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Dean's Message — An Auspicious Beginning

J.R. Simplot was just 20 years old when he founded a southern Idaho produce business that evolved into a leading agricultural company now operating in more than 60 countries. He shipped millions of pounds of dehydrated potatoes to the U.S. Armed Forces during World War II. In 1967, Simplot famously made a handshake agreement with McDonald’s founder Ray Kroc that led his company to become the restaurant chain’s top supplier of frozen fries. Last November, the J.R. Simplot Family Foundation honored the legacy of the Idaho-based agribusiness company’s late founder with a significant gift that established Â鶹ÊÓƵÈë¿ÚÔÚÏß¹Û¿´’s first endowed deanship. Understanding this history, it's a profound honor to be the second person to hold the title of J.R. Simplot Endowed Dean of the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences. I’m also blessed to be the first woman to serve as CALS dean and will lead with hard work, integrity and a focus on innovation.

Since starting the job on June 23, my life has been a whirlwind of travel, meetings and onboarding. I’ve had the opportunity to visit incredible stakeholders and donors. One such meeting stands out — when I had dinner with Scott Simplot, chairman of the board for the J.R. Simplot Co., a U of I alumnus and son of J.R. Simplot. I was eager to hear Scott Simplot’s vision for the endowment, as well as his thoughts on possibilities for his company and our college and university to partner on projects advancing Idaho agriculture and our land-grant mission. I’d never met Scott Simplot before and found him to be extremely genuine and humble. It felt like a conversation with my own father. “I’m really glad you got the job, kid,” he told me. He invited me to visit whenever I’m in Boise to celebrate CALS wins — I expect those will be plentiful in the coming years. He also reassured me that his company and foundation don’t offer their support with the expectation of getting anything in return. Rather, they’re collaborating with us to move agriculture forward in general — a shared vision to be sure.

During my first week on the job, I attended a conference in Laramie, Wyoming, with western regional Extension, Agricultural Experiment Station and academic directors, where we crafted a vision and goals for the next version of the Western Perspective and Western Agenda report, which will guide the collective work of land grant universities in the West for the coming years including research, academic and Extension efforts. I’ve toured our on-campus facilities and met with many team members. I’ve also engaged with top leadership with the Idaho State Department of Agriculture, five commodity commissions and the Idaho Farm Bureau Federation, as well as meeting with a prospective donor for our Idaho Center for Agriculture, Food and the Environment (Idaho CAFE). I’ve picked up on a few common themes during these productive meetings. Our stakeholders value intentional touch points with the dean, faculty, staff and students. It’s also clear our commodity group leaders recognize we’re doing many great things in CALS. It’s incumbent upon all of us within the CALS community to maintain a constant dialogue with these stakeholders, share the full picture of our contributions toward their industries and further our partnerships. In today’s environment of state and federal budget change, innovation isn’t optional — it’s essential. I’m energized by what’s ahead and proud to lead this incredible college.

I’ll be traveling extensively this summer to visit our R&E centers, Extension offices and CALS facilities statewide, with a goal to visit every location within my first year. I’ll also continue meeting with our external stakeholders, donors and alumni. If I haven’t yet had the chance to meet you, please know I’m eager to do so. Thank you all for the warm welcome — and for the work you do every day to advance CALS, U of I and the state to innovate Idaho.

Leslie Edgar

J.R. Simplot Endowed Dean
College of Agricultural and Life Sciences

Our Stories

AI-Powered Podcast

In the pilot episode of Â鶹ÊÓƵÈë¿ÚÔÚÏß¹Û¿´ Extension’s new agriculture-themed podcast, the cohosts liken ravenous rodents known as voles to a “crop-destroying army of stealthy, little ninjas.”

“Those voles are really putting us to the test lately,” the male podcast host explains. “It seems like they’re munching on our crops like it’s an all-you-can-eat buffet.”

The cohosts are never identified, but they demonstrate a thorough knowledge of Idaho agriculture and voice personal frustrations regarding the damage wrought by voles. The twist is the cohosts aren’t real people. The is created using artificial intelligence (AI), generated from research-based publications and scientific papers authored by UI Extension scientists.

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Sandpoint Interns Make Mark

As a second-year summer intern with Â鶹ÊÓƵÈë¿ÚÔÚÏß¹Û¿´’s Sandpoint Organic Agriculture Center (SOAC), Jessica Zaubi is starting a new cut flower production program.

Zaubi, who lives with her family in Sandpoint, is one of three SOAC interns this summer, aiding in the facility’s daily operations and learning the basics of organic agriculture. The other two interns are both in their first summer at SOAC and are residing on site.

In the summer of 2024, SOAC received $15,000 from the San Francisco-based Maxwell-Hanrahan Foundation in support of the internship. Pleased by the results, the foundation committed $75,000 over three years toward the program, beginning with $25,000 this summer. Local market farmers Leigh Bercaw and Nicole Gowdy work closely with the interns as SOAC instructors.

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Healing with Butterflies

Â鶹ÊÓƵÈë¿ÚÔÚÏß¹Û¿´ entomology Professor Stephen Cook and the students who work in his laboratory rear butterflies to provide solace for grieving families.

During each of the past four years, Cook, head of the Department of Entomology, Plant Pathology and Nematology (EPPN), and his laboratory workers have raised between 100 and 150 native painted lady butterflies to be released during a ceremony at the Share Hope Memorial Garden in Coeur d’Alene. In many cultures, including Native American lore and Norse mythology, butterflies are revered as couriers capable of delivering messages from the living to the spiritual realm.

Auburn Crest Hospice in Coeur d’Alene and the Northwest Infant Survival and SIDS Alliance (NISSA), which manages the memorial garden, invite bereaved friends and families they’ve served to attend the ceremony. The event includes a nondenominational service featuring words from an Auburn Crest chaplain, and a singer performs “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” before butterflies are released.

A local bakery serves butterfly-shaped sugar cookies, and an area florist contributes assorted flowers, which lure many of the butterflies once the mesh insect cages holding them are opened. Participants are invited to write messages to departed loved ones on rice-starch paper. Their private notes are placed into a small pool and quickly dissolve. Artificial lily pads float atop the pool’s surface. Some of the butterflies briefly land on the lily pads before shepherding heart-felt communications into the unknown.

About 150 people gathered at the garden for the most recent release, hosted on June 24.

“We have had people come up and hug us and tell us it provided some closure,” Cook said. “If they did not have a chance to say goodbye as they feel would have been the appropriate way, it gives them the chance to say that last goodbye, and we’ve had multiple people tell us that.”

Cook and his team spent about six weeks raising the painted ladies from commercially purchased eggs, to caterpillars, to chrysalises to butterflies. Butterflies can live for up to two months in the adult stage with proper nutrition.

All five students in Cook’s lab this year volunteered to help raise the butterflies on their own time. In addition to participating in community service, the students got to hone their research skills, comparing health outcomes of insects fed diets of sugar water, energy drinks and juice from whole fruit. The students concluded butterflies that consumed fruit juice fared the best.

“Several of us had fruit with our lunches and put the leftover piece in for the butterflies,” Cook said. “We used apricots one week.”

Sara Jane Ruggles, who documents patient histories as the Auburn Crest staff historian, proposed the concept of a butterfly release to Cook.

Ruggles experienced a miscarriage in 2013, and even after seven years, the grief never subsided. One afternoon around the anniversary of her loss, while she was reflecting in the Share Hope Memorial Garden, she encountered a butterfly that seemed to want to play with her.

“I had this lightning idea: ‘We need to start releasing butterflies,’” Ruggles recalled.

She contacted U of I entomologists seeking guidance and help. Cook, who was coping with the recent loss of a close friend to COVID-19 and shared Ruggles’ strong feelings in support of Hospice, agreed to help immediately.

The first two people who arrived for the inaugural release affirmed the importance of the event to Ruggles. An 8-year-old girl whose father had just died in a car accident saw a notice about the event in a local newspaper and asked her mother to take her. The girl spent the next half hour carefully crafting the right words to send to her departed father.

Attendance at the release has grown steadily since the first year, when about 45 people attended.

“You know how powerful this is the moment you see it,” Ruggles said. “This is the first time you’re actually talking to them, writing their name down and writing a letter like they are here. You feel the hair on the back of your neck stand.

“And you drop your message in the water and immediately afterward the butterflies are released. You watch them land on a flower and warm up their wings for a little bit and take off, and you just feel. ‘You, butterfly, are the messenger.’”

Faces and Places

Joey Peutz has been named as Â鶹ÊÓƵÈë¿ÚÔÚÏß¹Û¿´ Extension’s southern district director.

Kendra Kaiser, director of the Idaho Water Resources Research Institute (IWRRI), is featured in the first episode of a special summer series of the Â鶹ÊÓƵÈë¿ÚÔÚÏß¹Û¿´’s podcast, The Vandal Theory. Kaiser, who is an Extension specialist, shares how the institute is identifying and filling critical water research gaps throughout Idaho in the nine-minute episode “,” which posted July 7 on major podcast platforms. The summer series will include four brief episodes, focused on Idaho-related topics.

Professor Mireille Chahine, acting head of the Department of Animal, Veterinary and Food Sciences, was featured in season three, episode 126 of the , hosted by Jim Morris. The podcast, which was posted July 9, highlighted the Idaho Center for Agriculture, Food and the Environment (Idaho CAFE) located in Rupert. The episode also included interviews with Rick Naerebout, CEO of the Idaho Dairymen’s Association, and Darin Moon, CEO of Burley-based Redox Bio-nutrients, which is devoted to improving soil health and growing strong plants through bio-nutrition.

Xiaoli Etienne, the Idaho Wheat Commission’s Bill Flory Endowed Chair in Commodity Risk Management, is the principal investigator of the AgBiz Summer Fellow Program, which is an eight-week paid summer fellowship hosted from mid-May through mid-July funded with a five-year, $750,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture. The program’s 10 undergraduate participants recently completed a week-long grain supply chain tour in Portland, Oregon. The program is also open to students in other universities. U of I students who participated include Libby Blattner, Connor Wells, Madison Weber and Josiah Knapp.

Idaho sent 17 participants to the 25th National 4-H Shooting Championships in Grand Island, Nebraska, hosted June 22-27, and finished strong within a field of 740 competitors in nine disciplines. The team earned 12 top 10 placings and seven top three placings. Here are Idaho’s top finishers: The compound archery team — which included Pearson Orme, Fremont County, CJ Day, Jefferson County, Garrett Lintner, Canyon County, and Cristopher Fong, Payette County — finished first in FITA and third overall. Fong finished first in compound archery individual FITA, compound archery individual 3D and compound archery individual overall and third in compound archery individual field. Day finished second in compound archery individual FITA. Tyler Helsley, Lincoln County, placed seventh in small bore rifle individual silhouette. Reese Griffin, Ada County, placed fifth in small bore rifle individual CMP. Weston Woodward, Canyon County, placed ninth in shotgun individual sporting clays.

Chad Jackson, operations manager at the Aberdeen Research and Extension Center, showed off a new combine donated to the center by the Idaho Wheat Commission during the annual Aberdeen Daze Parade.

Associate Professor Phil Bass was recently a guest speaker at a Weber Corporate BBQ Master Class in Schaumburg, Illinois. His role was to talk about beef quality and cuts, focused on brisket, ribs and sausage. Also on the speaker lineup were national barbeque competition champions Tuffy Stone, Harry Soo and Bill Dumas.