Category Archives: NEWA State Coordinator

NEWA in New Hampshire – meet your coordinator

Dr. Cheryl Smith joined UNH Extension in 1993. In addition to her role as state Plant Health specialist, she is also director of the UNH Plant Diagnostic Lab. The UNH-PDL offers diagnostic services to help solve plant health-related problems for both commercial producers and home horticulturists. Diagnostic services include the identification of plant pathogens, environmental disorders, and insect pests, as well as educational information regarding management and prevention. Cheryl’s additional responsibilities include delivering outreach educational programs on plant health and providing training in the identification and management of plant diseases and disorders to commercial producers, landscape specialists, Extension staff and home horticulturists. Her current teaching responsibilities focus on Introductory Plant Pathology and guest lectures in several courses offered through the College of Life Sciences and Agriculture. Her focus and passion, is to help producers, landscape specialists and home gardeners produce and maintain healthy plants.

Cheryl received her BA in Biology from Plymouth State College, MS in Plant Pathology and Entomology from the University of Rhode Island, and PhD in Botany and Plant Pathology from the University of New Hampshire. She has been a diagnostic plant pathologist her entire career. Before coming to UNH, she was the diagnostician for the plant diagnostic labs at Cornell University in Ithaca, NY and the University of Rhode Island.

cheryl.smith@unh.edu | 603.862.3841

Enviroweather and NEWA in Michigan – meet your coordinator

Dr. Keith Mason is the coordinator of Enviroweather at Michigan State University. He facilitates and helps manage the various projects within the Enviroweather program. He serves as liaison between MSU researchers, MSU Extension, Enviroweather staff and its partners, supporters and users. Keith also works with agricultural and horticultural industry representatives to identify and implement Enviroweather projects that align with commodity needs. He also works to educate users about Enviroweather tools, while working to identify new users and areas for expanding resources. Keith comes to Enviroweather with almost twenty yearsof experience in Integrated Pest Management working as a research assistant in the Department of Entomology at Michigan State University. During that time Keith coordinated several multi-state, on-farm research/extension projects in grapes and blueberries.

eweather@msu.edu | 517.432.6520

NEWA in North Carolina – meet your coordinator

Dr. Mike Parker is an Associate Professor and the Tree Fruit Extension Specialist in the Department of Horticultural Science at North Carolina State University, Raleigh with an extension, research and teaching appointment. His extension responsibility is to support North Carolina Cooperative Extension field faculty and growers in the culture and management of tree fruit, primarily apples, peaches and pecans. This support is primarily accomplished through on-farm research and demonstrations, educational program development, publications, videos, and on-site consultation. Dr. Parker is also the educational liaison with the commercial apple, peach and pecan grower groups. Dr. Parker’s research focus is on the development of tree fruit practices and systems that are sustainable and profitable for North Carolina and southeastern growers. This includes evaluation of peach rootstocks and planting systems that are tolerant to peach tree short life, evaluation of peach cultivars that will crop consistently in North Carolina, and testing and evaluation of growth regulators that have commercial potential. Dr. Parker’s research on apples is concentrated in the area of successful replant strategies and rootstock evaluation as part of the NC-140 Regional Research Project. Dr. Parker also has extensive experience in the postharvest handling of apples and most recently in utilizing 1-MCP (SmartFresh) in systems applicable to many growers in the southeast.

mlp@ncsu.edu | 919.515.1198