Notables

Francille Firebaugh, vice provost for land grant affairs and special assistant to the president, was selected to give the 2002 Hatch Memorial Lecture at the 115th National Association of State Universities and Land Grant Colleges (NASULGIC) Annual Meeting in Chicago, Nov. 10.

The award, by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Cooperative State Research, Education, and Extension Service and NASULGIC, carries a $5,000 grant and medal. Firebaugh's lecture was titled "Land Grant Missions: Why Bother Now?" She was nominated by Patsy M. Brannon, the Rebecca Q. and James C. Morgan Dean of the College of Human Ecology, and Josephine A. Swanson, associate director of Cornell Cooperative Extension and assistant dean of extension and outreach for the College of Human Ecology. "Francille is an ideal person to give the Hatch Memorial Lecture," Brannon said. "She is a distinguished scholar, leader and path breaker, who understands the land-grant mission and the integration of research and outreach education that is central to making higher education and the knowledge it generates accessible to the public. This recognition of her is even more significant because she is the first woman and human sciences scholar to be selected as a Hatch Memorial Lecturer." The lecture commemorates the efforts of William H. Hatch, congressman from Missouri, who championed establishing federal support for the Agricultural Experiment Station system, which the Hatch Act created in 1887.

Sarah E. Thomas, the Carl A. Kroch University Librarian, has been elected vice president/president elect of the Association of Research Libraries (ARL). ARL is a not-for-profit membership organization composed of the leading research libraries in North America. Its mission is to shape and influence forces affecting the future of research libraries in the process of scholarly communication. ARL programs and services promote equitable access to and effective use of recorded knowledge in support of teaching, research, scholarship and community service.

Curtis Petzoldt, who develops innovative programs for managing pests on New York's 211,200 acres of vegetable farms, recently received a service award from Epsilon Sigma Phi, the national honorary Cooperative Extension fraternity. Petzoldt is the vegetable coordinator and assistant director of New York State Integrated Pest Management (NYS IPM), which promotes non- and least-toxic ways of dealing with pests. The program is based at Cornell's New York State Agricultural Experiment Station in Geneva, N.Y. "When we give these awards, we look for people who are creative, who provide solid, trustworthy information that anyone in the field can use with confidence," said David Hawley, the executive director of Cornell Cooperative Extension in Rensselaer County and co-chair of the Professional Recognition Committee of Epsilon Sigma Phi. Petzoldt has been a driving force behind the Northeast Weather Association, a service that gathers data from a network of portable weather stations in farmers' fields, then uses it to provide up-to-the-minute forecasts of diseases and insects of crops ranging from apples to zucchini. Petzoldt has also helped to link growers, processors, supermarkets, and consumers in providing and promoting IPM-grown and -labeled foods. Petzoldt was honored at an awards dinner at the annual meeting of the Association of Cornell Cooperative Extension Educators, Oct. 16.