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Planting seeds for turfgrass students - Karl Guillard, plant science
Prolific researcher with a passion for teaching - Kathleen Segerson, economics

Karl Guillard recognized with alumni association award for faculty excellence

Karl Guillard delights in seeing students become excited at watching grass grow.

“That look of discovery and that Aha! moment is so satisfying to me,” says Guillard, an agronomy professor who specializes in management of turfgrass, those well-manicured patches of grass seen on golf courses, parks, playing fields and commercial lawns.

Karl Guillard, professor of plant science, left, with seniors Thomas Lopez and Jeremiah Rozarie.

Photo by Peter Morenus

There is a fine art to cultivating and caring for turfgrass and a great demand for those with the expertise, which is why the four-year undergraduate turfgrass science degree program UConn began offering in 1998 has quickly taken root.

Guillard helped develop the program, updating the school’s traditional agronomy concentration, which focused on general plant and soil science courses.

“We were getting fewer and fewer students interested in a traditional agronomy major as there was a rise of interest in turfgrass and residential landscaping,” he says.

The department of plant science offers both a four-year degree and a two-year associate of applied science degree in ornamental horticulture and turfgrass management.

Guillard says students who elect the associate degree are either recent high school graduates or those experienced in business seeking additional training for a competitive edge.

Internships are an integral part of both programs. Students in the four-year program often receive job offers before they graduate, primarily for positions in Connecticut.

“Nearly 100 percent find placement within the field,” Guillard says. Most are hired by golf courses while others find positions in landscaping and sports management.

Students with an interest in teaching or working in a government regulatory agency often pursue advanced degrees where additional education credentials may be required.

Guillard’s agricultural bent stems from his childhood on the family farm that his father, whom he describes as “a country doctor,” bought to nurture a joy of gardening.

Among his siblings, Guillard was the one who relished plowing the fields and planting grain, corn and other crops.

He decided to study general agriculture at nearby Pennsylvania State University.

Guillard arrived at UConn in 1980 as a graduate student, earning both a master’s and doctorate in agronomy.

He remained on campus, establishing a reputation as one of UConn’s top teaching professors.

He was recognized as a 2001-2002 Teaching Fellow (UConn’s highest teaching honor) and last year received the 2006 Alumni Association Award for Faculty Excellence in Teaching at the Undergraduate Level.

“I try to cater to many different learning styles,” he says, describing his teaching style as “flexible.”

“I’m a big believer in experiential learning, particularly for the upper division classes, and having students set up research.

“I’m aware not all my students will go out and work in turfgrass; I just want them to be able to get information, evaluate it and utilize it. I want them to be able to think and make good decisions based on science, rather than using emotion.”

Guillard says the best part of teaching is “meeting students many years later and having them say something nice about the class and what life lesson they learned.”

— Karen Singer ’73 (CLAS)

Segerson known for work on economic theory and environmental policy

Kathleen Segerson, right, meets with a graduate student at her office.

Photo by Peter Morenus

Economist Kathleen Segerson believes in using economic principles to understand behavior and public policy issues. In her classroom, she uses real-life examples to encourage students to “understand intuitively what underlies a particular theory or concept.”

Nationally known for her contributions to economic theory and environmental policy, Segerson has studied environmental implications of agriculture and land use issues, including how governments try to control contamination and hazardous waste disposal.

“I had an interest in coupling law and economics to understand certain types of legal rules,” says Segerson, professor of economics in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.

Her research has included an examination of hotly debated liability provisions in the Superfund program, which Congress set up in the early 1980s to clean up America’s worst hazardous waste sites.

In the 1990s, she looked at the trend toward using more voluntary approaches and negotiated agreements (rather than mandatory controls) to control pollution.

For example, noting a European industry group of washing machine manufacturers who voluntarily spearheaded a plan to remove inefficient machines from the market, Segerson asks, “What drives an industry group to do that? Do they just want to be nice guys. . .or is it a move [to generate] more income?

“We develop economic models to address these kinds of questions, and look at the implications of using one kind of policy versus another,” she says.

Before joining the UConn faculty in 1987, Segerson earned a degree in mathematics at Dartmouth College and completed a doctorate in environmental natural resource economics at Cornell University.

She headed UConn’s department of economics in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences from 2001 to 2005.

Though she was inclined more toward research at the start of her academic career, Segerson enjoys sharing her insights and experience in the classroom, especially with graduate students.

Last fall she received the 2006 Alumni Association Award for Faculty Excellence in Teaching at the Graduate Level.

“I think that most of my graduate students would say I try to challenge them and push them,” she says, “let them know I will take you 90 percent of the way, and then expect them to show me they can go the other 10 percent.”

Segerson serves on several UConn committees, including the faculty review board, and is a member of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Science Advisory Board’s executive committee and Environmental Economics Advisory Committee.

She is also one of the primary organizers of the University’s Edwin Way Teale Lecture Series on Nature and the Environment.

Segerson also researches environmental policy design and land use issues such as global warming and the taking of private property for public use by eminent domain.

“Historically the federal government has been the leader in environmental legislation and the states have followed suit,” she says.

“In the case of global warming, there’s a role reversal, and the states have been more proactive.”

That could be changing. Last year the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to consider a lawsuit, filed on behalf of 12 states and several environmental groups, requiring the Bush administration to regulate the release of carbon dioxide (CO2) and other greenhouse emissions from new motor vehicles.

“If the Supreme Court finds that the EPA must regulate CO2 under the Clean Air Act,” Segerson says, “it will force the federal government to alter its current approach to global warming, which is based primarily on voluntary efforts.”

And that, she adds, would signal a “new direction” for America’s pollution control policy.

— Karen Singer '73 (CLAS)