In it for his Students Chris Kerth "Goes the Extra Mile" to Make Meat Science Relevant

By: Jamie Creamer

He wasn't exactly an ace student. In fact, despite his faithful class attendance, he had a D going into the final in Chris Kerth's muscle foods course at Auburn.

But when he handed in his final-a final that kept his D average intact, incidentally-the student shook his professor's hand and thanked him.

"This has been the best class I've ever taken," he told Kerth.

And on an Internet site that gives college students the opportunity to rant or rave as they ratemyprofessor.com, Kerth merits a big smiley face and high praises as an "awesome professor" who's accessible and who "goes the extra mile to help" his students.

That kind of feedback is what keeps a stretched-to-the-limit Kerth pumped and motivated.

"Sometimes, to say I get overwhelmed by everything at work is an understatement," Kerth says. "But to have students make those kinds of comments, that's rewarding."

Theoretically, Kerth's position as associate professor in the CoAg Department of Animal Sciences is 65 percent teaching, 35 percent research. But recent retirements have left faculty vacancies in the department that have shifted more of the teaching load Kerth's way. He's now teaching two classes each fall and an unenviable four classes in spring semesters. In fact, when he works the numbers, it's actually 144 percent teaching and 35 percent research. Kerth is quick to credit top-notch graduate students for helping him do his job.

"I couldn't do what I do without quality graduate students I've had, especially in the labs," he says. "When I spend 20 hours a week just in the classroom, there's no way I could teach the labs and give students the quality education they're here for."

On the faculty at Auburn since 1999, Kerth grew up on a cattle ranch in northwest Kansas and in 1989 enrolled at Kansas State University on an engineering scholarship.

"I started out in ag engineering, but as soon as I got my first calculus test back, I decided engineering wasn't right for me," Kerth says. That's when he switched to animal sciences, with intentions of returning home to help run the family farm.

The economic climate at the time, however, convinced him otherwise.

"Coming out of the '80s, the farm economy was not good at all," Kerth says. With his parents' full support, Kerth stayed in school, earning his master's and Ph.D. degrees in meat science from Texas Tech University in 1995 and 1999, respectively.

In both his undergraduate and graduate studies, Kerth was taught the fine art of teaching by what he considers some of the most outstanding professors to be found.

"I had some excellent teachers at Kansas and Texas Tech, and over the years, I've tried to incorporate things I learned from them into my classroom," Kerth says. "I model myself after them. There's a little of each one of them in me."

Kerth's guiding principle in the classroom is relevance.

"My approach to teaching is to present material that's current, that's important to the students, and that is very much applicable to their everyday lives," Kerth says.

He's in it with and for his students. Among his standard teaching practices: He posts all the notes from each class on the Internet so students can download them daily; he gives weekly quizzes that encourage students to keep up; he reinforces the key points by planning his labs to closely follow what he lectured about in class; and he goes out of his way to get to know at least a little about the background and interest of each student.

"I'm not out to try to stump students," Kerth says. "Without fail, almost two-thirds of the students in any class I teach have As or Bs, and I'm happy with that.

"In my lectures, I'll tell them, 'Put a big star by this because it will be on the test,'" he adds. "I tell them what they need to know, but on my tests, I don't ask them to just regurgitate what I said; I want them to see its relevance to them."

His original research focus area when he came to Auburn in 1999 was food safety and pork quality, but for the past four years, Kerth has concentrated his research on grass-fed, or pasture-raised, beef. In the current phase of that research, funded by a U.S. Department of Agriculture grant, Kerth aims to establish a plan for marketing grass-fed beef in Alabama.

"Our problem in Alabama is that we have producers interested in producing it and we have consumers interested in buying it, but there's a huge disconnect between the two," Kerth says. "There's nobody out there to buy it from the producer and sell it to the consumer."

Kerth will be surveying small packers in the state to determine their interest and capacity for slaughtering pasture-raised beef and working with retailers to develop retail outlets for the product.

Given his full plate of teaching and research, burnout could be a real threat to Kerth. But he's found a way to fight it. It's called personal time, spent with wife Lesli and 21-month-old son Nathan.

"I'm here every possible minute during the days Monday through Friday, but at 5 o'clock and on the weekends, that's Nathan and Lesli's time," Kerth says.

"Sometimes I'll drive by here on a Saturday and see other faculty members' cars, and I'll think, 'Yeah, you know there's a lot I could be doing if I went in,' but I don't stop," Kerth says. "For me, the way to stay sane is to have a life outside of work."

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