By Jean Cleveland
Beverly Sparks of the UGA Cooperative Extension Service is the 1999 Walter Barnard Hill Distinguished Public Service and Outreach Fellow.
 Sparks, along with the five recipients of Walter Barnard Hill Awards for Distinguished Achievement in Public Service and Outreach, is being recognized today at the annual meeting of the division of public service and outreach. The Hill Award winners for 1999 are Douglas C. Bachtel of the College of Family and Consumer Sciences, Robert T. Dixon of Business Outreach Services, Melinda D. Hawley of the Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication, Sally Hudson Ross of the College of Education and Darby M. Granberry of the extension service and the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences.
The awards are named for Chancellor Walter B. Hill, who led the University of Georgia from 1899 until his death in 1905. Chancellor Hill prized the idea that the university should reach out to the state that it serves and devise ways to apply university-generated knowledge to the state’s problems and challenges. The awards were inaugurated in 1992 to recognize distinguished achievement in public service by faculty members and service professionals. Each of the major service units and the schools and colleges submits nominees to a committee appointed by the vice president for public service and outreach. Recipients have made contributions to improving the quality of life of an order greatly exceeding the normal accomplishments of a productive faculty member.
Each awardee receives a permanent salary increase of $2,000 beyond the raise provided through the normal allocation process. Further, he or she then becomes eligible for appointment as Distinguished Public Service Fellow.
The Hill Fellowship, comparable to a distinguished professorship, is the highest award offered in Public Service and Outreach and recognizes those faculty who have made extraordinary contributions to university service programs. The Hill Fellow receives a further salary increase of $1,000 as well as a supplemental fund for advancing his or her program of work.
Beverly Sparks
A member of the UGA faculty since 1989, Sparks is vice chair of the Structural Pest Control Commission. In the past year, Sparks has led the development and implementation of the Structural Pest Control Training Center to provide certified pest-control operators and their employees with continuing-education opportunities. She has been an education resource for the industry since 1990 and active on the commission since 1996.
Sparks has been instrumental in developing a computerized record-keeping system for the
insect-identification service provided by extension entomologists, providing data on pest infestation and a history of insect problems in the state.
Previously Sparks led the creation of the Homeowner IPM Clinic, and she is responsible for training the diagnosticians who oversee the clinic. More than 1,500 structural or ornamental-turf samples are submitted to this clinic annually.
She also supports the entomology curriculum for the Environmental Education Program located at the 4-H Centers in Georgia, the largest environmental-education program in the nation. Annually, more than 500 schools and 23,000 students are served.
Douglas C. Bachtel
Douglas Bachtel’s name is synonymous with Georgia demographics and is recognized in v irtually every governmental office and in many households in Georgia.
In his 18 years at the university, Bachtel has demonstrated an unparalleled ability to collect, analyze and disseminate statistical data to support educational programs that meet the needs of a changing society. The information he develops is used routinely by decision-makers and citizens.
His outreach activities involve four principal components: a comprehensive database project called the Georgia County Guide, presentations to state agencies and public groups, service-learning projects by UGA students, and applied research projects. The Georgia County Guide has approximately 80 tables of agricultural, demographic, economic, educational and vital statistical information for each of Georgia’s 159 counties. Over 100,000 copies of the book have been sold and distributed.
Bachtel also developed two other statistical reference books--the Georgia Municipal Guide and the Georgia Housing Guide--and a compact report called the Passport to Georgia: A Statistical Journey.
Robert T. Dixon
 Robert T. Dixon joined the staff of the Small Business Development Center in 1989. He is responsible for improving the quality and quantity of SBDC business training programs for existing businesses and potential entrepreneurs.
He also directs the Professional Development Program, which provides opportunities for business consultants to improve their client skills. Dixon co-developed and co-directed the Business Management Practicum, a 120-hour, post-master’s/pre-doctoral professional-development program in collaboration with the Terry College of Business.
Dixon developed a partnership with the Georgia Department of Natural Resources Pollution Prevention Assistance Division to provide pollution-prevention seminars for small and mid-sized manufacturers in Georgia in 1994.
Melinda D. Hawley
Melinda D. Hawley created, with support of the vice president for public service and outreach and  colleague Donna Butler, the nation’s first refereed, interdisciplinary academic journal dedicated to public service and outreach.
Hawley developed a service-learning publishing program to produce high-quality annual magazines highlighting service programs at the university.
Funded by the vice president for public service and outreach, the annual magazine, Impact, is distributed each January to approximately 4,000 recipients. In addition, in fall quarter 1996, 16 undergraduate and graduate students applied their skills in writing and publication design for a University System of Georgia project, Catalyst, a 48-page magazine covering economic-development outreach work in the system’s 34 colleges and universities. Ten thousand copies were printed and distributed in January 1997.
The first Management Seminar for College Newspaper Editors was held in August 1996 for 40 newly named editors from across the country. In its third year, 15 advisers joined 50 students for an expanded four-and-a-half-day seminar. Faculty for the seminar are distinguished journalists from top newspapers and newspaper groups across the region.
Sally Hudson Ross
In her 11 years at UGA and her prior 10 years as a public school educator, Ross has shown a  deep commitment to English education. She is recognized across the nation for her work in public schools, her powerful collaborations with teachers and her scholarly contributions. In her most recent project, Ross returned to teach English for a year at Cedar Shoals High School and used that experience, with teacher collaborators from six area high schools, to redesign both pre-service and in-service teacher education in English.
As chair of Co-Reform for the College of Education, Ross has worked with faculty in elementary, middle school, science and counseling education to shape collaborations with other schools and programs. She was instrumental in expanding this group to include all secondary education programs and schools in the college for the 1998--99 school year. This year she received the prestigious Faculty Fellow Award, funded by faculty contributions, indicating the value her colleagues in the college put on her work in co-reform.
Darbie M. Granberry
When Darbie Granberry became a UGA faculty member, his initial challenge was to identify a  vegetable crop to replace the 6,000-acre, $24 million tobacco crop--and to teach farmers how to grow the new crop.
Granberry introduced intensive production of tomatoes using plasticulture. According to the most recent tomato-acreage survey, Georgia farmers now grow about 5,000 acres of tomatoes (most of the acreage in the old shade-tobacco area) on plastic with drip irrigation. The value of this acreage exceeds $65 million, nearly triple the value of the crop it replaced. Granberry also developed sulfur recommendations for non-pungent onion production, and since then Vidalia onion acreage has increased from less than 5,000 acres valued at $17 million to 16,000 acres currently valued at $89 million.
Before Granberry initiated his plasticulture program there was little, if any, production of vegetables on plastic. Today, peppers, watermelon, cantaloupes, squash, cucumbers, eggplant, cabbage and other vegetables are routinely grown using plasticulture technology. Acreage of vegetable crops on plastic now exceeds 20,000 and the value of vegetables on plastic in Georgia exceeds $130 million.
Granberry’s extension program focused on plasticulture technology has helped elevate the state’s vegetable industry from the technologically underdeveloped fledgling stage to one of advanced technology and national prominence.
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