Research News

Six University of Georgia faculty and staff members are being honored for their commitment to public service and outreach. These honorees have made significant career-spanning contributions to UGA’s public service mission through scholarship, service-learning opportunities for students and campus leadership. All have created a legacy of extraordinary impact through special projects and long-term achievements to propel a better quality of life for the people of Georgia.

Stanley Culpepper has dedicated the length of his career to supporting farmers in their mission to feed and clothe the world. For the past 25 years, Culpepper has been a weed science specialist for University of Georgia Cooperative Extension and a College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences faculty member. Recently his job has become increasingly complex as mounting challenges around the availability of pesticides — primarily herbicides — have taken center stage in agricultural production.

The University of Georgia College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences and the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Agricultural Research Service have broken ground on a new state-of-the-art research facility housing the Southeast Watershed Research Laboratory and the Crop Genetics and Breeding Research Unit. the UGA Tifton campus, the research facility will include a new, 31,000-square-foot building housing university and ARS employees working on climate-smart agricultural research.

Ron Walcott, University of Georgia vice provost for graduate education and dean of the Graduate School, was first a doctoral student at the UGA Tifton campus. As a UGA administrator and professor in the Department of Plant Pathology, Walcott helps students and colleagues find their sense of place at the university and has a legacy of increasing diversity in the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences.

For many veterans, returning to civilian life is a stark shift from their fast-paced and service-based military life. When you combine this with the more than 4.7 million veterans who have service-based disabilities, the challenges of re-entry compound. The University of Georgia is working to assist Georgia’s veterans with this transition through its dynamic farming program, Farm Again.

Building on the foundation set by his father in Effingham County, Shiloh Farms owner Bruce Redmond has expanded his operation through innovation and dedication, earning him the honor of 2024 Georgia Farmer of the Year, presented at the 2024 Georgia Ag Forecast in Tifton, Georgia, on Jan. 26. Nominated by Blake Carter, the University of Georgia Cooperative Extension Agriculture and Natural Resources agent for Effingham County, Redmond assumed full ownership and operation of Shiloh Farms in 2018.