Richard L. Kohls, BS '42, PhD '50, dean of Purdue Agriculture from 1968 to 1980, died May 28 in West Lafayette. He was 85.

Kohls joined the Purdue faculty in 1948 and later served as assistant head of the Department of Agricultural Economics and as assistant academic vice president. He retired in 1986 as dean emeritus and professor emeritus. He was appointed the first Hovde Distinguished Professor of Agriculture in 1980. He did graduate instruction in economics at Northwestern University and was a visiting professor of economics at the University of Exeter in England.

He published articles in the Journal of Marketing, Journal of Farm Economics and Journal of the International Association of Farm Economists. He also wrote a college text, Marketing of Agricultural Products, now in its ninth edition.

During his college years, he was a member of Alpha Gamma Rho and was active in the Purdue Playshop, WBAA radio station and Purdue Glee Club. He was a member of Alpha Zeta, Ceres, Gamma Sigma Delta, Sigma Xi and Theta Alpha Phi.

Kohls served as vice president of the American Agricultural Economics Association and received its Award of Merit as a Distinguished Undergraduate Teacher in 1966. He received the Distinguished Teacher Award at Purdue in 1967. He was in the first group to be inducted into the Purdue ROTC Hall of Fame, was awarded a certificate of distinction for outstanding service to agriculture from the Purdue Alumni Association, and received the Hovde Award for Excellence in Service to Rural Indiana from the Indiana Farm Bureau in 1984.

Kohls was included in the first edition of Purdue's Book of Great Teachers in 1999 and was named a Brother of the Century by Alpha Gamma Rho in 2004. He was a member of the Lafayette Symphony Board, the West Lafayette Library Board and Foundation, and many other community and Purdue organizations.

His marriage was to Irene E. Shuster on April 20, 1944, in Fowler, Ind., and she survives. Also surviving are a son and a daughter.