Congratulations to Our 2011 Department Award Winners!
M. Buell Award for the Outstanding Student in Ecology
Ellwood B. Moore Forestry Award
James E. Applegate Award for the Outstanding Student in Wildlife Conservation
Roger Locandro Award for the Outstanding Student in Natural Resources
Peter E. Smouse Award for the Outstanding Student in Evolution
Murray Buell was born in New Haven and graduated in 1930 from Cornell. In 1935 he earned a Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota. Dr. Buell came to Rutgers in 1946 and stayed there until 1971. His wife, Helen Foote Buell, with whom he worked, earned her Ph.D. in phycology at the University of Minnesota. Rutgers scientists, especially Buell, trained in the Chicago school, did a great deal to help establish botanical ecology for the NYC vicinity during the 1960's. During his 25 years at Rutgers he had thirty-nine graduate students earn their Ph. D. under his mentoring. Along with his wife and Rutgers colleague Dr. John Alvin Small, Buell set up the Buell-Small Succession Study of the Hutcheson Memorial Forest in 1958. The fields are still used for research. Dr. Buell became the first director of the Hutcheson Memorial Forest and co-founded the Graduate Program in Ecology and Evolution.
Ellwood B. Moore was instrumental in the modernization of management of eastern forests, although as a graduate student in Wisconsin he worked on the Riley Game Cooperative organized by Aldo Leopold and local Farmer R. J. Paulson. Leopold and Moore co-wrote at least one article. While at the Northeastern Forest Experiment Station in Pennsylvania and later in New Jersey, Moore wrote extensively about the effect of fire in New Jersey Forests and the use of fire as a forest management tool. In 1939, Moore penned Forest Management in New Jersey, a text that continues to be referenced by forest researchers.
James E. Applegate came to Rutgers in 1971, joining the faculty of what was then the Rutgers College of Agriculture and Environmental Science. In 1997 he spearheaded the development of a college wide course called Perspectives on Agriculture and the Environment, and coordinated 30 faculty members in teaching more than 700 first-year Cook College students. He has served as curriculum coordinator in the Natural Resources Department and throughout his career has been repeatedly cited for his excellence in the class room, often times teaching six courses a year. Applegate has received numerous awards for his distinguished career in natural resource education, his commitment to education at the college and in the community, and his consistent excellence in teaching. He continues to teach in the Graduate Program in Ecology and Evolution and is also active on the Endangered and Nongame Species Advisory Committee of the New Jersey Division of Fish & Wildlife.
Roger R. Locandro is inseparable from the history of Cook College, now the School of Environmental and Biological Sciences. Locandro holds a Bachelor of Science degree from the College of Agriculture at Rutgers University as well as a Master of Science and Post Doctoral degrees in Botany and Ecology from the Graduate School-New Brunswick at Rutgers University. Born in New Brunswick, Dr. Locandro began his teaching career in 1956 as an instructor of vocational agriculture at Palmyra High School in Palmyra, New Jersey. While at Cook College and the New Jersey Agricultural Experiment Station, Locandro served as a county agricultural and resource management agent, associate extension specialist, assistant dean, associate dean, dean of students, and professor and extension specialist in the Department of Ecology, Evolution and Natural Resources. Locandro currently is Professor Emeritus in the Department of Ecology, Evolution and Natural Resources.
Peter E. Smouse is a Professor of Evolution and Ecology in the Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Natural Resources at Rutgers. Although originally trained in forestry, over his prolific career Dr. Smouse has worked in far-reaching fields, from anthropology and human genetics, demography and mathematical ecology, bacterial ecology, statistical epidemiology and immunology, to psychometrics. He has worked on quantitative analysis of humans and higher primates, propagule flow in forest trees, taxonomic diversity in forbs and agronomic grasses, clinal variation in insects, ecological niche partitioning in bacteria, and forensic genetics of marine and freshwater fish. His research group is primarily oriented toward mathematical modeling and statistical analysis of theoretical population biology problems, both those in evolution and ecology. Much of their work is theoretical, but computer simulation and data analysis play a role in their program as well. The group’s concentration on the mathematical aspects does not preclude field work, and they have conducted taxonomic studies of southern pines, genetic anthropology studies of rain forest tribes in Brazil and New Guinea, participated in studies of hydrothermal vents in the Gulf of California, and pollen flow studies in Costa Rica.