Advisory Board

Keith Summerville

Vice-chair; Associate professor and associate dean, Drake University

Summerville represents the Iowa Association of Independent Colleges and Universities on the Leopold Center Advisory Board. He teaches courses in conservation biology, entomology, restoration ecology, sustainable development and zoology as well as a beginning course, Foundations of Environmentalism. A native of Richfield, Ohio, he has an undergraduate degree in environmental science from Westminster College in Pennsylvania. He earned a master's degree in engineering and a Ph.D. in zoology from Miami University in Oxford, Ohio.
He also serves as associate dean for the College of Arts and Sciences at Drake. Since joining the faculty in 2002, he has tackled a number of research projects on Iowa ecosystems. He's studied the prairie moths that pollinate environmentally-threatened western fringed prairie orchid in central Iowa, and reptiles in Polk County's Chichaqua Bottoms Greenbelt and the Sandhill Prairie. He also received a USDA Managed Ecosystems Program grant to research restoration of prairie insect biodiversity in agricultural landscapes.
In 2005, Summerville joined the Iowa Audubon Society board of directors and has developed plans for its Iowa Important Bird Areas. He advises the Chichaqua Greenbelt advisory committee as they critique and revise a 10-year master plan for prairie and wetland restorations. He is a member of the Des Moines Urban Conservation Advisory Board and Polk County Conservation Advisory Board.

Dale E. Farnham

Assistant Vice President and Head, R&D Department, Farmers Mutual Hail Insurance Company

Farnham represents the State Soil Conservation Committee, where he is serving a six-year appointment by Governor Branstad as the committee's "cities and towns" representative. He lives in Ames in Washington Township. He has worked in a number of positions as agronomist and agribusiness manager, and currently is a managing officer for Farmers Mutual Hail Insurance Company in West Des Moines.

He grew up on a corn, soybean and livestock farm outside Gowrie in southwest Webster County, where he farmed with his family for five years after earning a bachelor's degree in agribusiness management from Arizona State University. In 1987 he enrolled in a graduate program to study agronomy at Iowa State University. He received a master's degree in 1989 and a Ph.D. degree in 1992, both in crop production and physiology.

He has worked as a manufacturing engineer for Motorola and with Cenex Land o' Lakes. He also has worked for Iowa State University Extension as Webster County Extension Education Director in Fort Dodge, then as a crops field specialist in north central Iowa serving Calhoun, Franklin, Hamilton, Hardin, Humboldt, Webster and Wright counties. In 1996, he returned to campus where he was a state corn specialist and an assistant professor in the Department of Agronomy.

In 2001, Farnham left ISU to join Monsanto, Inc., as technology development manager for southwest and northeast Iowa. He has worked at Farmers Mutual Hail Insurance since 2004.

Doug Gronau

Farmer

Gronau represents the Iowa Farm Bureau Federation on the Leopold Center Advisory Board. For the Farm Bureau, he represents 11 counties in west central Iowa. He farms with his wife, Judy, and their son, Greg. They grow corn, soybeans, and hay in a system that has been no-till since 2003.

The Gronaus are members of the Iowa Corn Growers Association and Iowa Soybean Association. They have participated in the soybean association's Certified Environmental Management Systems for Agriculture (CEMSA) program, a process by which participants can measure the impact of current practices to reduce energy use and use of commercial fertilizers. Their farm also is enrolled in a carbon credit program.

Gronau has a degree in history and economics from Wayne State college in Nebraska. Since joined the Crawford County Farm Bureau in 1974, he has served in numerous leadership capacities including the federation's speaker corps and on several statewide environmental committees. He has served on the county extension council and is a member of the Crawford County Board of Adjustments.

Erin Irish

Associate professor, University of Iowa

Irish represents the University of Iowa on the Leopold Center Advisory Board. She is a corn geneticist; she grows and hand-pollinates approximately a half-acre of corn each summer for her experiments. Her work addresses a basic question in biology about how plants develop. A native of Ohio, she has lived in Iowa since 1990.

She and her husband have begun to restore a 40-acre pasture in Cedar County to the oak savannah that it once was by removing invasive species of plants and introducing locally collected seeds of native species.

She has a bachelor's degree in biology from Hiram College in Ohio and a Ph.D. from Indiana University with post-doctoral training at the University of Pennsylvania and Yale University. Results of her research, funded by the National Science Foundation and the USDA, have appeared in numerous scientific journals and presented at conferences throughout the United States.

Jay A. Johnson

Iowa Deputy Secretary of Agriculture

Johnson represents the Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship on the Advisory Board. He was appointed deputy secretary in January 2012, following a 28-year career with the USDA Packers and Stockyards Administration. He grew up on a farm in rural northern Illinois where he was active in 4-H, primarily breeding and showing cattle.

He received a degree in agricultural business from Western Illinois University in 1983. He also was a member of the inter-collegiate livestock judging team. He began his career at the USDA in South Saint Paul, Minnesota. After two years, he transferred to Washington, D.C., where he worked in various positions for 13 years, including drector of the USDA Packer and Poultry Division.

In 1998, the program reorganized and Johnson moved to Des Moines to direct the Midwestern regional office. He managed all packer-stockyard activities in a 12-state Upper Midwest region and all hog issues on a national basis.

Johnson and  his wife live in rural Warren County with their three children. They raise and show club lambs and show performance Quarter horses.

Paul Lasley

Professor and department chair, Iowa State University

Lasley represents Iowa State University on the Leopold Center Advisory Board. Lasley has been an ISU Extension sociologist since 1981. His research focuses on the organization of U.S. agriculture and how changes in agriculture affect rural communities. A major focus examines trends in rural culture and what these trends suggest about the future of rural communities, families and social organizations. Lasley also is co-investigator of the Iowa Farm and Rural Life Poll, a series of statewide surveys among farm operators on major agricultural and rural development issues. Areas of research and extension expertise include rural development, community development, sustainable agriculture, and leadership in agriculture. He grew up on a farm in northern Missouri and holds M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in sociology from the University of Missouri-Columbia. His undergraduate work was in animal husbandry. Lasley also is a board member for Youth and Shelter Services and a deacon at the United Church of Christ-Congregational in Ames.

Steven Mickelson

Department Chair and Charles R. and Jane F. Olsen Professor of Engineering, Iowa State University

Mickelson represents Iowa State University on the Leopold Center Advisory Board. He joined Iowa State in 1982 as a faculty member in Freshman Engineering. He joined the Department of Agricultural and Biosystems Engineering (ABE) in 1996.  Mickelson served as the Associate Chair for ABE from 2005-2011.  He was also the Director for the Center for Excellence in Learning and Teaching and the Co-Director of Learning Communities at ISU from 2008-2011.  He was named chair of ABE in 2011. His research has focused on assessment of agricultural best management practices for improving water quality.

He grew upon a family farm near Rembrandt, Iowa, and received his B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degree in agricultural engineering from ISU.
 

Patrick Pease

Associate professor and department chair, University of Northern Iowa

Pease represents the University of Northern Iowa on the Leopold Center Advisory Board. He has been a member of the UNI faculty since September 2006 with a research focus in geomorphology, paleoenvironmental reconstruction, aerosols and dust, and geochemistry. From 1998 to 2006 he was associate professor in the East Carolina University geography department, where he had conducted a number of research projects including a study of wind erosion in farm fields and soil erosion in the aftermath of Hurricane Floyd. In addition to teaching, he has worked as a research assistant on two National Science Foundation projects, including a study of streambank erosion from the Upper Mississippi flood in 1993. He has a a Ph.D. in geography from Texas A&M (1998), master of arts (1994) and bachelor of science (1991) degrees in geology from Indiana State University. In 2003, he received the Distinguished Teaching Achievement Award from the National Council of Geographic Education. He also edited the North Carolina Geographer from 2000 to 2005.