WOOSTER, Ohio — A former faculty member of The Ohio State University’s College of Food, Agricultural, and Environmental Sciences has established a new fund to support graduate students.

Earle W. Klosterman established the Earle and Ann Klosterman Endowed Graduate Award with a $200,000 gift to Ohio State’s Department of Animal Sciences. The annual distribution from this award will help support departmental graduate students conducting research with beef cattle at the Ohio Agricultural Research and Development Center (OARDC). OARDC is the research arm of the college.

Klosterman is native of South Dakota. He earned a bachelor’s degree from South Dakota State University in 1942 and a doctorate from Cornell University in 1946. His wife of 65 years, Ann, obtained a bachelor’s degree from the University of Tennessee and a master’s degree from Cornell University. Ann taught home economics at Wooster High School and the Wayne County Vocational School for a total of 23 years.

Earle held faculty positions at South Dakota State University and North Dakota State University before joining the faculty of the Ohio Agricultural Research and Development Center and The Ohio State University in 1952, where he conducted beef cattle research until his retirement in 1980. He served as associate chair of the Department of Animal Science from 1967 to 1980 and designed and oversaw the construction of the 400-head capacity OARDC Beef Center feedlot in 1968. 

He had more than 200 publications; his most recognized paper was published in 1971, titled “Beef Cattle Size for Maximum Efficiency.” His many contributions to the beef industry, the scientific community, and students at The Ohio State University leave a lasting legacy.

DUNBOYNE, Ireland —The Alltech Graduate Program recently kicked off with the arrival of the 21 graduates, selected from more than 1,500 applicants, from all corners of the world including the UK, Ireland, India, Estonia, Canada and the USA, at the Alltech European Bioscience Centre in Dunboyne, Co. Meath, Ireland. Eight of the 21 graduates are from North America, including: Danielle Palmer, University of Kentucky; Colin Richardson, University of Guelph; Rebecca Noble, University of Kentucky and the London School of Economics & Political Science; Ashley Hamilton Baker, University of Auburn and the University of Guadalajara, Mexico; Daniel Grubb, Georgetown College; Philip Hardy, St. Andrews University; 

Bethany Brashears, University of Kentucky; and Carly Borel, Texas A&M University. Graduates will attend two weeks of training and lectures in Alltech’s facility in Dunboyne, including presentations from staff in the facility, lectures from the UCD Michael Smurfit Graduate Business School and talks from Alltech’s vice presidents and directors. Following this, the graduates will be flown to Alltech’s corporate headquarters in Lexington, Ky., for another week of training. They will be placed in one of Alltech’s 128 global offices to spend their remaining year working on projects in the areas of animal science, aquaculture, crop science and Alltech’s consumer brands.

COLUMBUS, Ohio — Ohio State University surged four places on the Peace Corps’ annual list of the top volunteer-producing schools, placing for the first time among the top 10 large universities.

With 80 Ohio State graduates currently serving as Peace Corps volunteers, an increase of nine volunteers over last year, the university now ranks No. 9 and “remains a solid source of alumni committed to making a difference at home and abroad,” the Peace Corps said.

Since the agency was created in 1961, some 1,666 Ohio State alums have served overseas, making the university the No. 10 all-time producer of Peace Corps volunteers, the agency said.

Mark Erbaugh, director of Ohio State’s International Programs in Agriculture, was one of those volunteers. Housed in the College of Food, Agricultural, and Environmental Sciences, the agricultural international programs office has overseen the university’s Peace Corps program since 1974.

“Living and working outside of your own country is always a formative experience,” Erbaugh said. “You learn more about yourself. You gain self-confidence by dealing in a different environment and in a different language, all while discovering another part of the world.”

Erbaugh earned a degree in natural resources at the University of Michigan before serving in the Peace Corps in Swaziland from 1976-1980. In 1981, he became Ohio State’s Peace Corps recruiter and later earned his master’s and doctoral degrees in rural sociology from Ohio State.

Erbaugh has hired every Peace Corps recruiter at Ohio State since he left that post.

“The reason the program is based in our college is that the Peace Corps can use all of the ‘aggies’ (agricultural majors) and natural resource majors it can get,” Erbaugh said. 

Five other Ohio schools made the list this year. Miami University-Oxford ranks No. 11 among medium schools with 28 alumni volunteers; among smaller-population schools, Oberlin College ranks fourth with 20 alumni volunteers, Denison University is at No. 7 with 17 volunteers, Kenyon College has 16 volunteers and ranks No. 8, and Case Western Reserve University has the No. 18 spot with 15 volunteers.

Graduating college students are encouraged to apply to the Peace Corps by Feb. 28 for the remaining assignment openings for 2013 and the chance to be considered for programs in early 2014, the organization said.

The Peace Corps is looking for people in a wide variety of skill areas, Erbaugh said, such as agriculture, the environment, education, health and business.

The organization, working with the International Programs in Agriculture Office at Ohio State, hosts an on-campus recruiter to offer information on the application process and share his personal experience as a volunteer. Jack Campbell, who served two terms in the Peace Corps in Fiji and Botswana, can be reached at 614-292-3008 and peacecorps@osu.edu

Anyone interested in learning more can join the Facebook page at www.facebook.com/OSUPeaceCorps, attend an event, drop by to visit Campbell in 113 Agricultural Administration Building during office hours (Tuesday-Thursday, 11 a.m. to 2 p.m.), or attend the Peace Corps Week Open House at the Ohio Union on Feb. 25, noon to 4 p.m. in the Hays Cape Room on the third floor.