A good teacher must combine the qualities of taskmaster and nurturer – a difficult act, but one that Marion Brown has mastered during 32 years of teaching in the Department of Agricultural Journalism. His efforts have earned him a Jung Teaching Award for 1997.

When you hear think of an agricultural engineer, you probably think of heavy metal. You think of someone like Dick Straub, who teaches courses titled “Tractors,” “Tractor and Power Equipment,” and “Spark Ignition and Diesel Engines,” and co-authored a nationally used text, “Farm Machinery Fundamentals.”

Here’s something new for gardeners who have run through all the winter plant catalogs. It’s Landscape Plants of the Upper Midwest, a CD-ROM featuring color photos and information on more than 600 species and varieties of trees, shrubs, vines and ground covers that grow in the region.

Managed rotational grazing on deep silt-loam soils does not appear to contribute to groundwater contamination, say researchers from the U.S. Dairy Forage Research Center.

The Wisconsin Agricultural and Life Sciences Alumni Association will celebrate its 25th Anniversary April 4-5 on the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus. A variety of events will give CALS alumni and other friends of the college a chance to return to campus and reconnect with faculty, staff and students.

Four people were honored recently for applying the “Wisconsin Idea” to natural resource policy development and implementation. Anthony Earl, partner in the Quarles & Brady Law Firm in Madison; Alan Haney, dean, College of Natural Resources, University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point; Nicholas Neher, administrator of the Agricultural Resource Management Division at the Wisconsin Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection; and Caryl Terrell, legislative liaison for the Sierra Club received the Wisconsin Idea Award in Natural Resource Policy at a banquet on March 4 at Memorial Union on the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus.

Common knowledge doesn’t always square with the facts. Case in point: spotted owls and logging jobs in the Pacific Northwest.

Pasture stocking density ranged from three cows per acre in spring to .5 cows per acre in mid-September during a year with normal rainfall in south-central Wisconsin. Scientists at the U.S. Dairy Forage Research Center and UW-Madison’s College of Agricultural and Life Sciences studied mixed-species pastures, dominated by cool-season grasses.

Robert D. Steele, associate dean for research and executive director of the Wisconsin Agricultural Experiment Station at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s College of Agricultural and Life Sciences, has been named Dean of the College of Agricultural Sciences at Penn State University. Steele will begin his duties at Penn State July 1.

The UW-Madison Farm and Industry Short Course dairy cattle judging team took first place in the last judging team competition of the season at the Southwest Exposition and Livestock Show. The team, all short-course students in the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences with a strong interest in dairy science, placed first in Holsteins, second in Jerseys and Guernseys, and third in Brown Swiss and Reasons. There was a large spread of 17 points between UW-Madison and second-place Kansas State.