Contact: Maridith Geuder
STARKVILLE, Miss.--A major gift announced Tuesday [May 1] by a Starkville couple is establishing the first fully endowed faculty position in Mississippi State's College of Agriculture and Life Sciences.
In campus ceremonies, university officials announced a significant outright contribution to one of the university's oldest academic units. The Dr. Glover B. Triplett Endowed Chair in Agronomy in the department of plant and soil sciences is designed to provide leadership in agronomy education and research, as well as outreach to agronomy-based industries.
Triplett, a longtime MSU faculty member, is a Crawford native, while his wife Imogene was raised in nearby Brooksville. Proceeds from the sale of 1,063 acres of Noxubee County timberland that was given to the MSU Foundation by the Tripletts will be used to fund the endowment.
"We are getting older and decided it was time to make these plans," Imogene Triplett said. "I told Glover he would enjoy meeting the first holder of the chair and exchanging ideas with him so it needed to be done in our lifetime."
A pioneer of zero tillage or "no-till farming," Glover Triplett has been credited with helping revolutionize farming in the United States by assisting in the development of the environmentally friendly method of farming that aids erosion control. Today, no-tillage and minimum tillage farming are globally accepted production practices, with more than 100 million acres planted worldwide.
"The climate for research today appears to be largely driven by grants which often mandate a faculty member's research direction," Triplett said. "This way, the chair will give someone the latitude to research as they deem beneficial. I chose an endowed position because I wanted to help someone else do what they love."
Vance Watson, vice president for agriculture, forestry and veterinary medicine, said the Tripletts' generosity will leave a legacy of research and development for the college and university.
"This new endowment will enable Mississippi State to attract and retain nationally recognized faculty who excel in the areas of agronomic research and cropping systems," said Watson, who also serves as dean of the college. "Available funds from the endowment may be used to supplement the university salary and research expenditures of the chair holder, as well as provide for graduate research assistants."
"Dr. and Mrs. Triplett's contribution will be invaluable in furthering farming-systems research in Mississippi," said Michael Collins, plant and soil sciences department head. "The position will allow us to continue the cutting-edge research for which Dr. Triplett himself is so well known."
Triplett received bachelor's and master's degrees from MSU in 1951 and 1955, respectively. He went on to complete a doctorate in agronomy from Michigan State University in 1959. After a distinguished career with the Ohio State University Agricultural Research and Development Center in Wooster, Triplett returned to MSU in 1983.
In Starkville, he has continued his ground-breaking research in the areas of no-till farming and forage crop research.
The couple has a long history of support for the 129-year-old land-grant university. The Imogene C. Triplett Endowed Scholarship was created to assist Mississippi residents majoring in ornamental horticulture and retail floristry. The Glover B. Triplett Endowed Fund for Crop Research provides funds specifically for the plant and soil sciences department.
For more information on the Triplett gift, contact Jud Skelton, the college's development director, at 662-325-0643 or jskelton@foundation.msstate.edu.
For more information about Mississippi State University, see http://www.msstate.edu/.