Each year, Annie's Organics awards a few very competitive scholarships to deserving students. This year, MSU took the lead, sweeping up THREE of the 16 awards!

Two Ecological Food and Farming Systems specialization graduate students, Carolyn Lowry and Emily Reiersgaard joined horticulture undergraduate Rachel Cross as deserving award recipients. Emily has just returned from her Peace Corps experience in Africa. Carolyn can be seen (often moving quickly) around the halls of the Plant and Soil Science building when she's not out in the field... catch her if you can!

GREAT JOB, and so glad you were rewarded for your excellent work and future potential.

Hometown: Branch, MI
B.A. in Sociology and Environmental Science from CMU

PhD. Candidate in SociologyThis summer I plan on doing an internship for the Hummingbird Monitoring Network in Southeastern Arizona as part of my Master’s work. I will be creating surveys and working with local, primarily impoverished farmers on the use of hummingbirds as pollinators. My hope is that my degree will enable me to work with farmers and other entities involved in agriculture in order to promote understanding and sustainability of the natural environment, as well as improving the livelihoods of agricultural workers.

I’m excited by how open the Sociology department and the EFFS specialization are to my ideas about how I want to complete my degree. There is a lot of freedom to choose classes and research that are interesting to me.

Got a question for Katie? Send her an email.

Hometown: Mt. Prospect, IL
Community, Agriculture, Resource and Recreation Studies (CARRS)
Ph.D. candidate

After spending 6 years in Malawi working for a NGO Phil returned to the US for M.S. studies in the CARRS department which he completed last May.  His thesis research focused on farmers’ decisions to adopt or reject minimum tillage agriculture in the Angonia highlands of Mozambique.  He used in-depth interviewing and partial budget analysis to understand why most farmers had such high opinions of minimum tillage but failed to use it on large parts of their land. 

Phil’s Ph.D. work in CARRS will build on his M.S. focus of minimum tillage and the sustainable intensification of agriculture for smallholder farmer food security in southern Africa. He continues to work with John Kerr as his adviser but much of the research is linked to AFRE’s Food Security Research Projects in southern Africa. He is collaborating in Zambia with Steve Haggblade on minimum tillage adoption patterns by cotton farmers.  He is also working in Mozambique with Cynthia Donovan in order to analyze the benefits and challenges of minimum tillage agriculture in the diverse agro-ecological zones across the country.  His research may also include modeling how minimum tillage adoption would affect food security under projected climate change patterns. Phil welcomes your email.

Name:  Rob Morrison
Department of Entomology, Ph.D. Candidate
with Ecology, Evolutionary Biology and Behavior double-major

Hometown: Mesa, AZ

Rob Morrison is broadly interested in issues of biodiversity and chemical ecology. He is currently a Ph.D. candidate in the Szendrei Lab. His current research focuses on the integrated pest management and chemical ecology of the asparagus miner as well as its associated natural enemy community. Michigan is the second largest asparagus producing state in the United States, but asparagus production has globally been declining. The asparagus miner is a putative vector for pathogenic species of fungi, which are responsible for shaving 5-8 years off the lifespan of asparagus fields, and is one of the main constraints on asparagus production. In addition, the asparagus industry heavily relies on broad-spectrum insecticides, which are harmful to many nontarget organisms. Rob’s work looks at how to control the vector to reduce incidence of the fungi, while decreasing reliance on high carbon, harmful inputs such as broad-spectrum insecticides.

After completing his Ph.D., Rob hopes to gain a post-doc position that combines research and teaching components. While research is a passion of his, it is equally important to educate the future generation of scientists. Ideally, he would like to find a post-doc position in the southwestern United States. Rob would ultimately like to end up back in the Midwest.