12/11/1998

Wood Named Eminent Scholar, Agronomy Society Fellow

AUBURN, Ala. - Wes Wood, a faculty member in Auburn University's Department of Agronomy and Soils, has been named the Butler/Cunningham Eminent Scholar Chair in Agricultural and Environmental Issues and recently was named a fellow by the American Society of Agronomy.

Wood, a native of Mississippi, received his B.S. degree in agronomy at Mississippi State University in 1979, after which he worked as an assistant manager of an 11,000-acre corporate farm at Sibley, Miss. In 1981, he returned to Mississippi State to earn a M.S. degree in soil science, then went on to earn the Ph.D. in soil science from Colorado State University, graduating in 1990. That same year he joined the faculty of the Dept. of Agronomy and Soils at AU as an assistant professor of soil fertility/environmental soil science. He was promoted to associate professor in 1993 and professor in 1997.

Wood's research program focuses on environmental aspects of agricultural practices, including water and soil contamination problems originating from disposal of animal waste, understanding nutrient cycling processes in agricultural and natural ecosystems, evaluating new and existing technologies for prediction of crop nitrogen needs and developing new field scale techniques for determining ammonia emissions from soils.

He has obtained more than $3.5 million in competitive grant monies during the past eight years to support his research efforts. In addition to conducting research and consulting at local, state and national levels, Wood also has worked in New Zealand, Haiti, Kenya, Thailand, Mexico, Peru and Honduras.

Wood is winner of numerous awards for his research efforts, including the Alabama Agricultural Experiment Station Director's Research Award, the AU Sigma Xi Research Award, the Southern Branch of the American Society of Agronomy's Early Career Research Award and he was appointed to an Alumni Professorship at Auburn University in 1992. Wood's most recent honor is being named fellow of the American Society of Agronomy.

Wood also has teaches soil fertility courses at Auburn and recently developed a new course in environmental soil science that attracts students from many different departments and colleges. He maintains a large and active graduate student program and served as chairman of the AU Interdepartmental Graduate Student Ecology Minor. He also helped develop curricula at the All Russian Agricultural College in Zargorsk, Russia.

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Contact Jamie Creamer, 334-844-2783 or jcreamer@auburn.edu
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12/11/98