Ag economics is beneficiary of scholarships

Endowed scholarship funds have been established in the Department of Agricultural Economics to memorialize three of the program's former educators.

The Rupert Johnston Scholarship, the David L. Trammell Jr. Scholarship, and the John E. Waldrop Jr. Scholarship have been established by family, friends and colleagues of the three late professors. The scholarships will be awarded annually to full-time students studying agricultural economics.

The Rupert Johnston Endowed Scholarship Fund memorializes the Shannon native who served almost three decades with the Mississippi Cooperative Extension Service, retiring in 1980 as state leader for rural development and leader of extension agricultural economics. He also was a professor of agricultural and extension education.

Johnston is credited with developing the Tri-County Rural Development Pilot Program in Calhoun, Grenada and Yalobusha counties and for initiating the "Mississippi Farm Management Handbook," which provides crop and livestock budgets, outlook, farm planning, and farm program data. He received his bachelor's and master's degrees in agricultural economics from Mississippi State and his doctorate in extension education from Cornell University.

Johnston died in 1993 at age 73.

The David L. Trammell Jr. Endowed Scholarship Fund memorializes the Panola County native who began his long association with Mississippi State as a

4-H leader and assistant county agent in Sharkey County in 1953. Through the years, he held positions of professor of extension education, professor of adult education, professor of agricultural economics and extension education, and leader of the extension marketing department of MCES. Trammell was assistant to the director of the Mississippi Agricultural and Forestry Experiment Station when he retired in 1992.

He received his bachelor's, master's and doctoral degrees from Mississippi State. Trammell died in 1995 at age 62.

The John E. Waldrop Jr. Endowed Scholarship Fund memorializes the former agricultural economics professor who taught in the program for three decades. A native of Thaxton, Waldrop received bachelor's and master's degrees from Mississippi State and a doctorate from Oklahoma State University. He was an assistant professor at Louisiana State University until 1967, when he joined the faculty at Mississippi State. He retired in 1995.

He was known for his key research and devoted work with the state's catfish industry. In 1990, his expertise in the expanding catfish industry was featured in the U.S. Department of Agriculture's "Yearbook of Agriculture."

Waldrop died last year at age 64.

Combined, nearly $70,000 has been contributed or pledged to the three scholarship funds.

All three scholarships are open funds in the Mississippi State Foundation and may be increased through additional contributions. For more information on the funds, contact the Office of Development at 325-3410.