Women break stereotypes to change the face of agriculture
By Faith Peppers, Brad Haire, Sharon Omahen & Stephanie Schupska
Naomi Chapman Woodroof left a legacy of work that helped increase the Georgia peanut yield fivefold and made Georgia a real contender in the peanut industry.
Although you won't find her name on any peanut publications — she wasn't a professor, thus keeping her name off official University of Georgia publications — the legacy she left behind helped change the face of agriculture.
Woodroof's journey to the South started with a degree in animal husbandry from the University of Idaho in the early 1920s. When she headed to Georgia after finishing her master's degree in plant pathology, the University of Georgia's then College of Agriculture had only begun accepting female students. It was the first UGA college to do so, opening its doors to women in 1918, an achievement commemorated by a plaque on Soule Hall.
Although the main college wasn't hiring females, Woodroof applied for a staff position as a biologist at the Georgia Experiment Station in Griffin and became the first woman scientist hired there.
Naomi Chapman Woodruff pauses for a photo in a peanut plot on the Tifton campus
in the 1920s.
"She was way ahead of her time," her son-in-law, Ken Smith, told the University of Idaho in 2000. "She was working in a man's world, but she was not competing, she was simply contributing."
That marked the beginning of a long, illustrious career. Woodroof's husband Jasper was named the first president of Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College in Tifton. When they moved there, she was hired as the first state-employed plant pathologist at the Coastal Plain Experiment Station.
Woodroof was also the first woman named to the Georgia Agricultural Hall of Fame and is one of 25 women listed on the Honor Roll of Distinguished Georgians. According to the New Georgia Encyclopedia, her research was a key component in transforming peanuts from a crop for hog feed to an essential food product. And in 1997, the Naomi Chapman Woodroof Agricultural Pavilion was erected in her honor at the University of Georgia.
That was then, this is now
Now, 80 years later, things have changed. Because of the example Woodroof and others set, countless U.S. women now hold degrees in agriculture. Many women have walked the row she tilled to better education, teaching and career opportunities in agriculture.
UGA welcomes women students and faculty with open arms, when they can get them.
"When I was a student in the college (in the early '80s), there weren't many female students," said Laura Meadows, UGA associate vice president for economic development. "Being a woman in the ag college really made you stand out."
That's not the case today. Nearly 46 percent of students in the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences were female in fall 2006.
"For the first time in the history of our college, we enrolled more women than men undergraduates, this semester (fall 2007)," said Joe Broder, associate dean for academic affairs. "With the greatest percentages of women among freshman and sophomores, I expect the overall percentage of undergraduate women to increase in the future."
CAES majors that attract the most women include animal and dairy science and animal health, which includes a preveterinary program. Both of those majors are more than 75 percent female. Other majors with a majority of women students include biological science, food science and agricultural communication.
"I don't think we consciously recruit women to the college," said J. Scott Angle, CAES dean and director. "We recruit the best and brightest students who want to study science, agriculture or the environment. The increase in the number of female students is a national trend that stems from greater career opportunities in agriculture other than farm work."
Angle says he finds one thing perplexing: Over the past two decades, the dramatic increase in female graduate students in U.S. agricultural colleges hasn't translated into more female faculty members.
"If you look at the demographics of most colleges of agriculture across the country, you will find that about 50 percent of the Ph.D. students are women," Angle said. "If you agree that most faculty members come through our programs and student ranks, it would stand to reason that we would have a considerable number of female faculty. We don't. And the number is low nationally."
One potential problem Angle sees and is working to change is a lack of women in CAES administration and leadership roles. "If female students look at our administration and don't see any women role models," he said, "they may assume there's no place for them here. We've changed that in the past year."
Among Angle's most recent hires, he named two new female top administrators, the first in college history. "Our students and upandcoming faculty now have excellent role models in Beverly Sparks (associate dean for extension) and Jean Bertrand (assistant dean for academics)," he said.
"We hired the very best candidates for the job," he said. "They happened to both be women. But now they demonstrate to other faculty and students that there are opportunities out there for them that they might not have seen before."
Angle and other CAES administrators also encourage female faculty members interested in administration to take advantage of many training opportunities. "We're always looking for opportunities to help our faculty grow," he said. "We have various leadership programs in the college and nationally that we encourage female faculty to move into to help prepare them for leadership roles."
Angle also looks for opportunities in the college for female faculty to be able to move into, such as the recent announcement that Louise Wicker will be interim director of the CAES diversity program. "She indicated an interest in this area and in leadership roles, and this will give her a chance to get a feel for college administration," he said.
Women in agriculture
CAES faculty and alumni represent some of the most successful women in agriculture. Read their stories:
| Peggy Ozias-Akins | Crop genomics provide savings and safety for consumers |
| China Reed | Hard work, determination make pie-in-sky dream reality |
| Maria Navarro | Real-world learning a true test for Navarro's students |
| Donna Klockeman | Matching healthy food trends with great taste |
| Julia Gaskin | Love of science led to love of agriculture |
| Laura Meadows | Meadows' dream comes true as she combines two loves |
| Shona Jonson | Alum finds satisfaction in chicken sandwich kingdom |