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 Pragmatism,
Mission-Oriented Goals Underscore Extension Scientist’s Career
Auburn,
Dec. 11,
2003 ---
Reflecting on his Extension career, Dr. Michael Eckman, who will
retire in December, considers it his great fortune to have encountered
two professors early in his life who put him on the right track both
intellectually and professionally.
One of them was
Dr. Gerald Smith, a professor at Colorado State College (now
University of Northern Colorado) where Eckman earned his bachelor’s
and master’s degrees.
“He said, ‘I’m not
going to give you a vocation or an avocation; I’m going to give you an
education. What you do with it is your problem,’” Eckman recalled.
If Smith taught
Eckman the value of acquiring a topflight education, the late Dr.
Allen Edgar instilled him with an understanding of the importance of
achieving tangible results. Edgar, a world renowned poultry
pathologist, directed Eckman’s doctoral work while he was a student at
Auburn.
“Dr. Edgar took it
for granted that you knew all the basics. What he wanted you to do at
the end of the day was to produce something. It could be a principle,
a solution or a product, but it had to represent progress.”
Eckman, who will
retire in December, ending a 26-year career as an Alabama Cooperative
Extension System poultry scientist and Auburn University poultry
science professor, admired this about Edgar --- he not only admired it
but strove to incorporate these values into his own work.
“Edgar was very
pragmatic, very technically competent and very mission-oriented. Any
individual in my profession or this industry has to be,” he said.
“The more technology you have to work with the better, but you had
also must be mission-oriented.”
“Everything you do
has to be cost effective from the standpoint of the poultry industry,”
he added. “Technological transfer is a real challenge because the key
players in the poultry industry aren’t researchers --- they’re running
a business. They have to turn a dollar, and they’re responsible for a
lot of people. Quality requirements have to be brutally precise. You
can’t afford to make mistakes.”
From the very
beginning, Eckman has striven to do the job right every time. He
hopes the astonishing strides in poultry production within the last
few decades are a reflection of the high professional standards he
acquired from Edgar decades ago as an Auburn student.
“There’s no
question about it, if you want to feed the world, you’d better pick
broiler chickens. We’re not only producing more birds but bigger
birds. No other industry compares to broiler chickens when you
consider the speed with which these chickens are raised to go to
market and their acceptability to consumers.”
A native of
Englewood, Colo., Eckman had never been close to a chicken “other than
to eat it,” he recalled jokingly, until he completed college.
After receiving
his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in biological sciences and
parasitology, respectively, he moved to Norwich, N.Y., to work for
Norwich Pharmacal. Several years later, in 1968, his employers
approached him with an offer he couldn’t refuse --- to return to
school to earn a doctorate in avian diseases
“They gave me a
choice of three schools --- the University of Georgia, Cornell and
Auburn,” he said. “I visited all of them, and I loved Auburn.”
What attracted him
most was Edgar, the first world-class scientist ever to devote his
entire career to improving the poultry science industry.
After earning his
doctorate, Eckman returned to Norwich Pharmacal, only to learn that
the company had decided to phase out its animal health operations. In
1977, several years after relocating to Texas to work with Dow
Chemical, he returned to
Auburn
University
as a poultry scientist working with poultry growers and integrators to
improve animal health and production practices.
In the course of
his Auburn career, Eckman has shared his expertise with growers and
industrial leaders in more than 30 countries and 25 states.
[Writer: Jim
Langcuster, Extension Communications Specialist, News and Public
Affairs, 334-844-5686.]
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