry County’s Pilot Mountain Pride successfully markets local produce • Faithful Families program promotes healthy lifestyles • Family and Consumer Sciences celebrates 100 years of service to N.C. families

35 A L U M N IStone balances family life, farm work and community involvement • Alumnus Raymond Schnell maps cacao genome, leads international research • Off to great places: World travels lead Caitlin Lowe in new directions

39 G I V I N GMay Day arboretum gala celebrates spring in Raleigh • Resource Development Awards presented, new endowments celebrated at 2011 joint foundations spring event • Carlson Endowment created to fund annual award for outstanding ARE dissertation

N O T E W O R T H Y

The Cover: Gary Cartwright, director of the CALS Dairy Enterprise System, is shown at the Lake Wheeler Road Dairy Educational Unit, which is being modernized and expanded. (Story, page 8.) Photo by Marc Hall

contentsThe Magazine of the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences

Summer 2011Vol. 13, No. 2

Managing Editor: Terri Leith

Design and Layout: Karl E. Larson

Staff Photographers: Becky Kirkland, Marc Hall, Roger Winstead

Staff Writers: Dave Caldwell, Natalie E. Hampton, Terri Leith, Dee Shore, Suzanne Stanard

Contributors: Erin McCrary, Rhonda Green, Jeanne Marie Wallace, NCSU News Services

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

Johnny C. Wynne, Dean and Executive Director for Agricultural Programs

Kenneth L. Esbenshade, Associate Dean and Director, Academic Programs

Joe Zublena, Associate Dean and Director, North Carolina Cooperative Extension Service

David Smith, Associate Dean and Director, North Carolina Agricultural Research Service

Sylvia Blankenship, Associate Dean for Administration

Keith D. Oakley, Executive Director, Advancement 919.515.2000

W. Scott Troutman, Executive Director, Alumni and Friends Society

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

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P e r s P e c t i v e sF E A T U R E S

NC STATE UNIVERSITY

2 perspectives

By Dee Shore

2 perspectives

Extension and research: You could call them north

Carolina’s AgAdvantage. Because that’s what North

Carolina’s producers are saying.

Whether they are operating in the mountains, piedmont

or coast; whether they’re involved in growing traditional crops

or trying something new; and whether they grew up on a farm or

CALS brings North Car olina the AgAdvantage

Real Results for Real People

summer 2011 3

(Clockwise from top left) B.B. Griffin, Kristi Marshall, John Hoffman, Bryan Cash, John Griffin, Joey Baker, Jill Hoffman, Paul Marshall

got into the business some other way — these factors matter little. Because together, these farmers are saying things like “Researchers solve production problems,” “We need North Carolina Cooperative Extension now more than ever,” and “I wouldn’t have a successful operation if it were not for N.C. State.”

University helps farmers stay ahead of emerging pests

CALS brings North Car olina the AgAdvantage

Here we bring you a few of their stories — stories of farms be-ing started, production problems being solved and dreams being fulfilled. And these are no small matters for North Carolina. Agri-culture and agribusiness — food, fiber and forestry — account for almost a fifth of the state’s income and employees.

Working on Bertie County land that their family has

farmed for generations, cousins B.B. and John Griffin know a thing or two about growing cot-ton. But when it comes to staying a step ahead of pests, diseases and other production challenges, they say, they’ve come to rely on their CALS agents and scientists for timely solutions.

To explain what they mean, the Griffins cite stink bugs, which have in recent years emerged as one of the most economically important

cotton pests. Today, virtually all N.C. cotton is genetically engi-neered with the bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis to control caterpillars. As caterpillars have declined, so has the need to apply insecticides — but with the drop in spraying has come a rise in stink bugs and other insects that aren’t susceptible to Bt.

To help farmers address the problem, agricultural scientists from land-grant universities in the Carolinas, Virginia, Georgia and Alabama began working together. They found that stink bugs are

John (left) and B.B. Griffin

Photos by Dee Shore

4 perspectives

most likely to cause economic yield losses during a relatively nar-row window in the growing season — the third through fifth week after cotton plants bloom.

NCSU entomology Extension specialist Dr. Jack Bacheler and technician Dan Mott developed a tough plastic field card that grow-ers and crop scouts can use to fig-ure out whether to spray. It illus-trates how the boll damage thresh-old changes according to week of bloom. The card has pictures illustrating the type of damage that stink bugs do and explains the use of the new “dynamic,” or chang-ing, threshold. It also includes holes that growers and scouts can use to more accurately gauge the size of vulnerable bolls on which the new threshold is based.

Bacheler estimated that at least 20 percent of North Carolina cot-ton growers use the cards, poten-tially saving themselves a total of $8 million a year by limiting yield loss and eliminating unnecessary sprays. These cards are being eval-uated throughout the remainder of the cotton belt in 2011.

As B.B. put it, “You don’t want to spray when you don’t have to. And you certainly need to spray when you need to. Now, thanks to scientists working together across state lines, we have a way of knowing when it’s the right deci-sion.”

It’s just one example, John add-ed, of the many ways that Exten-sion and research help farmers get timely answers to problems that threaten their livelihood.

“Some people say that the large farmers are beyond Extension. But that’s not true,” John said. “We need them as much or more than anyone else, and we need them as much now as we ever have.”

(continued next page)

Extension helps Rockingham farmers fulfill retirement dreams

When Paul and Kristi Marshall imagine their retirement,

they see a farmhouse overlooking a thriving muscadine vineyard, a pear orchard, a field of Christmas trees, a juice processing plant and perhaps even bed-and-breakfast cabins.

Fifth-generation farmers, the Marshalls bought a tobacco farm near Reidsville in 1989. Though both left farming for what they call “public jobs” – she as a systems analyst and he as a designer for an electronics manufacturer – they al-ways hoped to return to the land.

Among their goals: giving their children and grandchildren the kind of intangible quality-of-life benefits they enjoyed while grow-ing up and providing themselves with a fruitful retirement.

As the two have worked to turn their dreams into reality, they’ve often enlisted the help of agents with Cooperative Extension’s Rock-ingham County Center and of ag-ricultural Extension specialists with CALS. Agriculture agent Kathryn Holmes has often been at their right hand, delivering advice on every-thing from farm business planning to pest management to safety.

“Over the years, Kathryn has advised us on the more progres-sive ways, or the better ways, of doing things,” Paul said. “And also

the most economical, the most ef-ficient,” Kristi added.

Holmes also helped the Mar-shalls write a grant proposal that allowed them to establish North Carolina’s largest pear orchard. They are growing 140 pear trees — 10 each of 14 different European and Asian varieties — and testing the survival rate, fire blight resis-tance and marketability. They want to determine whether dessert pears can be a viable alternative to tradi-tional crops such as tobacco.

The pear project is supported by a grant from the nonprofit or-ganization Rural Advancement Foundation International, or RAFI, and the N.C. Tobacco Trust Fund Commission.

The Marshalls are also experi-menting with Christmas trees with the help of Dr. Dennis Hazel, an Extension Christmas tree specialist.

As for the future of the farm they call Riverbirch Vineyards, the Mar-shalls hope to get into beekeeping. They plan to build a home on the farm and move there. They recently won a RAFI grant to get into juicing and fruit processing. They see a day when they might make gift baskets for sale through a local foods orga-nization. And they want to convert two barns into a bed-and-breakfast.

Paul and Kristi Marshall

summer 2011 5

Joey Baker

Marshalls (continued)

On-farm research leads to solutions for Bertie County farmer

When it comes to growing crops like

peanuts, cotton, corn and soybeans, knowing the latest research-based recommendations can mean the difference be-tween making a profit or racking up losses. And there’s no faster way of getting that informa-tion, said Bertie County farmer Joey Baker, than by having researchers conduct trials on your farm.

Baker farms more than 3,000 acres in northeastern North Carolina and is presi-dent of the N.C. Peanut Growers Association. He said he depends on the university and Co-operative Extension for answers to some of his most vexing issues. And for the past six or seven years, he has hosted NCSU experiments on his farm.

Cooperating with the university gives Baker early and firsthand insight on questions ranging from how new corn varieties perform under real-world conditions to when is the best time to apply disease-preventing fungicides on peanuts. As an example, he points

to a trial that plant pathologist Dr. Barbara Shew conducted to deter-mine the optimal timing and num-ber of fungicide applications for Sclerotinia blight, one of the worst peanut diseases.

“Spraying is expensive, and so spraying at the wrong time can take the profit potential out of peanuts real fast,” Baker said.

Based on what Shew learned

at Baker’s farm and elsewhere, sci-entists developed a weather-based Scleronitia blight advisory system that alerts growers when it’s time to take action. They found that late-season sprays don’t have much benefit, but early-spraying accord-ing to the advisory or at the first sign of the disease is cost-effective.

Shew said that conducting trials on Baker’s farm has given her in-sights she might not have reached by working solely in a laboratory.

“Seeing tiny Sclerotinia infec-tions during severe drought … really stands out,” she said. “With just one rain, I’m sure an epidemic would have exploded overnight. Another lesson was seeing the fungus actively growing in 100-de-gree heat. That’s not supposed to happen. Weather models and lab studies showed the same thing, but I would not have believed it if I hadn’t seen it myself on several oc-casions.”

Shew is just one of the univer-sity scientists and Extension edu-cators who’ve assisted Baker. Dr. Alan York has been an asset when it comes to weed control in cotton, Dr. Tom Isleib has developed soon-to-be-released peanut varieties that Baker is eager to use on his farm and Dr. David Jordan has been helpful with tomato spotted wilt virus on peanuts, Baker said. He also cites Extension agents Richard Rhodes of Bertie County and Craig Ellison of Northampton County, which is where the farmer lives.

“I stay in contact with my … Extension agents, and they can usually answer my questions right off the top of their head,” he said. “There’s nothing like having a firm answer that you can depend on.”

The plans are big, but, as Holmes has advised, the Marshalls are taking it one step at a time.

“We just keep putting one foot in front of the other,” Paul said. “And Extension has been with us since day one on everything we’ve done. The hours that Kathryn and all of her cohorts at the Extension office in Rockingham have put in and the support we’ve gotten from

N.C. State University – we never can pay that back. There’s no dol-lar amount you can put on that.”

The Marshalls said that partici-pating in research and demonstra-tion efforts is a way to return to the farming community what Exten-sion has provided them. And, Paul said, it is a way to encourage farm-ers to work together and improve the local economy.

6 perspectives

John and Jill Hoffman

Nursery collaborates with N.C. State to solve production challenges

From its greenhouses and farm in Rougemont, Hoffman Nursery

sells ornamental and native grass liners — or starter plants — wholesale to customers all across the United States and Canada. But when the company’s owners need solutions to production problems, they frequent-ly look much closer to home — to the agricultural research and Exten-sion experts at N.C. State.

CALS scientists are conduct-ing three research projects in col-laboration with the nursery and its owners, John Hoffman and Dr. Jill Hoffman. The experiments are de-signed to create a superior cultivar of a popular ornamental grass and to solve problems related to pest and weed management.

The work has the potential to benefit not just the Hoffmans but the entire nursery industry, one of the most valuable sectors of North Carolina agriculture. In 2009, greenhouse, nursery and floricul-ture crops generated more than $900 million in cash receipts.

One of the NCSU projects involves developing a seedless cul-tivar of the ornamental grass Mis-canthus sinensis. Sometimes called silvergrass, this perennial grass is among the most popular in U.S. landscapes, but in some places, it has a tendency to reseed and cause problems in the landscape.

To get around that problem, Drs. Tom Ranney and Darren Touchell, plant breeders stationed at the Mountain Horticultural Crops Research and Extension Center in Mills River, are using biotechnology tools to create culti-vars that won’t reseed and spread. They are testing plant material in the mountains, while the Hoffmans are conducting field trials at their piedmont location.

John Hoffman said the nursery helped fund the Miscanthus re-search because he expects there to be strong interest in cultivars that don’t reseed.

“We think it’s certainly a worthy

plant for the landscape,” he said. “We thought if we could come up with something that wouldn’t re-seed, it could go nationwide and, possibly, worldwide.”

In a second project, the nursery has partnered with N.C. State to consider ways to encourage ben-eficial insects – ones that prey on pests – to thrive in greenhouses. Specifically, they are looking at the Black Pearl pepper plant as a so-called banker plant to support the survival and reproduction of the minute pirate bug.

The bug is sometimes used to control thrips, spider mites and aphids, three of the most economi-cally damaging pests of ornamental plants grown in greenhouses. Us-ing beneficial insects provides an alternative to chemical pesticides, but the insects can be expensive and aren’t guaranteed to persist in green-houses after their initial release.

Wendy Trueblood, a nursery em-ployee, had heard about using Black Pearl in greenhouses, and she con-

tacted Dr. Steven Frank of CALS’ Department of Entomology for advice on how best to use the plant. Because no re-search had been done on the topic, he enlisted one of his graduate students to find answers. Sarah Wong, a master’s degree student, is comparing greenhouses with banker plants and pirate bugs to houses without them.

The third research collaboration between Hoffman Nursery and N.C. State is also focused on controlling pests – specifically, weeds. With funding through the U.S. Department of Ag-riculture’s Interregional Research Project No. 4, most often referred to as IR-4, Dr. Joseph Neal of the Department of Hor-

ticultural Science is studying herbi-cides for ornamental grasses.

Right now, few herbicides are la-beled for pre-emergence and poste-mergence weed control in ornamen-tal grasses, mainly because pesticide manufacturers have little incentive to invest in the expensive process of developing and testing products for use in such minor crops.

Neal’s research is designed to help fill that gap by identifying new pest management tools for orna-mental growers.

These ongoing research projects are just the latest efforts linking N.C. State and Hoffman Nursery.

Jill earned her master’s and Ph.D. in toxicology from the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences in the 1980s, and John took courses with the late Dr. J.C. Raulston, a CALS professor and namesake for its JC Raulston Ar-boretum.

While operating a landscape business he started in 1981, John

(continued next page)

summer 2011 7

noticed a growing interest in using ornamental grasses and thought he could create a business to capital-ize on that interest. His hunch was confirmed by Raulston, who told his students that grasses were, along with aquatic plants and bamboo, the plants of the future.

In 1986, the Hoffmans bought 45 acres in rural Durham County. Since then, Hoffman Nursery Inc. has matured into a successful horti-cultural business with more than 60 greenhouses and 35 full-time em-ployees. They constantly strive to improve their efficiency and to be

good environmental stewards, Jill Hoffman says, exploring ways to recycle water, make the best use of energy, mechanize production and shipping, and more.

The nursery’s Director of Sales and Marketing Shannon Currey said that collaborating with N.C. State researchers also leads to more efficiencies. Not only that, col-laborative research is a mutually beneficial: NCSU has a chance to stay in touch with the industry and be aware of real-world problems it faces, while the nursery gains ac-cess to leading-edge solutions.

Hoffmans (continued)

Anson County farmer starts with Extension to get on award-winning track

Bryan Cash is justifiably proud of his cattle herd in Anson

County. When he bought his first cows more than a decade ago, he knew very little about what it took to raise them. But now, he has a herd of close to 70 healthy cows, plus 42 calves that are thriving.

“Everything that you see out there today, I wanted it, and I did it, but without my Extension agent Richard Melton, (the farm) wouldn’t be where it is today,” said Cash, Anson County’s Outstand-ing Farmer of the Year in 2008.

“Everything I learned, I learned from Richard.”

And by everything, Cash means solid practices related to nu-trition, record-keeping, reproduc-tion, genetics, health, marketing and more.

Cash began cattle farming in 1999 to supplement his earnings as an N.C. prison correction officer.

“I didn’t know anything when I first started. I got to the point where I would sell some calves, and they would be a year old but they wouldn’t weigh but about 400

pounds,” Cash said. “I knew that wasn’t right. I didn’t know where to go, but I wanted to get better.”

On other farmers’ recommen-dation, Cash turned to Melton. The day they met, the agent lis-tened and advised Cash about nu-trition and genetic improvements. He also encouraged Cash to buy a good bull.

In months and years to come, Melton – now Extension director in nearby Union County – would be there when Cash castrated his first animal and the first time the farmer artificially inseminated a cow.

Today, Cash relies exclusively on artificial insemination for his herd, and fellow Anson County farmers often call him for help. He estimated he’s artificially insemi-nated 300 cows in the past year.

Cash makes time every day to look after the herd, and he believes in taking good care of what he calls his momma cows. “You need to keep her in good shape. If you do, she’s going to work for you,” he says. “If not, she can’t give you but so much.”

From Melton, Cash learned that 30 days before they are ex-pected to deliver their calves, it is important to give cows vitamin E and a vaccine to prevent reproduc-tive and respiratory diseases. He also learned that when each calf is born, they should get vitamin E and their umbilical cords should be sprayed with a solution that prevents infection.

“I don’t know where else I would have gone to get to where I am today. When I made the phone call to the Extension office, things started shaping up,” Cash said. “Richard’s knowledge pushed me and got me to where I am today.”

Bryan Cash

8 perspectives

evolved from the work in the dairy technology field on the N.C. State campus in 1918, pasteurizing milk for soldiers based near the college.

This also was the first milk pasteurized in the state. By the early 1920s, Professor Wil-liam L. Clev-enger was on campus as dairy manufacturing

and Extension specialist, teaching courses and working to develop the state’s cheese and dairy in-dustry. The details of all this were

W.L. Clevenger

There’s a new milking center under the last stages

of construction at N.C. State University’s Lake Wheeler

Road Dairy Research and Teaching Farm, to be joined

by a new heifer raising facility, classroom pavilion and a visitor

center/museum. All are components of the Dairy Enterprise

A new ‘showcase for

the modern dairy

industry’ adds luster to

the FBNS Department’s

golden anniversary.

By Terri Leith

System, a vertically integrated uni-versity approach to all aspects of the dairy commodity, from milk-ing to market, from cow to con-sumer. That system is housed in the Department of Food, Biopro-cessing and Nutrition Sciences, in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. The FBNS department, formerly known as Food Science, celebrates its 50th anniversary this year. And it is fitting that the modernized dairy unit is the new-est milestone in the department’s history – because it all started with a creamery, well before the depart-ment’s official creation in 1961.

Food science at N.C. State

The framework for the new Lake Wheeler Road milking facility has taken shape (above). At top is Gary Cartwright, director of the Dairy Enterprise System.

8 perspectives

Mar

c Hall

Mar

c Hall

Rising to the Top

summer 2011 9

Ivan Jones

set aside for pos-sibility of making preliminary steps to a Department of Food Science in 1959 or 1960,” Jones added. “The amount of money was a

nominal sum, but it did serve as seed money and with the back-ing of Gov. Sanford, there was a Department of Food Science es-tablished. The faculty was formed from various departments.”

Thus in 1961, the department was established to house the uni-versity’s academic curricula and research and extension programs related to food processing. The department was first called “Food Processing,” then became “Food Science” and is now the Depart-ment of Food, Bioprocessing and Nutrition Sciences.

There are, of course, numerous historic events that mark the way from 1961 to 2011 for the depart-ment. And in this anniversary year, there’s an event in the mak-ing: the modernized Lake Wheeler Road Dairy Farm.

What a farm it will be. The construction started in De-

cember 2010, with completion to be in late fall 2011. When all mod-ernization is complete, the Lake Wheeler Road Dairy Educational Unit will include a new milking center, freestall facility, heifer rais-ing facility, classroom and pavilion — and a visitor center/museum to teach visitors about the dairy and the property’s Randleigh Farm connections and history.

“The Randleigh Farm, which was donated by William Kenan to the university in the ’60s, was sold, and a significant part of the pro-ceeds was set aside for a new milk-

recalled by Dr. W.M. Roberts, who in 1961 became the first head of the new Food Science Department, in an interview with Dr. Dean W. Colvard.

(Colvard, who served as CALS dean from 1953 to 1960, spoke with Roberts in 1979 as part of his research for Knowledge Is Power, a history of N.C. State’s College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. Colvard later turned over all interview transcripts and other pertinent papers as a gift to the College’s former Department of Communication Services.)

When Roberts came from Ten-nessee in the early ’40s to visit N.C. State about a dairy-related position in the college’s Animal Industry Department, it was Clev-enger who met his train and hosted a tour of dairy operations around the state. “I could see the relation-ship that Professor Clevenger had with these people and the confi-dence they had in him,” Roberts told Colvard. And when N.C. State offered Roberts a job, he was told “it was the first state appropriation that had ever been given for work in this particular area. This was the beginning.”

Roberts said that he was “quizzed very critically and in de-tail about what I thought it would take to build a dairy manufacturing department of the type that was needed and wanted,” and Roberts laid out what he envisioned.

“We had rather quickly one of the best staffed departments in the South” Roberts told Colvard. In fact, Roberts recalled, by 1952, North Carolina State College con-ferred, “as far as we can determine, … the first Ph.D. in dairy manu-facturing in the South to Dr. R.B. Redfern.”

Among the college units and departments that make up the cross-curricular origins of the food science/food processing curricu-lum at N.C. State is Horticultural Science.

In 1930, Dr. Ivan Jones joined the (then) Horticulture Depart-

ment, where he was instrumental in enlarging the food preserva-tion program and conducted N.C. State’s first research on the com-mercial processing of fruits and vegetables. In 1961, having led the committee to develop a food processing curriculum, he became a professor in the newly created Food Science Department.

Going into the 1960s, food processing had been recognized as a viable eco-nomic player in the state’s economy. By 1961, the state’s legislature had

before it the request to start a new Department of Food Processing at N.C. State.

Jones, also interviewed by Colvard in 1979, offered his recol-lection of the department’s cre-ation: “I think of Governor [Terry] Sanford as being the man who was really responsible for getting a food processing department start-ed,” Jones said. “Not only Gover-nor Sanford, but Ralph Scott, … who, I think, deserves the recogni-tion for being responsible for start-ing the present food science pro-gram on the campus.” (Scott, N.C. State class of 1924, who served as a state senator and university trustee, was one of the organizers of the Dairy Foundation at NCSU.)

“I was told that he specified that a certain amount of money be

A bottler works at the N.C. State dairy plant in Polk Hall in the 1950s.

Cour

tesy

FBNS

10 perspectives

ing parlor,” said Gary Cartwright, director of the Dairy Enterprise System.

“This all represents a 20-year master plan,” he said. “We want this to be the farm of 2050, not the farm of 2010.”

Currently, the farm has more than 300 total cows, about one-quarter Jerseys and the rest Hol-steins. The milking herd has been as low as 125 animals but is cur-rently at 165, Cartwright said. “Our target is to be between 160 and 180 to be an efficient operation and have sufficient numbers for valid research trials.”

In oversight of the herd, he said, “We absolutely depend on the Department of Animal Science to define the direction we want to go. The operation is under FBNS, but Animal Science is the driver of teaching and research and collab-orative efforts with the College of Veterinary Medicine (CVM).”

Animal Science Professor and Extension dairy specialist Dr. Brinton Hopkins said, “While sev-eral university dairy teaching and research herds across the country have been closed in recent years, N.C. State University had the great foresight to do just the opposite and expand and improve our dairy fa-cilities. This puts N.C. State Univer-sity in the forefront as the primary dairy teaching and research loca-tion in the Southeast United States.”

Hopkins said that “dairy farmers

in North Carolina view these new dairy facilities as being the showcase for the modern dairy industry in North Carolina. Since many of our dairy farmers provided input into the design and construction of these facilities, they also feel ownership and great pride in the revitalization of our dairy teaching and research programs at the university.

“Extension agents and FFA vo-cational agriculture instructors, as well as 4-H and FFA members, will utilize these new dairy facilities to learn more up-to-date information to share with dairy farmers and the general public across the state,” Hopkins said, adding that “the

general public will gain a greater, more positive appreciation for the North Carolina dairy industry by visiting our new dairy facilities and museum at the Lake Wheeler Road Dairy Educational Unit.”

According to his animal sci-ence colleague Dr. Vivek Fellner, the key advantages of having the new dairy unit facilities are “an improved facility to showcase newer technology to students; new degree programs that combine pre- and post-harvest technolo-gies; increased cow comfort and well-being of animals; enhanced waste management by streamlining housing, milking and feeding areas; and improved nutrient capture, to minimize environmental impact of the farming system.”

Moreover, he said, the expan-sion of the facility “will allow us to propose a new degree program outlined for students who want technical expertise in dairy man-agement with pre-harvest and post-harvest technologies.

“The future of the dairy indus-try lies in a better understanding and close link between production practices at the farm and milk han-dling, processing and marketing of dairy products. The new milk-ing parlor, improved calf housing modules and on-site pasteurizer units give us an edge over other campuses in the United States for highly focused and specialized re-search projects.”

Anthony Chesnutt, dairy farm manager, shares his colleagues’ enthusiasm about the new milking parlor, which, he said, “will host numerous milking labs associated with the NCSU animal science and the Agricultural Institute curricula that afford students the opportunity to get hands-on experience in the

In 1964, ground for Schaub Hall was broken by (from left) UNC system Pres-ident Bill Friday, NCSU Chancellor John Caldwell, N.C. Gov. Terry Sanford, CALS Dean H. Brooks James, Food Science Department Head William Roberts and N.C. Sen. Ralph Scott.

Cartwright says the new facility will be an environment that truly repre-sents the region’s dairy farms.

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summer 2011 11

Students work in the current milking parlor, which will soon relocate to the more spacious, modern facility nearby. Adjacent will be a classroom pavilion and labs.

milking process.” Furthermore, he said, both

CALS animal science and CVM faculty and students will have op-portunities to take part in research-related activities, such as milk sam-pling, teat scoring, mastitis manage-ment and milk data collection.

“A new calf milk pasteurizer will be located in the new facility for research and teaching purposes,” he said.

Groups associated with 4-H, YMCA, Ag in the Classroom, ele-mentary and middle schools, dairy industry and private farms will be touring the facility under strict bio-security guidelines, said Ches-nutt. “Biosecurity will be a major emphasis and teaching aspect of this facility.”

And, as always, he said, “N.C. State students will continue to work in a flexible capacity in the new facility, which will afford them

hands-on large animal and dairy experience to enhance their educa-tional endeavors.”

FBNS’ Cartwright is equally excited about what the new facili-ties mean to the Dairy Enterprise System, which integrates the Lake Wheeler Road Dairy Farm with the Schaub Hall Dairy Pilot Plant. “We wanted to have an operation large enough to have valid research and teaching applications,” he said. “This model allows us to do that.”

The main change to the depart-ment’s dairy operation that the

Dairy Enterprise System puts into place is “implementing entrepre-neurial and economic feasibility into the whole operation. Our mis-sion is research, teaching and exten-sion, but paying for it is paramount. Our ultimate goal is being totally self-sufficient. The dairy processing plant has always been totally self-supporting,” Cartwright said.

“All participants – students, researchers, instructors and staff – have the opportunity and the responsibility to contribute to a continuously improving operation. There are finite resources, so deci-sions must be made as to the best way to invest for maximum return. However, in our environment those returns are not measured just by dollars, but elements of cow comfort, genetic quality, teaching efficiencies and capabilities, feed and metabolism, breeding, etc., are considerations of value.”

And while the dairy farm con-struction is fund-ed by proceeds of the Randleigh Farm sale, “right now money is flowing from our operation in Schaub back to the farm,” said Cartwright. “The system can bal-ance itself out.”

The opera-tion in Schaub, of course, pro-

cesses and markets N.C. State dairy products, particularly ice cream, now branded as Howling Cow products. “We’d always been N.C. State ice cream, N.C. State milk,” explained Cartwright. “We decided we wanted to brand it, so in 2008, we came up with ‘Howling Cow.’”

It was in 2004 that the depart-ment went to the legislature and asked for an exemption from the Umstead Act, which prevents uni-versities from competing with the private sector. “The legislature sup-ported us, and the state dairy indus-

try supported us and supports us in this new direction,” Cartwright said. “The legislature gave us the ability to sell dairy products produced in FBNS to the general public, which

Dr. Keith Harris and FBNS students scoop ice cream for State Fair cus-tomers.

we could not do previously. But we must sell it on N.C. State’s campus.”

As for the ever-popular ice cream venue at the N.C. State Fair, he said, “We sell the ice cream to the Food Science Club students, and they sell it at the fair.”

The FBNS dairy operation can also claim credit for enhancing the university’s participation in the local foods movement — which emphasiz-es the support of the state’s growers via consumption of locally grown products — as campus student food venues have traditionally sold the department’s milk and ice cream.

And there are more products to come, said Cartwright.

“With the popularity of our ice cream, we knew the future of our operation and the best template for educating students was a much more diverse fluid line than plain milk,” he said. “We want to do more diverse, value-added dairy products and integrate the students into what we do. It is an incred-ible teaching tool: From bench-top ingredients to processing to label-ing and marketing, all those things have to be put together, and this gives our students significant real-world experience and advantage.”

And, he added, “This also cre-ates a pipeline that perhaps the next Gatorade comes from N.C. State and will be a milk product. But ev-

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erything will be education-based.“The need to do all this,” he

said, “meant we needed to have an outlet to showcase. All of these concepts culminated in the Schaub annex.”

That’s another milestone event coming: N.C. State is to have the Creamery, an on-campus dairy retail operation/ice cream parlor addition planned for the north side of Schaub Hall.

Dr. Christopher Daubert, in-terim head of FBNS, called

the Creamery “a significant part of our departmental history: Food Science was born from the Dairy Manufacturing program within dairy husbandry. The formation of the vertically integrated Dairy Enterprise System, through adop-tion of our research and teaching farm on Lake Wheeler Road, is a natural extension of an already suc-cessful function. The farm provides our scientists with the opportunity to extend research all the way back to the crops grown for our cows, availing the opportunity to observe and see impacts on food quality and nutrient value. We essentially have command and control of the production pipeline, from the crops to cow to cream.”

Daubert added that “as far as we know, N.C. State is the only major university to integrate all

aspects of dairy production under one system, with the goal of ap-proaching operational self-sustain-ability.”

At the same time, he said, “by keeping education through research, teaching and extension as our driving mission, N.C. State is producing dairy professionals who are skilled in science and have practical experience in every facet of the dairy business. We are already hearing from industry lead-ers — not only in North Carolina, but nationally — that students ex-posed to all levels of farm-to-fork production are in high demand.”

As the function and operation of the facilities expand, he said, “Our vision is for this N.C. State farm to represent a model for the future of dairy farming. We feel an obligation to instruct the next

The planned annex to Schaub Hall will house an on-campus dairy retail operation and an ice cream parlor.

generation of leaders in the dairy industry with the next generation of technologies that address issues of concern, like waste and water management, animal health and welfare, and energy conservation to name a few.”

Said Cartwright, “From my perspective, the impact to the dairy program within our department is the ability to vertically integrate and stabilize financially for perpe-tuity and be here for future genera-tions.”

And appropriately enough, this vision takes shape during the FBNS anniversary.

“We are celebrating 50 years of achievement by our faculty, staff and students,” said Daubert. “This department is the key engine that drives innovation and entrepre-neurship for food manufacturing in North Carolina.”

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LET’S CELEBRATE 50 YEARS!The FBNS 50th Anniversary Celebration events take place Sept. 22-24.

For information: www.ncsu.edu/foodscience/anniversary.htm Call 919.513.2388 or email: wchollif@ncsu.edu

summer 2011 13

Joe Zublena

brings experience

and strategy to

bear as state

Extension director.

A power of a leader. “By the strength of the leader’s com-

mitment,” it says, “the power of the team is unleashed.”

Today, Zublena’s challenge is unleashing the power of the North Carolina Cooperative Extension Service, the largest extension pro-gram at N.C. State University and one of the largest in the country. In December, Zublena was named Extension’s director, as well as as-sociate dean for the College of Agri-culture and Life Sciences.

Zublena brings more than 30 years of experience with extension and a passion for its ability to bring

about positive changes for farm-ers, families and young people. He hopes to help the organization fo-cus its programs, defining those ar-eas in which it can make the stron-gest impact and making those areas the highest priorities when it comes to funding and staffing decisions.

Zublena describes himself as a “product of Extension.” His first brush with the organization was as a student at Rutgers University, the land-grant university of New Jersey.

By Dee Shore

Unleashing the Power of Extension

He’d earned a bachelor’s degree in botany and a master’s degree in soils and crops when he landed an assistantship with Extension spe-cialist Jim Justin.

“Through him, I learned there’s something about an extension per-sonality. He knew the issues, and he knew how to do things to im-pact the issues,” Zublena recalls. “I knew I liked extension because it was changing things. And the other thing is, it was fun. It wasn’t boring — every day was something new, a new issue or a new concern.

“I just knew it was me.”After earning his Ph.D. in 1979,

Zublena took a job as an assistant

poster on dr. Joe Zublena’s office wall describes the

Dr. Joe Zublena

Marc Hall

14 perspectives

ate director position in charge of Extension’s agricultural, natural resources and community and rural development programs. Melton is a plant pathologist who had served as Extension’s assistant director for agricultural programs.

Rounding out the administra-tive team is Dr. Marshall Stewart, an agricultural educator who has for six years been associate direc-tor of 4-H youth development and family and consumer sciences.

Zublena sees the team’s task as one of rebuilding – of helping to lay a foundation of strong, focused programs that have a meaningful and deliberate impact on the lives of North Carolina’s people.

The organization, he says, has an outstanding faculty and

staff dedicated to the mission of empowering people and providing solutions through research-based knowledge and technology. It has a rich, century-long history of im-proving the state’s economy, the environment and the quality of life. And it has a committed network of partners and volunteers who am-plify Extension’s efforts.

But in today’s competitive envi-ronment and tight economic times, Extension needs to get serious about being strategic, Zublena says.

“We are very scattered,” he says. “Everyone is doing good stuff, but that good stuff is going in all directions. It’s not focused. What I’d like for everyone to do now is to just face north and start doing good things facing north. And then we’ll try to slowly pull things in to be more focused – to go from a shotgun approach to that of a rifle – something that’s narrower and more well-defined.”

And that, he says, means de-ciding which programs Extension should focus on and then defining what success in those program ar-eas will look like.

Once that’s decided, he says, it’s time for action: putting the process-es and people in place to achieve

professor and extension agronomist at Clemson University. There, he specialized in corn and sorghum. But in 1988 a career that had to that point been focused on crop pro-duction took a turn. Hired as N.C. State’s Extension leader for the De-partment of Soil Science, he soon found himself leading programs in the area of waste management.

At the time, waste manage-ment was emerging as a key issue in North Carolina, and Zublena helped develop a comprehensive train-the-trainer program related to waste management on farms. He was also one of the first extension specialists nationwide to conduct a nutrient mapping effort to identify areas where waste production was most likely to push soil nutrient levels too high and thus create problems in the environment.

“It was a wild ride, but it was also a great time for educational opportunities and for addressing an important societal issue,” he said. “I like helping people, solving problems and making things more efficient. And that’s exactly what Extension was doing at that time — and what it continues to do.”

Zublena’s leadership skills fac-tored into Extension’s success in helping North Carolina address waste management issues, and in 1995 he began putting those skills to use as Extension’s associate state program leader for natural resources and community and rural development. The next year, he was named assistant director of Co-operative Extension and director of county operations.

Zublena’s first order of business as state Extension director has been to assemble a top-notch adminis-trative team. To fill the associate director and director of county operations position he previously held, he appointed Sheri Schwab, a lawyer who most recently served as the college’s assistant dean for personnel.

Zublena also appointed Dr. Tom Melton to fill the associ-

that success. “Whenever we fund something or hire a new position, we have to know how it builds to-ward that defined success,” he says.

While Extension has in the past talked about taking a strategic ap-proach, years of budget cuts and the lack of prioritization pulled the organization off track, Zublena says.

“We need to prioritize so that when we have to make cuts, we cut things that aren’t that rifle point,” he says. “Right now, we don’t know what the rifle point is, so it’s hard to be discriminating. I’ve been talking a lot with the new administrative team about this – defining what we really need to be working on and what we need to be changing.

“My role as the leader is to make sure that we have those criti-cal conversations and dialogues – and that we act on them,” he says. “I’m really excited about the first meetings we’ve had. The administrative team members are expressing their ideas. They are all challenging each other in very posi-tive ways to make the organization better. They really want to move this organization forward.”

Moving ahead, he says, requires more than conversations with a small team. It means hearing what faculty and staff have to say, as well as listening to those outside the or-ganization – funding stakeholders, leaders of partnering organizations, volunteers and clients, among them.

Having such feedback is vital to Extension’s future, Zublena says.

“Cooperative Extension is one of the jewels in the N.C. State family. It is the conduit into every county, and we need to keep build-ing that connection,” he says. “We are looking to strengthen, improve and, we hope, keep this organiza-tion as a strength not only for the university but for the state for years to come.”

summer 2011 15

Concord conference serves up

lessons in niche meat handling.

In one room of the cabarrus event center, dr. gregg

Rentfrow of the University of Kentucky is cutting a side of

beef into pieces, demonstrating where to find value-added

cuts like a flat iron steak, chuck tender or a Denver cut.

Later, N.C. State University’s Dr. Dana Hanson tries to debunk some myths about meat produc-tion, while across the way, a group of would-be butchers learn where meat comes from by cutting down half a pork carcass.

This was the scene in March at the Carolina Meat Conference in Concord, which brought together more than 250 players in the meat industry from 13 states. The event, coordinated by NC Choices, a Center for Environmental Farm-ing Systems’ program, drew meat producers, butchers, processors, retailers, regulators and chefs from

as far away as Texas, California and Vermont.

NC Choices promotes the pro-duction and sale of locally raised and niche meats. Such products are defined by a range of production practices and marketing strategies that consumers increasingly value. Production methods that define niche meats include organic, grass-fed, pasture-raised, cage-free, free-range and heritage breed, as well as meat raised with humane husband-ry practices and without antibiotics or added hormones.

“We were just thrilled and ex-cited with the diversity of individu-

By Natalie Hampton

als who came to the conference,” said Jennifer Curtis, NC Choices project director. Curtis said the conference was the first of its kind in the country.

“I think it was the right time to do it, because of the growth and demand for niche meats,” said Casey McKissick, NC Choices’ coordinator. “Did it work? Yeah, I think people were very excited, re-invigorated and inspired.” It was so successful that McKissick is already planning a focused workshop series in 2012 and a repeat statewide con-ference in 2013.

Curtis, who has worked with NC Choices for five years, says it’s difficult to track exactly how

Choice Cuts

At a popular conference work-shop, Dr. Gregg Rentfrow dem-onstrated specialty meat cuts.

Becky Kirkland

summer 2011 15

16 perspectives

much North Carolina’s niche meat industry has grown in the last 10 years, but it’s safe to say that it is in pace with what has happened in national markets. Comments from conference participants outside the state indicate that North Carolina is nationally recognized for its progressive work in the area of lo-cal food systems, especially locally produced meats.

Across the United States, sales of natural and organic red meats have grown by 15 percent, com-pared with growth of 1.7 percent for all red meat sales. Poultry sales overall increased 7.8 percent, while sales of natural and organic poultry have grown by almost 14 percent.

Curtis says the best way to get a picture of how North Carolina’s niche meat industry has grown is by the growth in the number of meat handlers’ registration in the state since 2007. The number of registered meat handlers in the state has grown by 187 percent over four years, while the number of farmer-registered meat handlers has grown by 321 percent, she said.

Curtis hopes conference partici-pants got a sense of being part of a growing industry. Producer Karen McAdams of Orange County said it was unusual to have both pro-ducers and processors at the same conference.

“I think it was a step in the right direction, addressing some of the issues with marketing local meats,” said McAdams, a former livestock Extension agent, who now raises

beef and lamb with her husband, Howard, at McAdams Farm.

McKissick hopes that the butch-ery parts of the workshop will help encourage newcomers to the field of artisanal butchery. Most retail outlets now sell meat that is pro-cessed offsite, Curtis said, and there is little role for store-based butchers anymore.

“More and more young people

whole meat carcass, rather than just buying select cuts. Farmers benefit when they can sell the whole car-cass, McKissick said.

During the conference, a chef workshop on whole animal utiliza-tion was filled and had a waiting list, showing the meat industry’s interest in learning more about buying, sell-ing and processing whole carcasses.

Rentfrow of the University of Kentucky provided a workshop for meat processors on optimizing carcass utilization. He demonstrated the labor-intensive nature of some specialty meat cuts. Rentfrow said the meat processing industry is looking for ways to reduce the labor involved in those specialty cuts.

Meanwhile, N.C. State’s Exten-sion meat specialist Dr. Dana Han-son addressed “meat-processing myth busters,” explaining some common misconceptions about the cost of meat processing equipment, maintenance and the profit margins of meat processing.

During the first afternoon of the conference, home chefs grabbed some very sharp knives and tested their skill at butchery to see first-hand where various cuts of meat are found in a whole carcass. Tia Harrison of the Butcher’s Guild and executive chef of Sociale in San Francisco has been offering a consumer class for several years, “so people will know where their meat comes from.”

Butchers-in-training worked in teams to practice cutting and processing carcasses.

CALS’ Dr. Dana Hanson was the meat-processing myth buster.

are interested in working in butch-ery shops,” she said. “They’re anx-ious for more information on the art of butchery.”

Artisanal butchery promotes meat sales to restaurants by provid-ing chefs with options for utilizing a

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summer 2011 17

Whether he’s the

‘cockroach guy’

or ‘bed bug guy,’

entomologist Coby

Schal is the go-to

guy in the battle

to control insect

pests.

Profile

By Suzanne Stanard

CollegeProfileCollegeProfileCollegeProfile summer 2011 17

College

Marc Hall

18 perspectives

Dr. cobY schal of n.c. state universitY’s college

of Agriculture and Life Sciences is getting used to be-

ing known as “the bed bug guy.”

Schal has made the rounds in local and national media over the

past year, from an interview on NPR’s “The People’s Pharmacy”

to a talk at the Environmental Protection Agency’s National Bed

Bug Summit. His work also is featured in a new National Geo-

graphic documentary.

features and different genetics, so it gives us a range of different popu-lations to test our strategies on,” Schal says. “We’re working hard to find solutions for bed bug control.”

Before he became renowned for his work on bed bugs, Schal was (and still is) known as “the cockroach guy.” He says that his work with cockroaches continues at full steam, and his lab has made some recent discoveries that could prove to be ground-breaking.

“Almost 20 years ago, my col-league Jules Silverman discovered that there are cockroach popula-tions that refuse to eat certain sug-ars,” Schal says. “This is fascinat-ing because almost all animals like sugar, especially glucose. The taste of sweet is almost universal in its acceptance.”

Schal thinks Silverman’s dis-covery means that some cock-roaches have evolved to resist insecticide baits that combine glu-cose with poison.

“By avoiding glucose, they’re

avoiding insecticide,” Schal says. “Not much has happened with this discovery over the last 20 years because the mechanism has not been understood.”

Until now. Using a combination of behav-

ioral and neurophysiological stud-ies, Ayako Katsumata, a postdoc-toral researcher in Schal’s lab, has discovered that these cockroaches have a genetic mutation that makes glucose taste bitter, so they avoid it.

“This opens up a whole new area of molecular biology for us, and I believe it may turn out to be a textbook example of understand-ing the molecular mechanisms of behavioral resistance,” Schal says.

The discovery is new because most well-known cases of insecti-cide resistance are purely physi-ological: a change in the insect’s metabolism renders poisons inef-fective. But with behavioral resis-tance, insects evolve new habits to avoid insecticides entirely. Now Schal’s lab has found sensory un-derpinnings of one of these behav-ioral changes.

He describes his work with cockroaches as an “arms race” and says, “We keep hitting them with different insecticides and other control strategies, and they contin-ue to evolve ways to evade them.”

Schal lights up when he talks about bed bugs and cockroaches. He’s fascinated, not grossed out, as evidenced by the wall behind his desk that is plastered with photos of different roaches.

But it hasn’t always been that way.

“I think I’m different from

“Nothing surprises me any-more about bed bugs,” Schal says with a chuckle.

He fields requests from all sorts of people, including those in medi-cine, construction, furniture and textiles.

“We’re working with North Carolina companies quite a lot now, especially furniture mak-ers,” Schal says. “They’re working to prevent their furniture from harboring bed bugs, and they’re interested in our help primarily because we raise bed bugs.

“We probably raise more bed bugs in our lab than anyone in the world, so we’re able to test these companies’ products here in our lab.”

Indeed, it’s difficult to miss the “Bed Bug Containment Area” sign on the door to Schal’s lab. His lab raises 40 different strains of bed bugs that they’ve collected from all over the country, including about 10 strains from North Carolina.

“Different strains have unique

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Dr. Coby Schal provides a closer look at the pest that’s been plaguing homes, hotels and hospitals.

summer 2011 19

many entomologists, because I don’t remember playing with in-sects as a kid,” Schal says.

Born in Poland, he moved with his family to Israel at the age

of 2. His parents, who were Holo-caust survivors, moved the family to the United States when Schal was 15, seeking better education for him and his older sister. The family settled in New York City, and many years later, Schal has discovered that he grew up mere miles from a number of his fellow N.C. State colleagues.

After graduating from high school – the first in his family to do so – Schal enrolled at the State University of New York in Albany. On track for medical school, he decided to change careers when he fainted at the sight of a spinal tap as a volunteer at an Albany hospital.

“I took it as a sign from above that this is not what I should be doing,” he says with a broad smile.

He became interested in zool-ogy and ecology and took a num-ber of graduate-level courses as an undergraduate.

Bypassing a master’s degree, Schal enrolled in a Ph.D. program in entomology at the University of Kansas, during which he spent more than three years immersed in the rainforests of Costa Rica.

“That’s what really got me hooked not only on cockroaches, but also on natural history and be-havior and ecology,” Schal says.

To really understand “what makes tropical cockroaches tick,” Schal even became nocturnal and slept during the day, like the crea-tures he studied.

Describing the cockroaches as “incredible” and “amazing,” Schal discovered and named several

new species in the rainforest and also became interested in chemical ecology.

“These cockroaches live in a huge, dark jungle,” he says. “I wanted to know how they find each other, how these insects use chemicals to mediate interactions between the sexes.

“That experience was my real falling in love with insects,” Schal says. “It also set the stage for me wanting to combine lab work with field work throughout my career, and also not to be constrained by disciplinary boundaries.”

Schal doesn’t consider himself an ecologist, a behaviorist, a mo-lecular biologist or the like. He pre-fers the term “integrative biologist,” one who integrates different areas of biology to solve problems.

After earning his Ph.D. in 1983, Schal accepted a post-doctoral posi-tion in chemical ecology at the Uni-versity of Massachusetts at Amherst.

“I was really comfortable with ecology, but had very little experi-ence with chemistry and combin-ing chemistry with the behavior,” Schal says. Specifically, he wanted to learn the procedure of fraction-ation, by which a scientist whittles down a collection of chemicals to a single chemical, such as a phero-mone, that is responsible for a par-ticular behavior in the opposite sex.

“Once the chemical is identi-fied, then we try to synthesize it,” Schal says. “And if the male re-sponds to the synthetic chemical, we’ve successfully closed the loop, and that chemical can be used for pest control.”

For example, a chemical that attracts the opposite sex can be used to draw pests into traps either to detect a new infestation or to monitor the number of pests in an apartment, restaurant, school or

business.After a year and a half study-

ing the chemical ecology of moths, Schal accepted a position at Rut-gers University in 1984 as assistant professor and extension specialist in urban entomology, the study of pests that infest human structures. Although he had never heard of ur-ban entomology, he embraced the new opportunity.

“New Jersey was absolutely the perfect place to be for urban ento-mology,” he says. “It has the high-est density of people in the coun-try, with proximity to New York City and Philadelphia, and a lot of low-income housing that basically became my field sites.”

Ten years later, by then a known expert in urban entomolo-gy, Schal accepted the first Blanton J. Whitmire Distinguished Profes-sorship in the CALS Entomology Department at N.C. State.

“I was thrilled,” Schal says. “N.C. State has one of the best en-tomology departments in the coun-try, and I had tremendous respect for the faculty here. Plus, the oppor-tunity to grow the urban entomol-ogy program was very appealing.”

Other schools have tried to lure him away over the years, but Schal says he has no intention of leaving.

“The College’s forward-thinking integration of agriculture and life sciences is unique, and it really suits my style of work,” Schal says. “I’m in a building that houses plant people, geneticists, microbiologists, plant pathologists … the biology and chemistry departments are a stone’s throw away, and poultry science is right next door.

“This is precisely the type of environment that fosters the col-laborative style of work I enjoy,” he says.

Schal cultivates that same in-

20 perspectives

years is to develop better tools for bed bug control,” Schal says. “We’re committed to helping solve this problem.”

And the university backs them in that commitment. It was an-nounced in July that, for his devel-opment of a new bed bug baiting system, Schal is among the N. C. State University researchers who are the first recipients of N.C. State’s Chancellor’s Innovation Fund awards. The awardees’ proj-ects will receive seed money that will be used to make the technol-ogy more marketable, such as by gathering additional data, conduct-ing market research and building prototypes.

many of these communities simply can’t afford to control the bed bugs.

“I don’t see the problem sub-siding anytime soon,” Schal says. “The magnitude and frequency of bed bugs’ resistance to insecticides is huge, no new insecticides are due to hit the marketplace soon, and no cost-effective strategies for bed bug control have been developed. So we really don’t have a good way to control bed bugs right now, especially in low-income situations.”

His goal? Develop the strate-gies. Find solutions.

For example, Alvaro Romero, a National Science Foundation postdoctoral fellow in Schal’s lab, is exploring what physical and chemical cues humans emit that excite hungry bed bugs. These cues—heat, carbon dioxide and a host of human body odors—can be used to lure bed bugs to traps and insecticides.

“The key for us in the next five

terdisciplinary approach in his classes, which include a graduate-level course in insect behavior and seminars in chemical ecology and urban entomology. His lab buzzes with three busy graduate students, six postdoctoral fellows and a re-search specialist.

The value of Schal’s work is also recognized well beyond N.C. State. He is a fellow of both the Ameri-can Association for the Advance-ment of Science (AAAS) and the Entomological Society of America, and this summer Schal received the silver medal from the International Society of Chemical Ecology for his career accomplishments.

As for bed bug mania, Schal says it’s a long way from dying down.

“Bed bugs have experienced a resurgence, not only in the United States but globally, for at least 10 years or longer,” Schal says. “Only recently has the problem become so severe that the media have caught up to it.”

Schal explains: A decade ago, bed bugs were a nuisance mostly for the traveling community and hospitality industry. And when travelers picked up bed bugs in ho-tels and brought them home, they typically had the means to take care of the problem.

But now, because bed bugs have established themselves so well in residential communities, they’ve started moving into low-income houses, shelters and theaters — pret-ty much wherever humans are. And

‘The College’s forward-thinking integration of

agriculture and life sciences is unique, and it really

suits my style of work.’

Schal says he and his team are committed to solving the bed bug problem.

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summer 2011 21

Deep in the “pit,” beneath the win-dowed dome of Raleigh’s Dorton Are-na, throngs of middle- and high-school aged robotics teams drilled, sawed, wired, secured bolts and sweated on a sunny April afternoon, preparing their creations for competition.

Among the chaos of the pit were 10 teams of 4-H’ers from throughout North Carolina, competing for the very first time in the North Carolina Re-gional FIRST Robotics Competition.

After passing inspection, these rookie teams placed their creations into the “playing field” to battle other robots — and youth drivers — from all over the state.

While none of the 4-H teams advanced to the next round of com-petition, the Iredell County 4-H team became the only rookie team in the en-tire competition to win an award, taking home honors for “most perseverance.”

And for all of the youths involved, the experience would last a lifetime.

“My favorite part of all this is figur-ing out how to do things I didn’t think I could do,” said Rachel Borders, 15, of the Winston-Salem based Yellow Jackets 4-H robotics team. Teammate Naikeesha Poe-Smith, 14, said, “A lot of girls don’t get this kind of experience.”

The national 4-H organization partnered with NC FIRST (For Inspi-ration and Recognition of Science and Technology) and JC Penney to support pilot robotics programs in a number of states. North Carolina was one of the pilots chosen for participation, thanks in large part to the efforts of Dr. Kate Guerdat, 4-H Extension associate, and Chris Caveny-Cox, former 4-H Extension agent.

“This seemed like a great fit for

our science-based curriculum, and the partnership with NC FIRST has been terrific,” Guerdat said. “Our kids have gained not only content knowledge, but a whole new experience in com-munity involvement.

“Connecting to something larger —that’s what 4-H is all about,” she said.

For this first year of involvement, JC Penney covered all registration costs for the 4-H teams ($6,500 each). The company will continue to chip in, covering partial registration costs for the next two years.

“This is not a one-shot thing,” Guerdat said. “We’re trying to stretch

these resources as far as possible.”

The process lead-ing up to April’s com-petition began in Janu-ary, with a kick-off event during which the teams were given a bag of parts and sent off to build their robots. The completed robots had to be shipped by the end of February, so these 4-H’ers, many of whom had never worked in robotics, didn’t have a lot of time.

They came face-to-face with their creations again on April 7, for the first time since sending them away in the winter. A few of the teams encountered problems that they had difficulty solving, but true to the nature of 4-H, these youngsters quickly befriended veteran teams who helped them out.

“It’s a FIRST philosophy called ‘gracious professionalism,’” said Caveny-Cox. “There is no failure here. It’s all about everyone working together and helping each other.”

4-H is N.C. Cooperative Exten-sion’s youth education program.

— Suzanne Stanard

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A robot is assembled by members of the N.C. 4-H teams participating in the event.

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County 10th graders.Students, teachers and elected

officials have praised Heather Jones’ Cabarrus 4-H Citizenship Focus pro-gram for its role in giving students a hands-on way to learn more about

Award-winning 4-H agent creates civics program to introduce high-school students to local government

A North Carolina Cooperative Ex-tension 4-H agent recently won the N.C. Center for Voter Education’s Outstanding Citizen Award for 2011 for her role in creating an innovative citizenship program for Cabarrus

the principles they study in their semester-long civics classes. Nearly 90 percent of students who have taken part say it has instilled in them a better understanding of their duties as citizens.

The program has grown rapidly since its launch in 2009 with two high schools. Now, Citizenship Focus is held four times a semester, reaching hundreds of students with seven of the county’s eight high schools.

During the day-long program, students take part in three activities: They get to ask questions of a panel of elected officials, including county commissioners, school board mem-bers, mayors, the sheriff and town and city council members. They break into small groups and interview gov-ernment employees. And they take a crack at balancing a $100 million budget.

The program is most often held at the Cabarrus County Governmental Center, but it’s also taken place at a high school and at Concord’s opera-tions center.

Jones created the program in 2009, after meeting two local teachers at a statewide N.C. Civics Education Consortium training program. She handles the logistics, and Cabarrus County 4-H has paid for buses, bus drivers and substitute teachers.

But Jones says the program wouldn’t be possible were it not for the support and commitment of civics teachers, high school administrators, government employees and elected officials.

Northwest Cabarrus High School teacher Daniel Helms has been in-volved with the program from the start. In a video put together to honor Jones and the program, Helms says

As North Carolina 4-H wound down its centennial celebration of 2009,

an exhibit at N.C. State’s D.H. Hill Library was teaching visitors about the links between N.C. State and 4-H, while showing how today’s 4-H continues the traditions of service through head, heart, hands and health. Thearon McKinney and Mitzi Down-ing of the 4-H Youth Development and Family & Consumer Sciences Depart-ment worked with designers Lincoln Hancock and Tania Allen to create the exhibit that ran through July 24, the close of State 4-H Congress. The ex-hibit included 4-H memorabilia, such as project books, pins, even uniforms worn by 4-H’ers of bygone days. Each piece — such as the signature hat worn

by L.R. Harrill or the green jacket worn by a man from Caldwell County — came with a story. Among exhibit contributors was Dr. Jim Clark, author of Clover All Over: North Carolina’s First 4-H Century.

—Natalie Hampton

Library exhibit tells the story of 4-H

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Cabarrus teens learn the workings of government via role-playing activities.

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N.C. State Fair to buy lumber and screws. And, with the other club of-ficers’ approval, she set up a work day in late March.

About 40 club members came out and completed the fence in a day. CORRAL’s participants also got to help out; they were each paired with a club member for the day.

Gallagher said it was a good day for all.

“The people that run CORRAL have really good hearts, and they are trying hard to make it successful. They are helping girls while they are helping horses. They are making a difference,” Gallagher said. “Building the fence was something that the club could contribute, and we knew that it was for a good cause.”

—Dee Shore

that the goal is to help students under-stand how they can become involved in their communities.

“Whether or not they go into poli-tics is a moot point. It’s more about ‘Will they be active? Will they get involved and vote and be a citizen in the community?’” he says.

Jones, who visits each civics class to help students understand what will happen on the day of the program, says the most rewarding part of the program for her has been seeing the students’ knowledge grow by leaps

Civics program (continued)

Animal Science Club builds good fence for good neighborWhen College of Agriculture and Life Sciences student Izah Gallagher learned that a local non-profit needed help funding and building a fenced arena where at-risk girls could ride rescued horses, she knew just the group to help: N.C. State University’s Animal Science Club.

Each semester, the club takes on four or five service projects, usually with a tie to agriculture. This spring, the club donated money to farmers hurt by tornadoes, made valentines for nursing home residents and spent one spring Saturday building a 700-foot fence for the CORRAL Riding Academy in Cary.

CORRAL — which gets its name from the phrase “changing lives through riding rehabilitation and learning” — pairs horses acquired through the U.S. Equine Rescue League with teens who are referred by social services, police departments, school counselors and others.

The academy’s founder and presi-dent, Joy Currey, operates CORRAL on her family’s farm. Her goal: to promote healing, growth and lasting life change through horseback riding, vocational training, tutoring, equine-assisted learning and equine-assisted psychotherapy. Girls must apply to the program, and those selected must commit to being involved for at least

a year.Gallagher used to teach horse-

riding lessons under Currey when they both worked at another equestrian center in Raleigh. After Currey left, Izah kept in touch with her and learned that CORRAL needed a fence – and not just money to buy the fence, but the manpower to install it.

As president-elect of the Animal Science Club, Gallagher was in charge of the spring semester service projects, so she proposed using some of the funds that the club raised during the

CALS Animal Science Club members and CORRAL Academy riders proudly present the new fence.

and bounds.“It really brings real-life meaning

to their civics standard course of study objectives,” she says. “They are learn-ing these things in their textbooks, but this way they get to see it and they get to interact with local government.

“It gets them in the door, more comfortable speaking with elected officials. They go home and talk about what they’ve learned. And they real-ize they have a role as a citizen in the community.”

—Dee Shore

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NUTS for Nutrition

As Alice Raad pulls a fresh bunch of carrots from her bag, the gaggle of 4-year-olds sitting in a circle around her squirm to get a better look.

Same goes for the leafy green spinach, colorful bell peppers and tangle of sprouts that make their way around the circle. The children hold the vegetables to their noses, use tiny fingers to explore different textures, and in some cases, wrinkle their noses at a “funny” smell or speck of dirt.

The lesson on eating healthy hard-ly seems like a lesson to these kids, who, after getting acquainted with the vegetables and singing a veggie song, devour the fresh produce wrapped simply in whole-wheat tortillas.

No ketchup. No dipping sauce. And many of the kids asked for sec-onds.

Mission accomplished for Raad, a first-year master’s student in nutri-tion science and volunteer with the College’s Nutrition NUTS program.

She, along with seniors Musa Koroma and Harrison Riggs, spend nearly every Friday at Telamon NC Crosby Head Start Center in Raleigh, educating youngsters on the value of eating fresh, healthy foods.

Developed by Suzie Goodell, as-sistant professor of food, bioprocess-ing and nutrition sciences, Nutrition NUTS (which stands for “Nutrition Understanding Through Service”) focuses on obesity prevention for low-income, low-resource parents and their preschool-aged children.

Goodell launched the program in

Spring 2009, just after joining the College.

“I really want my work to em-body the College’s land-grant mission of research, service and academics,” Goodell says. “I

also want my students to become more connected to their community and build important leadership skills.”

The Nutrition NUTS program has two parts: “PEANUTS,” which is geared toward preschool-age children, and “WALNUTS,” which targets parents.

“Initially, our students went out and read to the kids,” Goodell says. “But the program has evolved to include hands-on lessons on everything from cooking to composting. Reading is still a major component, but not the only one.”

Led by one of Goodell’s doctoral students, Virginia Carraway-Stage, student volunteers design the curri-

cula and conduct all of the in-school lessons. Students also created the program’s name and logo.

Their 45-minute lessons are built around four concepts: illustrate, in-vestigate, illuminate and integrate. Each student conducts a weekly les-son, and some teach twice a week. They’re also responsible for their own transportation.

It seems like a lot of work. But these students say they’re learning as much as they’re teaching. And being with the kids is the ultimate reward.

“Seeing them learn a lesson that you actually created is just awesome,” says volunteer Sydney Riggsbee, a junior nutrition sciences major.

Allison Dipper, a junior major-ing in nutrition sciences and human biology, says, “We’re learning so many techniques for interacting with children. And I read kids’ books all the time now!”

Many of the preschoolers with whom they interact have never been exposed to people outside their fami-lies or their teachers, Goodell says. “Our hope is that through this pro-gram, we’re getting kids interested in nutrition and healthy eating, as well as social interaction and literacy.

“The biggest thing we want out of it is for these children to know they’re loved, that the world is a good place and that there are people out there who care,” she says.

Funded through grants, private donations and Goodell’s faculty start-up funds, Nutrition NUTS program-ming is delivered to a number of Head Start and preschool locations in the Triangle and in Siler City. Plans are in the works to expand the program through partnerships with UNC-Greensboro and East Carolina Uni-versity, Goodell says. She also hopes to partner with Smart Start locations next year.

—Suzanne Stanard

CALS students Harrison Riggs, Alice Raad and Musa Koroma provided nutrition education to Raleigh youngsters.

The program leaders captivate their young audience with a healthy foods presentation.

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As Jeremy Pattison works to build a better strawberry for North Caro-lina, the N.C. State University plant breeder isn’t focusing solely on what would make a new cultivar attractive to farmers.

Through a unique arrangement with a leading culinary school, he’s also looking closely at traits that might matter most to consumers – things such as flavor, color, size and texture.

Pattison is at the center of the N.C. Strawberry Project, a joint venture of N.C. State’s Plants for Human Health Institute at the N.C. Research Cam-pus in Kannapolis and Johnson & Wales University, an internationally recognized culinary institution with a campus in Charlotte.

Funded by a grant from Golden LEAF, a nonprofit organization devot-ed to strengthening North Carolina’s economy, the strawberry project is be-lieved to be the first project to connect university plant breeders, researchers and producers with the culinary world.

Through the one-year project, Pat-tison is gathering information he hopes will lead to a tastier strawberry that’s especially suited to North Carolina’s growing conditions. “We want a North Carolina brand that is clearly different than those that were developed for the mass market,” he said. “Ultimately, we want to increase the economic value and impact of N.C. strawberries while enhancing the eating experience.”

If all goes well, the varieties that Pattison comes up with will also extend North Carolina’s strawberry harvest season, which typically lasts five to eight weeks in April and May.

Project organizers are hoping that they can help grow the market for N.C. strawberries 25 percent, to about $26 million annually, through efforts involving research, education and outreach.

Pattison and other project leaders —

food microbiologist Dr. Jim Oblinger and communications specialist Leah Chester-Davis — said that students and faculty at Johnson & Wales are giving the university valuable information about what culinary professionals and high-end restaurants look for in strawberries.

Because chefs can serve as inter-mediaries between farmers and con-sumers, their insight can be especially valuable, Chester-Davis said.

To gather and analyze their feed-

back on their preferences, N.C. State University hired Sensory Spectrum, which is also based at the N.C. Research Campus. The company conducts re-search into how consumers experience food and other products. In May, it led tests with produce buyers, chefs, JWU students and faculty and consumers.

Having Sensory Spectrum’s in-put in the early stages of a breeding program distinguishes the effort from traditional university breeding proj-ects. Pattison said it could ultimately amplify the edge that North Caro-lina strawberry growers have when it comes to meeting local needs — and possibly lead to more national interest in North Carolina-grown strawberries.

“I feel that land-grant university research and extension has an excel-lent track record addressing the needs of the farmer,” Pattison said. “In this project, we are taking a more system-atic approach to breeding fruit for qual-ity — for consumer-preferred traits.”

The project has other goals, as well: Through a series of farm tours, it is helping tomorrow’s chefs and their in-structors better understand the science and business of food production — par-ticularly as it relates to local agriculture.

Oblinger, who is in charge of the project’s educational component, said that at the start of the project, JWU stu-dents were asked what industry leads North Carolina’s economy.

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Pattison and Chef Mark Allison display the fruits of the project that connects producers and the culinary world.

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Better berries for a better economy Jeremy Pattison keeps consumer preferences in mind as he develops strawberries.

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Better berries (continued)

“They thought that banking is the leading industry, and information technology is up there,” Oblinger said. “But they think agriculture is not really all that important to the economy of North Carolina.”

The project teaches those students that agriculture and agribusiness — food, fiber and forestry — is actually the leader, generating $70 billion in value-added income for North Carolina each year. And strawberries — seen as a high-risk but also high-value alternative to tobacco — are an increasingly impor-tant part of that. North Carolina ranks fourth among the states in terms of the amount of strawberries produced, and most of them are sold locally.

The message was reinforced as the students travelled to local farms, met local farmers and saw university

research at the Piedmont Research Station in Salisbury. Chef Mark Al-lison, the dean of culinary education at Johnson & Wales in Charlotte and one of the project’s leaders, said that having this familiarity with local agri-culture will help the students in their culinary careers.

In addition to enhancing the JWU students’ education and laying the

He has served on National Acad-emy of Sciences-National Research Council committees to study the environmental effects of the com-mercialization of genetically modified plants and develop recommendations on genetically modified pest protected crops. He has also served on Environ-mental Protection Agency panels on genetically modified crops.

He has supervised 31 master’s degree and Ph.D. students at N.C. State, served on the thesis committees of more than 40 other students, and mentored 16 post-doctoral researchers.

He is a member of the Entomologi-cal Society of America, the Society for the Study of Evolution and Sigma Xi.

Born in New York, Gould earned his bachelor’s degree in biology from Queens College and a Ph.D. in ecol-ogy and evolutionary biology from the State University of New York at Stony Brook. He came to N.C. State as an research associate in 1978, was named full professor in 1990, and was named Reynolds Professor in 1993.

—NCSU News Services

Gould elected into the National Academy of Sciences

Dr. Fred Gould, William Neal Reynolds Distinguished Professor of Entomol-ogy at N.C. State University, has been elected into the National Academy of Sciences, one of the world’s most im-portant scientific societies.

Gould becomes the ninth cur-rent N.C. State faculty member to be elected into the august scientific soci-ety. He is one of 72 new members and 18 foreign associates elected this year.

Gould studies the ecology and genetics of insect pests to improve food production and human and envi-ronmental health. One of his research projects involves genetically modi-

fied mosquitoes that have reduced capacity to carry and spread den-gue fever. He has received funding from the National Science Founda-tion, the Bill and Mel inda Gates Foundation and

the National Institutes of Health, among others, for his work.

In 2007, he won the George Bu-gliarello Prize from Sigma Xi for his article on genetic manipulation of pests for control of human disease vectors. In 2004, Gould received the Alexander von Humboldt Award, which is pre-sented annually to the person judged to have made the most significant contribution to American agriculture during the previous five years.

This year, Gould received N.C. State’s Holladay Medal, the highest award presented for faculty achieve-ment.

Fred Gould is the ninth current N.C. State faculty member to be elected to the NAS.

groundwork that will lead to a better N.C. strawberry, the project also has a public education component, led by Extension media specialist Chester-Davis. She and her team of Kristen Bright and Justin Moore developed a

website and a Facebook page for the N.C. Strawberry Project and have worked with news media representa-tives locally and nationwide to tell them about the project, to promote the students’ award-winning recipes and to spread the word that buying local produce guarantees the freshest product and keeps more food dollars in the local community. — Dee Shore

Allison (right) and his John-son & Wales students use the strawberries in new recipes.

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CALS will support agricultural education in Liberia

Faculty members in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences will share their teaching expertise to help the West African nation of Liberia re-build its agricultural education system following almost two decades of civil war and unrest.

CALS is one of several partner agencies participating in the Excel-lence in Higher Education for Libe-rian Development (EHELD) project, funded by the U.S. Agency for Interna-tional Development. The entire project will receive nearly $18 million over five years to help Liberian universi-ties rebuild their teaching capacity in agriculture and engineering. Approxi-mately $600,000 will be associated with CALS.

Dr. David Jordan, Extension spe-cialist in the CALS Crop Science Department, represented N.C. State University at a recent meeting of other partner institutions in Monrovia, Liberia. Research Triangle Institute is coordinating the EHELD effort. Other collaborators include the University of Michigan, Rutgers University and As-sociates in Rural Development. The team will also utilize regional univer-sities such as the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology in Ghana as resources.

Other CALS faculty who will participate in the project are Dr. Rick Brandenburg and Dr. Clyde Soren-son, entomology; Drs. Charlotte Fa-

rin and Sung Woo Kim, animal sci-ence; Gary Bullen, agricultural and resource econom-ics; Dr. Bir Thapa, crop science; and Dr. Jay Jayaratne,

agricultural and extension education.The program focuses on building

local capacity at two Liberian partner institutions—Cuttington University and the University of Liberia. Cuttington, one of Africa’s oldest universities, provides much of Liberia’s formal education in agriculture.

Jordan said that N.C. State will help evaluate Cuttington’s agricultural curricula and provide faculty mem-bers there with the most up-to-date information for teaching agriculture. Liberian universities have limited re-sources, including textbooks, because of the cost, but Jordan said N.C. State also will look for classroom resources that could boost agricultural teach-ing. Those may include materials like PowerPoint presentations and other resources often taken for granted by U.S. universities.

“Our role is to review their curricu-lum, develop short-term training for educators, and provide students and faculty with educational resources,” Jordan said. “USAID and other fund-ing agencies have made considerable investments in primary and secondary education throughout Liberia. The EHELD project will focus on the next step – higher education.”

The 15-year Liberian civil war interrupted education for most peo-ple. So many students in secondary schools, similar to U.S. high schools, are actually in their 20s and 30s.

Most faculty teaching agriculture in Liberia probably hold bachelor’s degrees, so another challenge is helping agricultural faculty to earn advanced degrees. Most will pursue degrees at other universities in Af-rica. But a few will come to study at N.C. State and other U.S. institutions, Jordan said.

The idea is to assist as Liberia cre-ates centers of excellence for training in agriculture and engineering. The engineering component of the pro-gram will be fulfilled by the University of Michigan and Rutgers University. N.C. State and Rutgers also will part-ner in the agriculture component of EHELD.

The ultimate goal is to help Liberia grow its agricultural industry, Jordan said. Agriculture has been perceived as hard work and therefore an un-desirable occupation. The grant also seeks to encourage excitement about agriculture and to prepare students for opportunities in the agricultural sector as the economy and infrastructure in Liberia improves. EHELD also will focus on increasing involvement of women and girls in both agriculture and engineering fields.

“While Liberia continues to face serious challenges as it emerges from two decades of war, Liberians are ready for relief to give way to develop-ment,” said RTI’s Nathaniel Bowditch, the project’s director. “EHELD is taking a step in that direction as we work to prepare a workforce ready for the next stages of growth in in-frastructure building and agricultural productivity.”

— Natalie Hampton

Project partners gather at the market near Liberia’s Cuttington University, home of much of the country’s agricul-tural education.

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28 perspectives

New International AgriBusiness Law course launched Lynn Clark, a junior business adminis-tration major (with a minor in agricul-tural business management), already has traveled several continents in his lifetime and, as a result, has developed an interest in learning about different cultures, customs and laws.

So enrolling in Dr. Ron Camp-bell’s new International AgriBusiness Law course was a no-brainer.

And somewhat of a life-changer. “Because of the excellence of the

course, I have become significantly more aware of and engaged in global and international issues … more than I could have ever imagined,” Clark said. The course, which he completed in the spring, inspired him to pursue studies in Japan, South Korea and China this summer. His experience in the course also has opened doors for Clark “to ex-

plore areas that I might want to pursue in future graduate studies,” he says.

The experimental distance edu-cation course ARE 495 is delivered through “Elluminate Live” technol-ogy, which allows live participation by nearly two dozen students scattered throughout North Carolina.

“We designed the course to give students a new perspective,” Camp-bell said. “In addition, this course is meant to hone the students’ skills in

learning and communicat-ing through modern tech-nology.”

The topic also is timely, Campbell said.

“Last year, North Caro-lina exports jumped to an all-time high, with more than $3 billion of our state’s agriculture being sold over-

seas,” Campbell said, citing data from the N.C. Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services (NCDA&CS). “I believe it’s critical to teach students, especially those interested in agricul-tural business and law, about North Carolina’s participation in the world market.”

Students participated in the live, online course sessions by using head-sets equipped with microphones. They

BritParis trip is a special spring break experience

This past March, College of Agri-culture and Life Sciences faculty members Melissa Hendrickson and Ron Campbell led a group of 35 par-ticipants, mainly CALS students, for a European spring break to remember in London, Paris and the countryside of England. BritParis ’11 was the first of a new annual trip open to CALS

students, parents, alumni, faculty and staff. Aimed at giving the travelers les-sons in international agribusiness, the trip also included famous attractions, like the Eiffel Tower and the Tower of London.

Hendrickson is an agribusiness in-structor, and Campbell is an instructor of agricultural business law, both in the

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Dr. Ron Campbell (left) leads an International Agri-Business Law session.

The tour group displays Wolfpack colors in London.

CALS Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics (ARE).

Prior to the trip, students studied the significance of the destinations in a three-hour credit course.

Tour activities included agricul-tural events at London’s New Spit-alfield Market, an international fruit and vegetable distribution center; the Clyne Farm Center, an agritourism operation; the National Botanical Gardens of Wales; and Writtle Col-lege, with its equine and swine studies specialization.

There will an opportunity for a group of 44 participants to replicate the experience with Britain Paris Ed-inburgh ’12.

“We’re taking reservations for the next adventure in 2012,” Campbell said. For information, go to http://www.ncsu.edu/project/are201304/ALS494/index.html.

—Terri Leith

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AgriBusiness Law (continued)

A new degree program in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences is designed to give soil scientists the busi-ness acumen they need to succeed in the world of real estate.

The first students are expected to begin working toward a bachelor’s de-gree in soil and land development this fall (2011), said Dr. Michael Vepraskas, William Neal Reynolds Professor of Soil Science.

“We will train students to evaluate land for real estate development,” said Vepraskas, who was instrumental in developing the program along with Dr. Joseph Kleiss, professor and academic coordinator for the Department of Soil Science.

Vepraskas said soil scientists have long been involved in assessing land being considered for development and making determinations related to whether a potential building site is suitable for a septic system, is in a wetland or presents other hazards to construction.

Yet soil scientists have typically been limited in their involvement in real estate development to, well, the soil.

Vepraskas said the new degree program is designed to give students a background in the business and fi-nancial aspects of land development as well as soil science. He pointed out that

New degree program focuses on business ... and land

North Carolina requires land evalua-tion by a state-licensed soil scientist for real estate developments such as housing, golf courses and shopping centers. The new degree program will give students the training they need to become licensed as well as the knowledge they need to become more involved in real estate development.

“We want our students to know how to run a business,” said Vepraskas. “We want our students to start their own companies.”

Vepraskas said there was consider-ably more demand for soil scientists with business training in the land development industry a few years ago during the housing boom. With the housing bust, employment opportu-nities in the industry have dimmed. Vepraskas pointed out, however, that the first graduates won’t enter the job market for four years, and in that time, the real estate market may well have rebounded, opening new employment and entrepreneurial opportunities.

Graduates of the new degree program will be prepared to pursue careers such as consulting soil scientist, real estate developer, regional planner and entrepreneur. They will also be well-prepared to enter master’s pro-grams in business administration or soil science.

— Dave Caldwell

Low-impact development project wins state awardAn N.C. Cooperative Extension-led educational project on development practices to protect water quality re-cently won a top award from the N.C. Chapter of the American Planning Association.

The collaborative project, called Low Impact Development (LID) Mul-timodal Planning Resources for North Carolina, won the Marvin Collins Out-standing Planning Award. The award recognizes innovative and highly successful efforts to create sustainable communities.

The project resulted in a 310-page low-impact development guidebook, an online curriculum and three workshops that reached about 120 people with in-formation on how to protect the state’s environment during times of growth.

Christy Perrin, of N.C. State Uni-versity’s Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics, says that the concept of low-impact development is gaining attention across the country, and the LID group wanted to make sure that N.C. developers and local

government officials had resources that took into account the state’s geography, its regulatory environment and what local governments are already doing to encourage low-impact development.

“We found that it’s helping ad-vance the conversation among local government,” she said of the guide-book. “It’s a tool that can be put in planners’, stormwater managers’ and elected officials’ hands, so it’s not just an abstract concept. The guidebook has a lot of tools and checklists that will help local governments with how to look at low-impact development in a practical manner.”

The project editors from N.C. State were Perrin; Dr. Lee-Anne Milburn, former faculty member in landscape architecture; and Laura Szpir, of the Department of Biological and Agricul-tural Engineering. They worked with partners from the University of North Carolina Coastal Studies Institute, Upper Neuse River Basin Association, Tetra Tech, PLS, N.C. Department of Environment and Natural Resources, McKim and Creed, City of Raleigh and Land of Sky Regional Council.

For more information, the project website is http://www.ncsu.edu/lid

—Dee Shore

also formed break-out groups for problem-solving exercises and worked in pairs to complete research projects and presentations that they delivered to the class through the web.

The course was offered one night a week, making it accessible to non-traditional students, many of whom work full-time day jobs.

Two special guests delivered pre-sentations through online video tech-nology last semester, and students were able to ask questions and contribute to the dialogue through their computers.

Fresh from a visit to China, Peter Thornton, assistant director of inter-national marketing for NCDA&CS, gave a talk on North Carolina’s in-ternational agriculture. And earlier in the semester, Dr. Ron Schrimper, a popular instructor and former head of the Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics, gave a lecture on the North American Free Trade Act.

—Suzanne Stanard

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analysis – basically, putting the fishes’ stomach contents under a microscope to see what they are eating, whether it be plants, zooplankton, insects, other

fish or something else.At the same time, Brey

is considering overlap indices – quantitative measures of how much overlap there is be-tween diets of the various fish.

“With overlap in-dices, we have this

quantitative measure of what a fish is eating and

how much overlap there is with what other fish are eating,”

she says. “That’s very useful for com-paring, for example, introduced and native or established species, so we can see how much they might share food resources.”

She’s also using stable isotope analysis, which involves sending pieces of muscle from the fish to a Cornell University lab to determine the rela-tive amounts of nitrogen and carbon in them. That gives her an idea of the

amounts of plants and other fish that the species in ques-tion consumes, and it tells her whether they are feeding near shore or out in open waters.

Finally, she’s putting all the data she’s collected over the years into the computer model-ing program Eco-path with Ecosim in an attempt to make predictions about how future

introductions might impact the popu-lation levels of the fish she’s studying.

The program has been used before to predict how fishing pressures will af-fect fisheries, Brey says, “but it’s rarely been used to ask questions about intro-duced species and specifically multiple introduced species.”

So far, she has found in Lake Norman that there’s been a rapid in-crease in the amount of white perch, introduced in the reservoir around 2001, and that the perch may be com-peting for food with black crappie, an established sport fish. She’s also seen that the forage fish alewife, another introduced species, have become an important part of the diet of several fish in the lake, but they aren’t increasing in number as much as the white perch.

Brey thinks that because the ale-wife seems to occupy a unique niche in the food web – eating fly larvae as they emerge in a particular area of the lake – they have been able to become established with few consequences to native prey species.

As she wraps up her dissertation

Graduate student examines invasive fish species and their ecosystem impacts A project designed to quantify the impact that introduced fish species can have on a lake’s ecosystem earned Marybeth Brey the top prize in the natural resources category of this spring’s Graduate Student Research Symposium at N.C. State University.

Scientists know that an invasive species can destroy habitat, push down populations of native species and alter an entire ecosystem. But what Brey, a Ph.D. student in biology, is trying to unravel is what happens when multiple species are introduced at the same time.

Specifically, do the effects on the food web add up in a linear way? Or is it more complicated than that? And based on what’s known about both the native and introduced species, can you predict what might happen?

Brey’s advisers are Drs. Derek Aday and Jim Rice of the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences’ Depart-ment of Biology. Her project focuses on Lake Norman, a large manmade lake north of Charlotte, and four fish – white perch, alewife, flathead catfish and spotted bass – that have been introduced there.

Fish are introduced into North Carolina’s lakes in two ways, Brey says: Sport fishermen intentionally add food fish, thinking they will increase the size and abundance of the fish they want to catch. And they unintentionally in-troduce new species when they dump buckets of live bait into the water.

For the past four or five years, Brey has been sampling in Lake Norman to find out which kinds of fish and how many live in different areas of the lake and how those populations have changed over the past four or five years.

She’s also been learning what those fish eat. To do so, she’s been us-ing a technique known as direct diet

Brey studies the stomach contents of fish from Lake Norman.

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Surry County’s Pilot Mountain Pride successfully markets local produce

When Pilot Mountain Pride opened its doors in May 2010, organizers of the produce marketing initiative were con-servatively hoping to bring in $30,000 to $50,000 in sales for the first year. But last year’s sales greatly exceeded those expectations, coming in at more than $250,000.

Bryan Cave, Surry County Exten-sion director, was heavily involved in getting PMP off the ground. Like oth-ers, he was pleased and surprised by the first year sales. In early June, PMP

was off to a somewhat slower start in its second season, due mainly to wet, cool conditions that had kept farmers out of the fields in the spring.

In Surry County, like other parts of North Carolina, former tobacco growers are seeking new ways to diversify production. Pilot Mountain Pride helps local farmers to earn a liv-ing raising produce, while establishing the organization as a regional model for produce sales.

Cave described PMP as an “ag-gregation center,” where growers bring produce to be washed, graded, packaged, marketed and delivered to buyers.

“Pilot Mount Pride is a venue for accessing markets for smaller growers,” said Tony Cave, a Surry County PMP grower and board member, no relation to Bryan Cave.

The program was developed through the efforts of the N.C. Coop-erative Extension’s Surry County cen-ter, along with support from county government and granting agencies. As early as 2003, PMP was just an idea shared by Bryan Cave, then a livestock agent, and Chris Knopf, then a county planner, now assistant county manager.

Agriculture accounts for nearly

a quarter of the county’s economy. Bryan Cave and Knopf knew that many of the county’s tobacco farmers were retiring, had decided to leave farming or were looking for crops to diversify their production. At the same time, there were few younger growers coming into farming.

In 2006, the idea for a shared marketing facility emerged when three Surry County communities — Pilot Mountain, Dobson and Elkin — received an N.C. STEP grant for Small Town Economic Prosperity, which included plans for some type of value-added agricultural center. Two years later, Surry County government provided funding to study the concept.

The study found a strong desire for local foods, and Winston-Salem – less than 30 miles away – had no coordinated local food marketing operation, Bryan Cave said. Potential clients didn’t show a preference for organic over conventionally grown produce but had a strong interest in buying locally.

Though Surry County has two farmers’ markets of its own and oth-ers nearby, Extension found that the growers in those direct sales markets wanted to stay there, while newer produce growers weren’t interested in getting into direct sales, Bryan Cave said. They wanted someone to market produce for them.

With the help of Golden LEAF funds, Pilot Mountain Pride renovated and moved into an old textile facility that provided space for a grading and packing line and large storage coolers. In addition to Golden LEAF and N.C. STEP, grant funding has come from the N.C. Department of Agriculture

in hopes of graduating in December, Brey is focusing on the modeling work and determining whether the approach she’s taking is an effective way to quan-tify the effects of introduced species on a reservoir food web.

Because she has funding from the Sport Fish Restoration Funds, which come from an excise tax on fishing rods, reels, creels, lures, flies and artifi-cial baits, Brey hopes the research she’s done at N.C. State will help address sport fishermen’s questions about fish introductions and will contribute to fisheries management decisions.

— Dee Shore

Marybeth Brey (continued)

Bryan Cave (right) and Bill Imus stand by the PMP truck that delivers local produce to markets.

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and Consumer Services, Tobacco Trust Fund, the N.C. Rural Center and the local Farm Bureau board.

In addition, the Wake Forest Uni-versity law school proved to be an invaluable resource, helping PMP to establish itself as a single-member LLC, under the county’s economic development agency. That legal status allows PMP to operate as a non-profit for the benefit of receiving grants, while still earning money to operate and pay the growers for produce.

When the facility needed a system for cooling produce quickly, Dr. Mike Boyette of N.C. State University’s Biological and Agricultural Engineer-ing Department came to the rescue, developing a simple, large, forced-air cooler that can cool large amounts of produce at one time.

Pilot Mountain Pride held its grand opening on May 20, 2010, with more than 350 people in attendance. “There was excitement in the air that day,” said Bill Imus, (then) PMP facil-ity coordinator. Imus, a grower and former chef, has been a real asset to the project, said Bryan Cave, because he knows quality produce and is good at marketing it.

“Bill’s background as a farmer and chef has just really paid dividends for us,” Knopf said. Imus spent a great deal of time between growing seasons seek-ing new markets for PMP produce.

Last spring, Lowes Foods, a gro-cery store chain, came to Pilot Moun-tain Pride, asking to buy produce to distribute to its stores. The stores even provided photos and descriptions of Pilot Mountain Pride growers whose produce they now sell.

In addition, higher end restaurants in Winston-Salem also buy from PMP, as well as several universities and school systems in Surry and Stokes counties. Institutions like area hos-pitals also have expressed interest in sourcing produce from PMP. PMP even holds a community market on Fridays, selling whatever produce it has on hand. Still, new clients would

help PMP diversify its marketing, Bryan Cave said.

In its first season, PMP received produce from 84 growers in seven counties adjacent to Surry County, including two in Virginia. Broccoli was a big seller, along with fall cabbage and greens, squash and cucumbers.

To meet the produce standards for Lowes Foods and other commercial buyers, PMP decided to have all its growers receive training in GAPs – good agricultural practices. GAPs train-ing focuses on strategies that growers can use to ensure that their produce is safe for consumers to eat.

Agricultural Extension Agent Joanna Radford helps arrange the GAPs training for growers. Beyond the training lies GAP certification, where a third-party auditor visits a farm to check on how GAP strategies are being implemented.

Produce growers have to plant crops in succession, so the crop is ready to harvest at intervals, not all at once. Access to labor for harvesting produce is another big issue, Radford said. Growers struggle with weed and pest management, particularly whether to rely on conventional controls or try new strategies like growing under plastic.

Surry County (continued)

Grower Tony Cave agrees that transitioning from tobacco to produce is a challenge. “I’ve farmed all my life, but this produce farming is a whole new thing,” he said recently while showing his potato crop to Radford and Bryan Cave. “Everything is brand new here.”

Tony Cave is experimenting with a new tractor that will create plastic-covered rows, complete with drip tape for irrigation. He will try it in his home garden this year, hoping to use it for commercial crops next year. He hopes the equipment – though expensive – will help him to better manage weeds and provide water for thirsty plants.

“You’re pretty much limited by how much you can afford to lose,” Tony Cave said.

In spite of the newness and chal-lenges, Tony Cave is committed to Pilot Mountain Pride as both a board member and grower for the organiza-tion. “We’re in the second year, and it’s already mind-boggling what we’ve done. Who knows what’s in store for this year?”

Bryan Cave said, “Pilot Mountain Pride has re-energized this commu-nity. It’s given Pilot Mountain a lot of hope.”

—Natalie Hampton

Extension Agent Joanna Radford works with grower Tony Cave in implement-ing good agricultural practices.

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Faithful Families program promotes healthy lifestyles

At the Cameron Grove AME Zion Church in Broadway, N.C., church dinners once consisted of fried foods and vegetables seasoned with fat. But things have changed, thanks to the efforts of N.C. Cooperative Exten-sion’s Faithful Families Eating Smart and Moving More program and two dedicated church lay leaders, Annie McIver and Sheilneil Feaster.

Faithful Families works with faith communities to teach healthy eating and good physical activity practices. Program associates work hand in hand with lay leaders, who help their mem-bers decide what positive changes they want to make for the whole community, as well as for themselves as individuals.

For Cameron Grove Church, changes included new items on the church menu: more baked foods, fresh fruits, seasonal vegetables sauteed or grilled and water to drink. There are fewer desserts. Sunday morning’s hon-ey buns have been replaced by quiche. And children of the congregation enjoy yogurt and applesauce for snacks.

It wasn’t always easy, but Mc-Iver and Feaster believe these positive changes will help their members to be healthier. In addition to the nutrition changes, the church is encouraging members to be more physically active by taking advantage of the large church parking lot as a walking space.

As a career nurse, McIver saw the devastating effects of chronic diseases like diabetes and heart disease. She wanted to see her congregation make changes that would impact members’ health in a positive way.

“It took some getting used to,”

said Feaster, the church cook, of the menu changes. Church members had some trouble adjusting to new foods at first, but

now, she reports, they ask for seconds on some new dishes.

Faithful Families Coordinator Da-vid Hall said the partnership between the program and Cameron Grove Church is exactly what Faithful Families strives for. “We’ve seen great success through our lay leaders,” he said. “They can help decide what changes can have the greatest impact on their members.”

The program started in 2007 and is supported in the South Central District by N.C. Cooperative Extension pro-gram associate Debbie Stephenson and by Erin Roberts in the North Central District. Stephanie McDonald, South Central District EFNEP Extension associate, also has been involved with Faithful Families since the beginning. The program is a partnership between Cooperative Extension and the N.C. Division of Public Health’s Physical Activity and Nutrition Branch. Funding is provided by the Kate B. Reynolds Charitable Trust.

Faithful Families seeks out faith communities that are interested in improving the health practices of their members. Faithful Families also ensures that the program has the sup-port of the community’s leader. The program has served nine counties in central North Carolina. Faithful Families program associates strive to have 10 faith communities complete the program each year.

The success of the program is direct-ly related to the partnership between program associates and lay leaders, Hall said. The program includes a member health assessment, nine nutrition and physical activity education lessons and

adoption of policy and environmental changes for the faith community.

Faithful Families uses the cur-riculum of the Expanded Foods and Nutrition Education Program. The program associates and the lay leaders share responsibility for teaching the nine EFNEP lessons.

Lay leaders help guide congrega-tions in deciding on policy and environ-mental changes their faith community will make to help members become healthier. Policy changes could be as simple as offering water as a beverage at church meals. Environmental changes could include Cameron Grove’s initia-tive of letting members know the walk-ing distance around their parking lots. Some congregations have developed community gardens.

Faithful Families encourages faith communities to make at least one policy change, though congregations may go even further. Congregations are asked to write formal policy changes that their leaders can endorse, explaining how the policy will be car-ried out, communicated to members and sustained.

In addition, members of Faithful Families communities are encouraged to make personal changes, like becom-ing more physically active or sharing family meals at home. At Cameron Grove, weight loss was a big motivator for the 17 congregation members who signed on and completed the program, McIver said.

McIver hopes to go further, maybe offering fitness classes at Cameron Grove. She’s noticed other congrega-tion members watching her plate at church gatherings or examining her cart in the grocery store. She thinks the message of healthy eating is starting to take hold. Even the church’s traditional “Soul Food” dinner included some healthier alternatives this year. A bul-

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Shown are (from left) Debbie Stephenson, Stephanie McDonald, Annie McIver and Sheilneil Feaster.

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Jan Christensen leads the players who described early FCS programs.

Family & Consumer Sciences celebrates 100 years of service to N.C. familiesAs the lights rose on the 100th anni-versary of North Carolina Cooperative Extension Service’s Family & Con-sumer Sciences program, four women dressed in period costume from the 20th century described how their home demonstration program had helped them meet their families’ needs.

Through pandemics, the Great Depression and two world wars, these women explained, the instruction they had received in their clubs had led to better times for their families and their communities. Beginning with home demonstration canning clubs, the FCS program has addressed needs of North Carolina families since 1911.

The centennial celebration events, which took place May 25 at the Jane S. McKimmon Center on the N.C. State campus, opened with the unveiling of Ordinary Women, Extraordinary Service, a book on North Carolina FCS’s history.

A celebratory dinner began with a dramatic reading by women represent-

ing four decades in the 100-year his-tory of family and consumer sciences: the 1920s, 1940s, 1960s and 1980s. Afterward, FCS inducted 25 inau-gural members into the Jane S. McKim-mon Hall of Fame for significant con-tributions to FCS at N.C. State.

“Since 1911, be-fore the country’s extension system was even started, FCS has been committed to positive change for the families of North Caro-lina,” said N.C. State Chancellor Randy Woodson. “Through FCS, N.C. State University is able to influence the lives of North Carolinians who will never set foot on this campus.”

Today, FCS professionals serve citizens in all the state’s 100 counties and the Eastern Band of the Cherokee Nation.

As families have grown more com-plex, so has Extension’s approach to family and consumer issues. Today, FCS programs help families better understand budgeting, credit use, economic loss protection, health care costs, financial planning and economic choices. Food quality and safety pro-grams give food-service personnel, dietary managers, community volun-teers and care givers the knowledge and resources they need for safe food preparation.

FCS Extension agents also work to improve people’s awareness of health, safety and environmental issues; to reduce household wastes, to expand support for groundbreaking rural health initiatives, to address elder care and aging issues and to help families learn about the importance of nutrition and physical activity for better health.

The FCS history book may be ordered for $47 (includes shipping) from the N.C. FCS Foundation, Box 7645, N.C. State University, Raleigh, N.C., 27695-7645. Call Susan Brame at 919.513.7989 for information.

— Natalie Hampton

letin board outside the church kitchen offers information on recipes, food safety and healthy eating.

McIver’s influence has extended beyond her own congregation. At AME Zion church conferences, she brings her message of healthy eating. Lee County Extension Director Susan Condlin shared with McIver nutrition materials and vials of fat, sugar and salt, representing the amounts found in certain foods to use in demonstra-tions. McIver believes she’s reached more than 2,000 people at conferences. She also spoke at the Seventh Annual Pediatric Health Weight Summit at East Carolina University.

Over the next five years, Faithful Families will be part of a study by N.C. State University sociologist Dr. Sarah Bowen. The study, “A Com-munity-Based Approach to Reducing Childhood Obesity in Low-Income

Communities: Research to Action,” is supported by a $3 million grant from the Agriculture and Food Research Initiative of the United States Depart-ment of Agriculture National Institute of Food and Agriculture.

“We will work with community groups in Durham, Harnett and Lee counties in order to understand how community ‘food environments’ affect patterns of childhood obe-sity. We will track limited-resource families over a 5-year period, asking them about their eating and cook-ing habits and beliefs,” Bowen said. Faithful Families lay leaders will participate in the research and will help facilitate community-driven, culturally-appropriate environmental and policy changes that increase ac-cess to healthy foods and safe places for physical activity.

—Natalie Hampton

Faithful families (continued)

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Stone balances family life, farm work and community involvement

When Michael “Bo” Stone talks about his approach to farming, he calls upon a quote from the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle: “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.”

The College of Agriculture and Life Sciences graduate says it’s an at-titude he picked up from his dad – and one that was likely instrumental in his being named the 2010 N.C. winner of the Swisher Sweets/Sunbelt Expo Southeastern Farmer of the Year.

Stone farms about 2,000 acres of row crops in Rowland, in southern Robeson County. He’s proud to be a sixth-generation farmer, producing wheat, corn, soybeans and strawber-ries, finishing about 10,000 pigs per year and managing a 70-head beef herd.

“We try to do the very best job we can with everything that what we do. That idea follows through from the

crops to the livestock,” he says. “We try to be the best environmental stewards that we can, growing the best crops.”

Stone grew up on the family farm and has been involved in farming since he was 8. His first job was picking up tobacco leaves from a custom-made harvester seat. But when he went away to college, he did so with an eye toward a career in corporate America.

At N.C. State, Stone earned his bachelor’s degree in agricultural busi-ness management in 1993, then a master of agriculture degree in 1995.

He joined the Gold Kist coopera-tive in Georgia but nearly immediately felt the tug of the farming life he’d left behind. His father, Tommy Stone, agreed to make room for him on the farm, and Stone was back home by February 1996. He bought his first farm the following year, then a second one in 1998, the year he got married.

In the years since Bo joined his

father in managing their P&S Farms, the operation has doubled in size, and it’s become increasingly diversified. In addition to the crops and livestock, the Stones sell produce at a roadside stand and through a you-pick strawberry operation.

The Stones took on the strawber-ries as a way to allow his wife, Missy, to stay at home while they raise their three children — 10-year-old Sarah Grace, 8-year-old Olivia Ann and 4-year-old Thompson Lyn.

In years past, Stone has also plant-ed a 5-acre corn maze, hosting 15,000 schoolchildren in hopes of giving them a chance to learn more about where food comes from.

Tobacco was long the farm’s main-stay, but Stone no longer produces it. That’s because, as his children grew, he found it difficult to attend to both the demands of the labor-intensive crop and the responsibilities of raising a family.

“Sarah Grace came home from school after summer break — I think she was in kindergarten or first grade — and she looked at me and she asked, ‘Daddy, why didn’t we get to go to the beach like all the other kids in my class?’” he recalls. “That was a big factor.”

Today, Stone strives to balance his family and farming responsibilities with community involvement. He serves as chairman of the deacon board at the First Baptist Church, on South-

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Bo Stone was named Southeastern Farmer of the Year in 2010.

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eastern Regional Hospital’s executive committee and on the boards of the private Christian school his children attend, the county Farm Bureau and Cape Fear Farm Credit.

He hopes his service will make ag-riculture and his community stronger.

“One of the reasons I am as active as I am in some of these organizations is one of the first things Dad told me when I came back — that decisions would be made that affected our farm-ing livelihood: ‘Nobody knows what’s going on here any better than you do. You need to make sure your voice is heard,’” Stone recalls his father saying.

“And that was a very important lesson,” he adds. “Sure, it’s taken away from our farm and family to be as ac-tive as we are, but at the same time somebody needs to make sure that the

story that’s being told is actually what’s happening out on the farms. This is where we live. This is where I will always live. We need to make sure we are doing what we can to ensure that our community is what it needs to be.”

Stone says he’s glad that his alma mater pursues science-based answers aimed at making farming both eco-nomically and environmentally sus-tainable. In his activities, he strives to ensure that such research – and not emotion – inform the development of public policies affecting agriculture.

From N.C. State University re-searchers and Cooperative Extension agents and specialists, Stone has sought guidance on such things as transition-ing to narrow-row corn and installing subsurface drip irrigation.

He’s also employed global posi-

Bo Stone (continued)

tioning system technology to cut down on the cost of fertilizer, applying it only where it’s needed. In addition, he diligently scouts his crops for pests, targeting problems as needed.

As for the future, Stone sees oppor-tunities to continue to grow his farm as older producers retire. His goal: “to keep farming and to leave the farming operation in such a way that if any or all of my children decide to make this a way of life that they’ll have that op-portunity,” he says.

“I like to say that my parents gave me the opportunity to the farm, and Missy and the kids give me a reason to keep farming. And for that,” he says, “I’ve been blessed.”

—Dee Shore

Alumnus Raymond Schnell maps cacao genome, leads international research

The next time you tear into a candy bar or sink your teeth into a brownie, con-sider this: Most of the world’s chocolate comes from cacao produced on small family farms in developing countries.

And one man, plant geneticist and College of Agriculture and Life Sciences grad Raymond Schnell, is helping lead an international effort to make better cacao, which in turn not only bolsters an industry but also helps improve the livelihood of millions of small farmers.

Schnell, who earned master’s

and doctoral de-grees from the De-partment of Crop Science (in 1979 and 1984, respec-tively), is largely responsible for cre-ating a cacao re-search program in the United States that has had signifi-cant global impact.

And he recent-ly collaborated with a team of scientists to sequence the cacao genome, which unearths vast potential to better under-stand and improve this crop.

“With the help of a few grants, I started a very modest cacao project in Miami in 1990,” Schnell said. But then Hurricane Andrew swept through the area in 1992, destroying Schnell’s quar-antine house and plants. In 1993, the United States Department of Agricul-ture (USDA) abolished his program.

But just a few years later, the

USDA contacted him again, “since I was pretty much the only person work-ing on cacao in the United States,” to re-start the project, with a focus on improving disease resistance in Central and South America.

At that time, candy maker Mars Inc. had been purchasing most of its cacao beans from Brazil. But a disease called witches’ broom surfaced in the country and quickly decimated the cacao indus-try there. So Mars turned to Schnell in 2000, launching what would become one the world’s largest cacao research programs, in partnership with the USDA Agricultural Research Service.

Then the U.S. Agency for Interna-tional Development approached him in 2001 to expand the cacao program into West Africa.

Today, the international breed-ing project features collaboration with national agricultural research organizations in Brazil, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Nigeria, Ghana, Cameroon, Cote d’Ivoire, Malaysia and Papua

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Schnell (right) and his fellow collaborators recently sequenced the cacao genome.

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When Caitlin Lowe came to N.C. State University four years ago, she never imagined the places she’d go or how those travels would influence her future.

But now, with her head full of brains and her shoes full of feet, as Dr. Seuss would put it, the new alumna is off to graduate school with the deter-mination to make a difference when

Off to great places: World travels lead Caitlin Lowe in new directions

it comes to agricultural policy and international development.

A native of rural Liberty, Lowe started her undergraduate studies in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences with an eye toward becoming a plant geneticist working for a major U.S. agricultural company.

As a freshman, she traveled exten-sively as state FFA president, getting

Schnell (continued)

New Guinea, as well as in Hawaii and Puerto Rico in the United States.

“We’ve been working with breed-ers in all areas to improve efficiencies and make the crop as profitable as pos-sible for these farmers,” Schnell said in an article published by the Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden magazine. “The program combines traditional breed-ing and new biotechnology-based techniques towards the long-term goal of genetically improving this important tropical tree crop.”

One of the first goals of the new pro-gram was to “clean up the germplasm collections, which were a mess,” Schnell said. Then he and his team developed genetic recombination maps and started using markers as selection tools.

“But the research wasn’t moving fast enough,” Schnell said.

At that time, second-generation genome sequencing was coming on-line, and, according to Schnell, it was

affordable, available and the quickest way to generate a slew of new markers.

By September 2010, a team of scientists, including Schnell, publicly released a preliminary sequence of the cacao genome, which contains all of the tree’s hereditary information. At press time, the genome map was about 92 percent complete.

“This marked a milestone in the scientific understanding of this crop,” Schnell said, using a street map anal-ogy to describe the significance and quantity of the new data. “It’s like go-ing from having street signs in a square mile area to having addresses for each house,” he said.

The genome sequence “helps us identify genes involved with the ex-pression of important traits, like dis-ease resistance,” Schnell said. “It also enables us to pinpoint the location of specific genes and creates opportuni-ties to look for novel genes.”

Further, he said, being able to select genes early in the cultivar de-velopment process will save significant amounts of time and money.

Discoveries being unlocked by the genome sequence can be applied, through traditional breeding, to geneti-cally improve a crop “that provides en-vironmentally sustainable income for millions of small farmers in developing countries,” Schnell said.

The genome sequence data is pub-lic information, available on this web-site: http://www.cacaogenomedb.org.

Schnell credits much of the suc-cess of the program to the produc-tive collaboration between industry, government, scientific institutions and producers. And with a nod to his roots, he said that his experience in the Department of Crop Science also has played a role in his success.

—Suzanne Stanard

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to see the variety of North Carolina agriculture. And in coming years, thanks in part to travel stipends of-fered through the N.C. State Caldwell Fellows program she was part of, she had the chance to help build a house in the Dominican Republic, to study plant biology in China, to visit farms and agribusinesses in Europe and to experience subsistence agriculture in Zambia.

Her globe-trotting experiences, plus her coursework in agricultural economics and agricultural business, led her to refocus her studies. She became interested in agricultural and trade policy, particularly in interna-tional development.

In May, she graduated from N.C.

Lowe is interested in the economic impacts of international food aid and development work.

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State with honors and with majors in plant biology and agricultural business management, as well as a minor in economics. This fall, she plans to begin work toward a master’s in agricultural economics at Kansas State University.

Lowe isn’t yet sure what career path she will take, but she said, “my interest within agricultural economics is in regards to a developing country’s market structure and its ability to withstand commodity price shocks, its willingness to open itself up to free trade, and its agricultural and trade policy both domestically and abroad — as well as biotechnology adoption. I also have a strong inter-est in analyzing the impact that food aid and development work have on economic growth.”

Lowe first experienced the devel-oping world when she traveled on a spring break trip to the Dominican Republic.

The experience made a profound impression on her.

“Before I went to the Dominican Republic, I always focused on the differences among people. But I came to appreciate the things I had in common with the people I met,” she recalled. “Yes, we are different, but we are all people and we have so many things that actually draw us together.”

When she went back to the Do-minican Republic the following year, she saw the difference the home she’d helped construct made for a family. And she continued to build upon the friendships she had made the previ-ous year.

She found her next overseas expe-rience equally rewarding. With others in the Plant Biology Department, she traveled to China for three weeks to study that country’s flora. There, she was paired with a Chinese student

whom she’s still in touch with.

“We not only had the oppor-tunity to learn about the native p lan t s and to work in the lab, we also had the chance to learn about the cul-ture,” she said.

Lowe also got a chance to get off the beaten tourist track when she spent a month in Zambia during the summer following her junior year. There, she worked at an agricultural center sponsored by the government and the United Methodist Church.

It was her first up-close look at subsistence agriculture and at the problems faced by farmers in devel-oping countries.

“I’d seen agriculture in the United States and in the Dominican Republic and China, but I had never been on a working farm in a developing country for an extended period of time,” she said. “It gave me new perspectives. I actually was able to see the challenges in the developing world’s agricultural systems that I’d learned about in class-rooms on campus. I saw it, and I could understand and relate.”

Said Lowe, “I had the opportu-nity to experience things that I never imagined I would, and I was pushed outside my comfort zone.

“These experiences humbled me and allowed me to learn things I’d never expected. They were eye-opening and life-changing, and I’ll always be grateful for that.”

— Dee Shore

Caitlin Lowe (continued)

The recent N.C. State graduate heads to Kansas State this fall to pursue her master’s degree in agricultural economics.

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noteworthy G I V I N G

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May Day arboretum gala celebrates spring in Raleigh

The annual Gala in the Garden fund-raiser at JC Ralston Arboretum is traditionally a beautiful herald of the spring season in Raleigh, whether the weather is fine, rainy, sweltering or windy. For this year’s May 1 festivities, it was more than fine: Gentle breezes and intermittent sunshine-and-clouds made for a comfortable and relaxing time for visitors to the renowned gar-dens at N.C. State University.

And it was a day bursting with color, flavors, scents and music in this garden of earthly delights for the more than 500 guests in attendance.

This year, the silent auction tents were arranged around the perimeter of the arb’s central Ellipse, a large oval-shaped greenway that was formerly the site of the trial plant beds. At the heart of the ellipse, in observance of May Day, stood a May pole, beauti-fully festooned with rainbow-colored ribbons and flowers. Here, gala guests enjoyed garden drinks and locally grown buffet treats, while the soft sounds of live music by the Southern String Band drifted from the vicinity of the Japanese Garden.

The gala not only is the JCRA’s

annual fund-raising event, but it also serves as opportunity to celebrate and thank the donors, sponsors and volunteers whose generosity and sup-port help the arboretum to continue in its efforts as a teaching and research garden, serving students, the green industry and the local community.

This year, Jere Stevens, a land-scape business owner, Wake County Extension Master Gardener and wife of state Sen. Richard Stevens, was event chair and leader of the gala committee. Susan Woodson, a graphic artist and first lady of N.C. State Uni-versity, served as 2011 honorary chair. They joined Dr. Johnny Wynne, Col-lege of Agriculture and Life Sciences dean; Dr. Randy Woodson, N.C. State chancellor; and Dr. Ted Bilderback, JCRA director, for an evening pro-gram at the York Auditorium in the McSwain Center.

Chancellor Woodson called the ar-boretum “a vital community resource that serves as a tranquil green space families of all ages can enjoy” and said that the facility’s research, educa-tion, extension and public outreach “are legendary and of course vitally (continued next page)

important to our community and even our nation. The arboretum serves as a living laboratory for our students and is committed to its mission to train

(Clockwise from top left) Susan Wood-son, Ruby McSwain, and Dean Johnny Wynne and Jackie Wynne enjoy the 2011 gala and its May Day decor.

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Carlson Endowment created to fund annual award for outstanding ARE dissertation

Dr. Gerald Carlson and his wife, Bar-bara, have created an endowment in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, where Carlson spent 35 years as a faculty member. The Barbara E. and Gerald A. Carlson Endowment —

to fund the annual Gerald A. Carlson Outstanding Ph.D. Dissertation Award in Agricultural and Resource Econom-ics — was estab-lished April 29.

At the same time, the inaugural Carlson awards were presented to Dr. Keri Jacobs and Dr. Ying Zhu, honoring their outstand-ing dissertations in pursuit of their 2010 doctoral degrees from N.C. State.

—Terri Leith

Resource Development Awards presented, new endow-ments celebrated at 2011 joint foundations spring eventThe College of Agriculture and Life Sciences presented its 2011 Resource Development Awards April 13, dur-ing the annual joint luncheon of the N.C. Agricultural, Dairy and Tobacco foundations at the N.C. State Uni-versity Club. The awards, sponsored each year by the N.C. Agricultural Foundation Inc., recognized CALS faculty and student organizations for efforts in raising funds to benefit Col-lege programs, as well as volunteer, corporate/foundation and commodity organization support activities.

Dr. Carolyn Dunn and Dr. Wayne Skaggs were winners of the Faculty Resource Development Award. The Student Organization Award went to the Alpha Zeta North Carolina Chap-ter. The 2011 Outstanding Volunteer Award winners were Judi and Frank Grainger.

The Outstanding Corporate/Foundation Partner was the Wey-erhaeuser Corporation and Weyer-haeuser Foundation. And the 2011 Outstanding Commodity Organiza-

tion winner was the N.C. SweetPotato Commission.

Following the awards presenta-tions, two new endowments were established in support of the N.C. SweetPotato Commission Campaign

for Excellence. These were the Tull Hill Farms Endowment and the Nash Produce Endowment.

— Terri Leith

From left are Bar-bara Carlson, Dr. Ying Zhu, Dr. Keri Jacobs and Dr. Gerald Carlson.

Shown are (front, from left) Alpha Zeta’s Lauren Mabry, Lindsay Pitts, Matt Greene, Cortney Freeman and Scott Whisnant; (back) Wayne Skaggs, Weyhauser’s Frank Rackley and Zakiya Leggett, N.C. SweetPotato Commission’s Sue Johnson-Langdon, Judi Grainger, Frank Grainger and Carolyn Dunn.

the next generation of horticulturists, while supporting the economic growth of the state’s nursery and landscape industries.”

The chancellor then introduced his wife, Susan, who called the gala a May Day to remember.

She announced that the event was “over our net profit goal of $80,000,” including pre-gala plant sales, with the total to grow with the finalized auc-tion tallies. According to Anne Porter, JCRA development director, the auc-tion sales came to nearly $33,000.

Those funds will go toward the continued support of the 10.5-acre research and teaching garden. As Bilderback, the arb director, put it, “We are Raleigh’s garden – a special green space that is admired and enjoyed by visitors from all over the country and the world.”

— Terri Leith

Arb gala (continued)

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When: Thursday, Oct. 27, 2011 from 9:00 am to 3:00 pm

Where: Talley Student Center

Build relationships with current students and alumni.

Advertise job and internship opportunities within your company.

Alumni may also attend the Career Expo as job seekers. Report with resumes in hand to the Talley Student Center. We expect more than 100 employers from career fields in agriculture and life sciences. Event details and informa-tion on registered companies can be found on our website.

2011 CALS Career Expo

• Live entertainment• An all-you-can-eat catered barbecue meal from

McCall’s• Exhibits from various CALS departments• N.C. State pep band and Mr. and Mrs. Wuf to start

a pep rally — and plenty more! 

2011

For 20 years, the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences has offered

alumni and friends a way to connect their organizations with CALS students, recent graduates, fellow alumni and industry colleagues. The CALS Career Expo affords participants exposure to approximately 1,500 students and colleagues, strengthening brand loyalty and educational goals. Hosted by CALS Career Services, this event provides an environment to showcase full-time job opportunities, internships, volunteer organizations, graduate and professional school programs, and professional development opportunities. Whether you have jobs to fill or career advice to share, consider registering today.

To reserve an exhibit booth, visit the 2011 CALS Career Expo link on our website: http://www.cals.ncsu.edu/career.

“Bright Futures, Big Opportunities”

CALS Alumni and Friends Society hosts the

20th Annual CALS TailgateCome celebrate the CALS Tailgate tradition!Saturday, Sept. 17, 2011

Dorton Arena, N.C. State Fairgrounds

Five hours before N.C. State vs. South Alabama game

Free parking available

For information, go to:

www.cals.ncsu.edu/tailgate

Ask us how to be an Event Sponsor, Exhibitor or Volunteer!

To contact the CALS Alumni & Friends Society office:Call 919.515.6212 or email jennifer_bernabi@ncsu.edu

Mark your calendars!

NONPROFIT ORG.U.S. POSTAGE

PAIDRALEIGH, NC

PERMIT #2353

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

Graduate student Marybeth Brey caught this bass at Lake Norman as part of her research on the ecosystem impacts of changing fish populations – a project that was a top award-winner at N.C. State’s 2011 Graduate Student Research Symposium. (Story, page 30.)

Courtesy Marybeth Brey

Prize catch