College of ACES awards many in annual program

URBANA, Ill. — Alumni, faculty, academic professionals, staff and students in the University of Illinois College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences were honored for their contributions.

Receiving the Paul A. Funk Recognition Award, the highest faculty honor, were three professors: Mark B. David of the Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Sciences and Michael Ellis and Douglas F. Parrett, both of the Department of Animal Sciences.

Receiving the Alumni Assoc. Award of Merit were: Keith A. Garleb of Pickerington, Ohio, director of pediatric research and development at Abbott Nutrition Division, Abbott; William R. Mullins of Shabbona, owner of Mullins Grain Co.; P. Scott Shearer of Oakton, Va., vice president of Bockorny Group, Inc.; Bir Bahadur Singh of Uttaranchal, India, visiting professor at Texas A&M University, College Station, Texas; and Robert E. Smith of Newport, Vt., president of R.E. Smith Consulting, Inc.

The Spitze Land-Grant Professorial Career Excellence Award was presented to John W. Erdman Jr., a professor in the Department of Food Science and Human Nutrition. Alex E. Winter-Nelson, a professor in the Department of Agricultural and Consumer Economics, received the Faculty Award for Global Impact.

The Senior Faculty Award for Excellence in Teaching went to Ramona F. Oswald, an associate professor in the Department of Human and Community Development. Soo-Yeun Lee, an associate professor in the Department of Food Science and Human Nutrition, received the College Faculty Award for Excellence in Teaching.
William G. Helferich, a professor in the Department of Food Science and Human Nutrition, won the Senior Faculty Award for Excellence in Research.

Taking the Senior Faculty Award for Excellence in Extension was Mosbah M. Kushad, an associate professor in the Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Sciences. Aaron G. Hager, an assistant professor and extension specialist in the Department of Crop Sciences, won the College Faculty Award for Excellence in Extension.

The Karl E. Gardner Outstanding Undergraduate Advisor Award went to Alan C. Hansen, an associate professor in the Department of Agricultural and Biological Engineering. The John Clyde and Henrietta Downey Spitler Teaching Award was presented to Frederic L. Kolb, a professor in the Department of Crop Sciences.

The Illinois Gardener Team received the Team Award for Excellence. Its members are: James E. Appleby, Philip L. Nixon, Dianne A. Noland, Robert M. Skirvin and Thomas B. Voigt, all of the Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Sciences; Nancy R. Pataky and Donald G. White of the Department of Crop Sciences; Heather E. Lash of ACES Administration-Office of Research; and Sandra L. Mason, Donald E. Meyer and David J. Robson, all of extension.

Winners of the Professional Staff Award for Excellence were: Suzanne M. Bissonnette, extension, for sustained excellence-teaching and outreach; Ram J. Singh, Department of Crop Sciences, sustained excellence-research; E. Louise Rogers, ACES Administration-Advancement, sustained excellence administrative/management or technical contributions; and Jill North Craft, Department of Food Science and Human Nutrition, innovation and creativity.

Staff Awards for Excellence were presented to Karen M. Claus of the Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Sciences and Donna K. Downen, Department of Crop Sciences. The Marcella M. Nance Staff Award was won by Linda M. Pein, ACES Administration-Dean’s Office.

Eric L. Lien, an adjunct professor in the Department of Food Science and Human Nutrition, received the Service Recognition Award.
Winners of the Graduate Student Research Award were Patricio R. Lozano, who received his Ph.D. in the Department of Food Science and Human Nutrition, and Andrew J. Gingerich, a master’s degree student in the Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Sciences.

The Louis V. Logeman Graduate Student Teaching Award was received by Lyndal B.L. Khaw of the Department of Human and Community Development and Benjamin J. O’Neal of the Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Sciences.

Ohio Ag Center honors several agricultural scholars

WOOSTER, Ohio — The Ohio Agricultural Research and Development Center (OARDC) honored Parwinder Grewal, a professor in The Ohio State University’s Department of Entomology, with its 2009 Distinguished Senior Faculty Research Award.

Grewal founded and directs the Urban Landscape Ecology Program (ULEP), a new multidisciplinary, degree-granting program at OSU that includes 40 faculty members from five colleges. He also leads the Center for Urban Environment and Economic Development. Highly committed to science education, he started the OARDC Research Internship Program for area high school and undergraduate students.

The Senior Faculty Research Award – a plaque, $1,000 to Grewal and $3,000 to the operating account of his research program – recognizes outstanding achievements by an OARDC faculty member at the rank of professor.

OARDC honored OSU’s Elena Irwin and Jeff LeJeune with the 2009 Distinguished Junior Faculty Research Award. An associate professor in the Department of Agricultural, Environmental and Development Economics, Irwin has become co-principal investigator of the Baltimore Long-Term Ecological Research Program, one of 26 such programs sponsored by the National Science Foundation, and has taken a lead role in developing the program’s $9 million renewal grant.

LeJeune is an associate professor in the Food Animal Health Research Program (FAHRP), is an adjunct associate professor in the Department of Food Science and Technology and in the College of Public Health’s Division of Environmental Health Sciences and is a national and international expert in the areas of pre-harvest food safety, animal-transmitted diseases and food-borne illnesses.
He leads an OARDC and OSU extension team focused on the emerging issue of microbial contamination of fruits and vegetables. He and Irwin each received a plaque, $1,000 and $3,000 to the operating account of each of their research programs.
John Finer, a professor in OSU’s Department of Horticulture and Crop Science, received the OARDC 2009 Director’s Innovator of the Year Award. Finer is widely recognized in the field of developmental plant biology and is often called upon as an industry consultant and legal expert witness.

He received the 2005 Ohio State University Gamma Sigma Delta Research Award, has been a USDA competitive-grants program panel member and serves as co-editor of the journal Crop Science. From OARDC he received a plaque, $1,000 and $2,500 to the operating account of his research program.

Miguel Vega-Sánchez, a 2008 doctoral graduate of OSU’s Department of Plant Pathology, earned the OARDC 2009 William E. Krauss Director’s Award for Excellence in Graduate Research. He was recognized for his paper, SPIN1, a K Homology Domain Protein Negatively Regulated and Ubiquitinated by the E3 Ubiquitin Ligase SPL11, Is Involved in Flowering Time Control in Rice, which appeared in the journal The Plant Cell in June 2008.

The award, $1,000 and a framed copy of the winning paper honors outstanding dissertation research by an OARDC-supported graduate student. Vega-Sánchez is a postdoctoral fellow at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory’s Joint BioEnergy Institute in Berkeley, Calif. Guo-Liang Wang, a professor in the Department of Plant Pathology, was his advisor.