Contact: Kay Jones
Alumnus of the Year Will Carpenter (c) is congratulated by MSU President Charles Lee (l) and E. Allen Maxwell of New Albany, national MSU Alumni Association president.
A Moorhead native and 1952 agronomy graduate is Mississippi State University's 2003 national alumnus of the year.
Will D. Carpenter recently was honored at the MSU Alumni Association's annual leadership banquet. Now residing in Chesterfield, Mo., he is chairman of the board for AgriDyne Technologies Inc., a Utah-based company developing environmentally compatible bioinsecticides that use compounds derived from the neem tree found in India and other tropical countries.
Carpenter also holds master's and doctoral degrees in plant physiology from Purdue University.
Continually involved with his Mississippi alma mater, Carpenter has served in recent years as executive-in-residence for the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. He also was the college's 1991 Alumni Fellow and 1997 alumnus of the year.
A 1947-51 member of the United States Naval Reserve, he went on to see duty with the Army in the United States and Korea from 1952-54. He was discharged from the Army Reserve at the rank of captain in 1959, a year after beginning work at St. Louis, Mo.-based Monsanto Co. as a research biochemist.
Carpenter spent 34 years at Monsanto, retiring in 1992 as vice president and general manager of the agricultural group's new products division. While at Monsanto, he was honored with the MSU Agricultural Alumni Achievement Award.