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Educating the Pupa...
Like others, my professional career has been made up of interactions with many people who have guided and shaped my goals and accomplishments. These interactions have truly molded my life and the greatest treasures I have in my professional career remain the friendships that I have with these people. Some of these people can be used as land marks in a sort of guided tour through my professional life. The person who most equaled the passion and enthusiasm that I felt for learning about nature (including insects) during my undergraduate education was a fellow student and kindred spirit by the name of George Toone. George probably has no idea how much he influenced where I ended up in life, although we have kept in touch over the years. George also had a passion for nature. He observed everything, asking himself and others why and how about whatever he was observing, and made learning fun. It is no surprise that he ended up as a successful school teacher and administrator where he has, no doubt, shared his thirst for knowledge and his enthusiasm for learning with young students. During the summer after my first exposure to entomology, I obtained a job working with a veterinarian to provide clinical training, ostensibly on my way to becoming a veterinarian myself. It was this veterinarian who first knew of my conversion, even before I recognized it myself. We had a cow wrestled to the ground and were inside her trying to pull out a dead calf (interesting work actually) when he noticed that all at once that I stopped what I was doing, went to the fence a few feet away and picked up a long-horned beetle that I had been watching and put it into my pocket. I thought nothing of it at the time but later that summer when I informed him of my decision to switch career tracks the Vet recounted this observation to me and told me that at that point he knew I was lost to Veterinary science, and .... look out entomology!. During the next two summers I worked at mosquito abatement in Salt Lake City and then as an IPM technician for Utah State University under the direction of a Pomologist by the name of Dr. Anthony Hatch. I loved the work. Dr. Clive Jorgensen, a professor in Entomology at BYU approached me the next semester at
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school and offered me an assistantship to do a Masters degree in insect pest management as soon as I could graduate with my Bachelors degree. I accepted and gained my first exposure to Integrated Pest Management (IPM) which I have been part of ever since. My masters research project was to describe the biology of a relatively new pest of apples, the western tentiform leafminer. At that point I was hooked.
The two years were soon over but I had not yet had enough of entomology so I applied to graduate school at Kansas State University for a Ph.D. What really influenced this decision was a job that was posted there as 'Insect Diagnostician' .... a job for which one was paid to identify insects. I thought that this was the best thing that could ever happen to me Ð it was my dream come true. My major advisor was to be a young assistant professor by the name of Dr. Randall A. Higgins with interests in pest management like my own. I was his first student and together we worked hard to develop the beginnings of a very successful program at K-State. My learning with Randy extended far beyond the training that most students receive from their professors. I worked long hours with him. I distinctly remember the times when we sprayed our field plots by the light of searchlight standing on the top of a truck. I learned how to develop a program from the ground up, find funding, buy equipment, set up research plots, organize workers, analyze results and teach these to others through seminars, papers and grower meetings. I did not know it then but experience in all of these things were what I would need to start my own project at Purdue University after graduation. Two graduate students with whom I worked closely and developed lasting relationships with were Sue Blodgett, now at Montana State University and Marlin Rice, now at Iowa State University. Times were good there and I would have liked to stay on there forever but there also comes time in a young students life when they need to move out and 'try their wings'. I was nearly at this stage when I found a permanent job announcement with the Department of Entomology at Purdue University. |
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