The recipients of the 2004 Walter Barnard Hill Awards and the Walter Barnard Hill Distinguished Public Service and Outreach Fellow were announced by the Office of the Vice President for Public Service and Outreach on Jan. 29. Winners were recognized at a luncheon banquet during the annual Public Service and Outreach Conference.
This year’s Hill Award recipients are Rusty Brooks, Vinson Institute of Government; Judy A. Harrison, College of Family and Consumer Sciences; Anant V. Jain, Athens Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory and College of Veterinary Medicine; Kenneth L. Lewis, Cooperative Extension Service and College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences; and F. Richard Rohs, Cooperative Extension Service and College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences. The 2004 Hill Fellow is Stephen E. Condrey, of the Carl Vinson Institute of Government.
Named for former UGA chancellor Walter Barnard Hill, the Hill Awards recognize distinguished achievement in public service and outreach by faculty members and service professionals. Recipients are expected to have made contributions to improving the quality of life in Georgia that go beyond the normal accomplishments of a faculty member. Improvements may be in the areas of program development and management, extension and public service instruction, technical assistance, applied research, or development of instructional materials. Recipients are awarded a permanent salary increase and become eligible to be selected later as Hill Distinguished Public Service and Outreach Fellow. Similar to a distinguished professorship, this fellowship is the highest award offered in public service and outreach.
Stephen Condrey
Stephen E. Condrey, program manager for the human resource management program at the Vinson Institute of Government, was named the 2004 Hill Fellow. Since receiving a Hill Award in 1998, Condrey has developed more than 100 new projects for the management program, totaling almost $1 million in contracts. He manages the majority of technical assistance projects within the program and has also served as co-principal investigator of a $1.5-million grant to assess Georgia’s welfare reform efforts. Condrey also served as principal investigator of a study to examine the economic impact of the Georgia Lottery.
Condrey is also an author and editor and a professor in UGA’s School of Public and International Affairs. His teaching expertise has been shared with audiences beyond Georgia: he has taught human resource management at both the Russia Academy of Atomic Energy in Moscow and at the Shanghai Administrative Institute in China.
Rusty Brooks
Hill Award winner Rusty Brooks, an associate professor in the Vinson Institute of Government’s International Center for Democratic Governance and in the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, develops national and international programs in economic development for governments, non-governmental organizations and the private sector through his work at the Vinson Institute.
Over the years, Brooks has served as an ambassador for the university by providing training, lectures and technical assistance on sustainable development in Ukraine, Croatia, Zimbabwe, the Republic of Georgia and China. In the state of Georgia, Brooks is responsible for the development of programs focused on developing heritage tourism based on the historic and cultural resources found throughout the state.
Judy Harrison
Judy A. Harrison, an associate professor and extension foods specialist in the department of foods and nutrition in the College of Family and Consumer Sciences, has created a variety of innovative programs to educate adults and children in Georgia about food-borne illness. “Smart Kids Fight BAC,” a curriculum for kindergarten through third grade, and “Fight BAC! With Allen and Bernie,” for adults, are two such programs Harrison has developed. She also educates county extension agents in home food preservation and has trained 159 agents from Georgia, Florida, South Carolina and Texas, as well as home food preservation industry professionals from the United States and Canada.
Anant Jain
Anant V. Jain, senior public service associate and head of the toxicology section at the Athens Diagnostic Laboratory in the College of Veterinary Medicine, has been an important force in establishing the toxicology section of the lab as a national leader in test development and validation. Jain has developed, validated and implemented 40 analytical procedures used in the lab; since joining the university, he has provided more than 18,000 toxicology reports to veterinarians and performed more than 5,000 consultations. One of the first procedures Jain developed was used to detect aflatoxins in mixed feeds containing citrus pulp, considered to be a high-energy source in feed given to cattle. He has also developed a screening procedure for detecting nitrate that accumulates in forages during drought and that can poison livestock.
Kenneth Lewis
Kenneth L. Lewis, county extension coordinator and agricultural and natural resources agent for Crisp County, coordinates the educational programming for about 150 full-time farmers. Lewis also helped his county receive a $20 million community grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture Enterprise Zone program. The funds will be used to develop local partnerships and programs to increase local employment, economic stability and quality of life for the area. The extensive knowledge Lewis has acquired through his research about watermelon crops, a major economic force in Crisp County, has made him a valuable resource to fellow extension agents seeking advice on assisting growers with crop problems.
Richard Rohs
F. Richard Rohs, a professor and extension staff development specialist in the department of agricultural leadership, education and communication, trains extension professionals from both an in-service and a graduate-education perspective. Rohs helped develop the Southern Extension Leadership Development Program and later implemented the Leadership Development Program in Georgia, which helps participants develop a plan to increase their leadership and managerial knowledge and skill. These plans then provide the foundation for follow-up training seminars. Through Rohs’s programs, an estimated $15 million has been saved in training, development and employee replacement costs by reducing turnover of faculty and staff.
Rohs has also developed the master of extension education degree that has become the primary advanced degree for extension service professionals.