Agricultural Research Programs has appointed Carl Huetteman as assistant director of sponsored program development. Huetteman received his bachelor’s degree in forestry in 1980 from the University of Illinois-Urbana-Champaign and his master’s degree in 1989 from Southern Illinois University-Carbondale. He was a project researcher at Southern Illinois University from 1989 to 1995, working to develop silver maple trees for biomass energy plantations. Most recently, he was a research scientist for MeadWestvaco Corp. in Charleston, S.C., studying hardwood pulp production for the paperboard industry.

Huetteman

Kashchandra Raghothama has been appointed associate director of International Programs in Agriculture. A professor of horticulture and landscape architecture since 1988, Raghothama will focus on building Purdue Agriculture programs in Asia and the Middle East.

Bernie Tao is the recipient of the United Soybean Board’s Excellence in New Uses Award for making a positive impact on the soybean industry through his research developing new uses for soy. The board is the National Soybean Checkoff group. Tao has been at Purdue since 1988 and was named the Indiana Soybean Alliance Chair for Soybean Utilization in 2004. His research projects include using soybeans to make aviation jet fuel; home heating fuel; biodegradable coatings for food and industrial uses; inexpensive, environmentally safe airline deicers; and laundry additives to improve fabric life. Tao, a professor of ag engineering and food science, also has helped students develop novel products, such as soy-based crayons, birthday candles, ski waxes, vegetarian gels, protein-based breakfast cereals and edible Popsicle sticks as part of a Purdue contest that rewards students who create new products based on soybeans.

Chang Lu has been appointed to the editorial board for a new open-access journal, The Open Analytical Chemistry Journal, launched this year by Bentham Science Publishers. Bentham publishes 79 online and print journals and four print/online books for the pharmaceutical, biomedical and medical research community. Lu has been a faculty member since 2002.

Two students, Elizabeth Casey and Janie McClurkin, have received National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Awards. The fellowship provides three years of support for graduate study leading to a research-based master’s or doctoral degree.

Douglas

Julie Douglas, BS ’05, is the writer/editor of Ag Answers, a Web partnership between Purdue University and The Ohio State University that provides agricultural advice, strategies and reminders to help Indiana and Ohio farmers better manage their crops, livestock and marketplace transactions. Douglas previously worked for the Indiana State Department of Agriculture.

Ag Communication staff members will receive four gold and four silver awards in mid-June at the Association for Communication Excellence in Agriculture, Natural Resources, and Life and Human Sciences (ACE) annual conference in Albuquerque.

Gold award recipients are: 1) Dan Annarino, for a photo illustration about diversity in Connections; 2) Annarino, Becky Goetz, Tom Campbell and Chris Sigurdson, print advertising, for a student recruitment ad in FFA Magazine; 3) Olivia Maddox, Russell Merzdorf, Campbell, Laura Hoelscher, Natalie Federer, Steve Leer, Sigurdson, Beth Forbes and Susan Steeves, magazines and periodicals, for Purdue Agricultures; 4) Campbell, Annarino, Frank Koontz, Mike Atwell and Christine Roper, newsletters, for Connections.

It is the third consecutive gold award for Purdue Agriculture Connections in the newsletters category and the second consecutive gold award in the magazine category for Purdue Agricultures.

Silver award recipients are: 1) Campbell, writing in a specialized publication, for a story about Barry Gutwein in Connections; 2) Annarino, Goetz and Sigurdson, direct mail, for a brochure about the Purdue/Vincennes agriculture transfer program; 3) Jane Brown, Chip Morrison and Kevin Leigh Smith, technical publications, for the Corn and Soybean Field Guide (lead author is Cory Gerber, director of the agronomy department’s Crop Diagnostic Training and Research Center); 4) Brown and Morrison, electronic publications, for the Hardwood Lumber of the Central Midwest CD (lead author is Dan Cassens, professor of forestry and natural resources).

William T. Boehm of Cincinnati, MS ’72, PhD ’74, received an honorary doctor of agriculture degree May 13 from Purdue. He is senior vice president and president of the manufacturing division for The Kroger Co. He joined Kroger in 1981 after stints as an assistant professor of agricultural economics at Virginia Tech University, senior economist and research manager for the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and senior economist for food and agriculture with the President’s Council of Economic Advisers. He has been involved in outreach programs of the Center for Agribusiness in Purdue’s agricultural economics department, and he received Purdue’s Distinguished Agricultural Alumni Award in 1999.

The department presented four Apex Awards in April, honoring individuals for outstanding contributions in their field and a strong connection to the department. The recipients are Gregory Beck, BS ’82, MS ’84, of Covington, La., who is vice president of the grain division for Consolidated Grain and Barge; George Green, MBA ’04, of Monticello, Ind., who is general manager of Excel Co-op; Jeffrey Hale, BS ’04, of Brownsburg, Ind., who is president and CEO of Symphony Bank; and Kimseyinga Savadogo, MS ’82, PhD ’86, of Burkina Faso, Africa, professor, vice dean, dean of the faculty of economics and management, head of the graduate department, and research center director at the University of Ouagadougou.

Paul Preckel, a professor of agricultural economics since 1983 and associate department head, on Feb. 1 became the faculty director for the State Utility Forecasting Group, a research and technical analysis center based at Purdue. The center is affiliated with Purdue’s School of Industrial Engineering, Department of Agricultural Economics and the Energy Center in Discovery Park. The primary purpose of the team of professionals supported by the Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission is to provide a biennial forecast of the state’s anticipated electricity use, prices and resource needs.

Lawrence C. “Sonny” Beck of Atlanta, Ind., BS ’62, MS ’64, received an honorary doctor of agriculture degree from Purdue on May 13. He is president of Beck’s Superior Hybrids. While Beck was earning his two Purdue degrees (a bachelor’s in agronomy and a master’s in agricultural economics) he also was a founding member of the Farmhouse Fraternity Foundation and won the G.A. Ross Award as the outstanding senior man in 1962. After his graduation, he took over the family business, founded by his father and his grandfather, and transformed it from a small regional corn seed company into the largest family-owned, independent retail seed company in the United States. The Beck Foundation provides scholarships to three agronomy students each year. The family also funded a major portion of the $5.2 million Beck Agricultural Center. Beck was a 1992 Distinguished Agricultural Alumni Award winner.

Cliff Weil has been elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Weil, a faculty member since 2001, earned his bachelor’s degree at the University of California in 1978 and his doctorate from Cornell University in 1984.

Mark Diekman, BS ’70, MS ’72, received the 2007 Dean M. Beverley Stone Non-Academic Counseling Award from the Purdue chapter of Omicron Delta Kappa National Leadership Honor Society for outstanding service in counseling Purdue students. Diekman has been faculty adviser to Chauncey Cooperative House since 1986. He has been on the Purdue faculty since 1979.

Wayne Singleton, BS ’66, professor emeritus, received the National Pork Board’s Distinguished Service Award for lifelong contributions to the pork industry. Singleton was a pioneer in the successful use of swine artificial insemination, which allowed the extended use of superior sires and significantly improved market hog and carcass quality. He joined the Purdue faculty in 1970 and retired in 2003.

Andy Tao, PhD ’01, received a National Science Foundation CAREER (Faculty Early Career Development) award for his project “Soluble Nanopolymers for Targeted Proteomics in vitro and in Living Cells.” Tao has been an assistant professor since 2004.

James C. Clemens has been selected as an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellow. The fellowships, which provide a two-year, $45,000 grant, were established in 1955 to provide support and recognition to early career scientists and scholars to set up laboratories and establish independent research projects. A total of 116 fellowships were awarded this year. Clemens, an assistant professor, has been a faculty member since 2005. His area of expertise is neuroscience.

Ag Spectrum, a national agricultural consulting group, has inducted Don Huber into its hall of fame for

his “scientific contributions to agriculture in plant nutrition, nutrient-disease interactions, microbial ecology, and glyphosate-induced nutrient immobilization.” Huber has been a faculty member since 1971.

Andreas Westphal, designated a “rising star” in the field of nematology, has been invited to participate in a plant pathology symposium at the national meeting of the American Phytopathological Society and the Society of Nematologists at San Diego in July. Westphal, a faculty member since 2001, will give a presentation titled “Sustainable approaches to the management of plant-parasitic nematodes and disease complexes” and is invited to publish a peer-reviewed symposium publication on this presentation.

John Shukle’s presentation earned first place in the bachelor of science category at the Ohio Valley Entomological Association’s 2006 Nineteenth Annual Forum. Twenty-three students from six universities took part in the competition. Shukle’s presentation was “mtDNA barcoding for taxonomic identification within the genus Agrilus.” In the master of science category, Paul Marquardt took a second, and Thelma Heidel took third.

Willette Crawford won the department’s Liska Graduate Student Teaching Award for fall 2006. Undergraduate students chose her for her excellence in service as a teaching assistant for the food microbiology laboratory course.

Carol Rizkalla, a graduate student, has been selected to join the Emerging Wildlife Conservation Leaders Class of 2007-08. The class comprises 20

up-and-coming leaders from the wildlife conservation field and is a collaborative effort between Defenders of Wildlife, the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, and multiple wildlife conservation organizations, government agencies and private businesses.

Tamara Benjamin, MS ’96, PhD ’00, was named Best Professor in Agroforestry for 2006 at CATIE. That’s the Centro Agronómico Tropical de Investigación y Enseñanza (Tropical Agricultural Research and Higher Education Center), which operates throughout Latin America (see story on Page 6).

Hoffman

Kelli Hoffman, 22, will participate in the Miss Indiana competition in Zionsville in June after being named winner of the Miss Purdue Scholarship Pageant on March 3. Hoffman, a sophomore majoring in agricultural education from Columbia City, Ind., was tops in a field of 15 pageant participants, including runner-up Amy Pflugshaupt, an agricultural education senior from Hamlet, Ind.

The winner of the Miss Indiana competition will represent the Hoosier state in next year’s Miss America Pageant.