Staking Out Her Turf: Guertal Shoots Straight with Turfgrass Students

When incoming students tell AU turfgrass soil fertility alumni professor Beth Guertal that they just can't wait to major in turfgrass management because, well, because they love golf so much, Guertal stops them right there.

"If they're thinking that this will be the dream job where they can work a little and play golf a lot, that's what I call 'a recipe for disaster,'" Guertal says.

So she lays it on the line.

"I have to burst their bubble and tell them, ‘Hey, guys, you need to find yourself another major, because you talk to any first-rate golf course superintendent, and they haven't played golf in months,'" she says. "This profession is about a lot of hard, hard work and a strong commitment to the job. It isn't about how much you love golf."

Not that Guertal has anything against golf. In fact, she plays the sport herself. But that is NOT how she wound up in turfgrass. It was completely circumstantial, landing in her lap due mainly to "attrition," so to speak.

A native of Ohio whose only connection to agriculture was two parents who worked at the state agriculture department, Guertal got her bachelor's in agriculture from The Ohio State University in 1984 and her master's in soil science from there four years later. She earned her Ph.D. in soil science in 1993 from Oklahoma State University, which is where she met her husband of 10 years, self-proclaimed computer geek Brian Anderson.

Shortly after she received her doctorate, she was attending an agronomy conference in Tulsa, Okla., when a friend introduced her to Auburn University agronomist Paul Mask. In the course of conversation, Mask learned that Guertal was in the job market, and Guertal learned that AU had a faculty position open in agronomy and soils, a position they thought twice they'd filled but the deals fell through. The problem was, its emphasis was on soil fertility in vegetable crops.

"But most of my work had been working with corn, wheat and soybeans, so I was ready to just pass it off," Guertal says.

It was too late, though. The energetic, quick-witted Guertal had made a strong impression on Mask, and he convinced her she could make a smooth transition from corn to cabbage and the like. She traveled to Auburn, interviewed and got the post.

When she arrived in Auburn, Guertal threw herself into the job with characteristic intensity, rapidly building both a strong research program and a reputation as a superb teacher. She'd barely been in the position three years, however, when her career took another turn—this time to turfgrass. It happened when, due to a cost-saving AU-wide faculty reduction program, Agronomy and Soils' whole turfgrass teaching team—including Ray Dickens, the man who had been key in establishing the program—took early retirement. Agronomy professor Harold Walker, a turfgrass specialist who had been working in soybeans, welcomed the opportunity to take turf back, and Guertal answered the challenge to join him.

As had been the case three years earlier, she shifted into the new field in high gear, and, again, things went smoothly.

Guertal downplays the ease with which she handled two major career changes in three years. After all, she says, the bottom line in all of it is science.

"Science is a license to learn," she says. "When you get a degree in science, you learn how to have thought processes to solve any problem—whether it's how a golf ball rolls on a putting green or how a soybean grows. That's what I tell my students, too."

Since the turf transition in'96, Walker, Guertal and Assistant Professor Dave Han, the relative newcomer, have developed a dynamic research program that golf course superintendents, sod farmers, athletic field managers and lawn-care professionals look to for technical answers to questions and innovative solutions to problems.

Guertal enjoys the challenges and rewards of research immensely, but she can say the same of teaching, and it shows. The woman was born to teach. She's lively, energetic and totally into turfgrass. Students repeatedly give her high marks—as can be seen in the list of outstanding teacher awards she's racked up over the past decade—even though her classes, by today's textbook teaching methods, are perhaps unorthodox.

"I don't have CDs, I don't have class notes online, and I don't walk in class with PowerPoints and handouts," Guetal says. "I tell my students those are all just excuses for them to shut off their brains. I am not a note service. My students are here to come to class, and take notes and learn.'"

And they do. And they get jobs. Guertal, who is also undergraduate adviser for the 50-plus students the program averages annually, guarantees that all graduates who are willing to relocate if need be will get a job. Part of that Guertal insists, is the high-quality of students in the AU turfgrass management program; part is the program's reputation as top-notch; and part is the interconnectedness of the turf-grass industry.

"The turfgrass industry is so highly specialized," Guertal says. "It's a requirement of the (researcher's) job that you have to have a commitment to the industry and know people in all facets of it.

"It's funny: a professor with a research appointment in poultry isn't expected to know every poultry farmer, but in turfgrass, you're expected to know every golf course superintendent and sod farmer and landscape specialist."

As noted earlier, Guertal is one to speak her mind, and she does have one outspoken beef about her job as a faculty member: the emphasis on research over teaching.

Frankly—and, Guertal believes, unfortunately—faculty today are rewarded based on "grants and research and publications," with little emphasis on or credit given for teaching.

"But you know what the best part of my job is?" Guertal says. "The best part is when a graduating senior brings his or her mom and dad by my office and says, ‘I just wanted my parents to get to meet you.'"

"When you die, who cares how many articles you had published? What matters is, how many kids want their parents to meet you."

When she isn't going full speed at work, Guertal enjoys a quiet, leisurely home life with her husband and their two wild and crazy guys, Will, 4, and 2-year-old Sam.

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