Meet the Penn State deans: Richard Roush talks fishing, ice cream — and immortality
As part of a collaborative effort with Penn State, which is releasing a monthly video on school deans and their perspectives and passions, the Centre Daily Times is continuing a lighthearted Q&A series that highlights a different dean every month in the hopes the local community gets to know them outside of the classroom.
Up next: Richard Roush, dean of Penn State College of Agricultural Sciences.
Roush, who holds a doctorate from Cal Berkeley, joined Penn State in 2014. He is internationally recognized for research into insect pests and weeds, and his most recent published work came on the spotted laternfly. He previously served as the University of Melbourne’s dean of the School of Land and Environment, and he’s currently focused on key issues such as water quality and job development.
He also loves fishing, whether it’s fly-fishing in local waterways, deep-sea fishing on the West Coast or wherever else.
Centre Daily Times: You count fishing as one of your main hobbies, and this area is widely regarded as one of the best fly-fishing and/or trout-fishing spots in the nation. Where is your favorite spot to fish locally — and why is this area so good when it comes to this?
Richard Roush: Well, I have to confess that my favorite spot is Spruce Creek, but a lot of that is private waters and I can get on there because of a friend or two. But another place I think is really nice, both for the fishing and just for the ambiance, is Fisherman’s Paradise. It’s close; it’s pleasant and very quiet in the morning. It’s just a nice place to go. A lot of fishing, especially trout fishing, is just getting out and being in nature watching woodpeckers fly by, kingfishers fly by, and so forth.
Pennsylvania, as a whole, gets a lot of rainfall and good water. I’ve heard that we’ve got the second longest linear miles of streams and creeks of any state in the country except Alaska. I think part of it is we get good rainfall pretty regularly, and there’s a lot of places that are kind of up in the hills and there’s not much civilization disruption around. And the other thing is, on Spruce Creek, there’s a lot of farming operations — but people do a really good job of preserving them. ... Literally, while he was president, Dwight Eisenhower fished Spruce Creek; Jimmy Carter fished the creek. So that says something about its name recognition for serious fishermen.
CDT: Let’s transition from fishing to farms. Centre County boasts about 1,000 farms here, based on the most recent available data from 2017, so let me ask you a big-picture question. What is one thing that a lot of farmers here maybe don’t know — but should?
Roush: Well, the one that comes right away to mind is soil testing. And a lot of farmers would know that, but sometimes people don’t get around to it or they forget about it, and it’s really critical to find out if you’ve got the right amount of nitrogen, the right soil pH and so forth. They’re not very expensive. ... If you’re significantly low on nitrogen, or if you’ve got the wrong pH, you could get significantly lower yields, so that reduces your profitability. But, on the other hand, you don’t want to do too much, which would allow some of it to wash off during heavy rainstorms.
Especially now that fertilizer prices have gone through the roof thanks to (Russian President Vladimir) Putin’s war, the idea of going and doing maybe a little bit more soil sampling than you normally did — at $9 a test — you could save thousands of dollars. ... It’s a good time to check to make sure you’ve got just enough nitrogen and not too much. This year, in particular, it’s expensive to make that mistake. And we want to encourage people to use soil testing so they have just the right amount of fertilizer and are less likely to have any runoff from it.
So it’s simple enough. People will take their samples to our analytical lab and, for $9 a sample, it’s not expensive. You might want to do a few in each field because there’s variation, but it’s relatively inexpensive compared to the savings in costs and benefits for increasing yields. So it’s something we’re encouraging people to do.
CDT: Are you an annual visitor to the Grange Fair or Pennsylvania Farm Show and, if so, what is your favorite part to those events?
Roush: I have great, fond memories of a draft-horse race at the Department of Agriculture’s Farm Show, but I’ll be honest, I really like hanging around our Ag Progress Days. ... I go, but I have to say that my favorite is really our Ag Progress Days. And maybe I’m biased, but I really like the balance between elected officials, people from the industry, farmers from all walks of life. We have our own displays. And I go out there every year; I really enjoy talking to all the people who are there.
And I learn from the displays in the Department of Agriculture and other agencies, as well as our own, even things I don’t know about from the College to keep up with. And it’s great — kids have a wonderful time, with tree climbing-things, and there are pulleys, horse demos and so forth. And it’s the right time of the year (Aug. 9-11, 2022), toward the first week of August, typically.
CDT: Your office isn’t far from the Berkey Creamery, so you had to know you couldn’t escape at least one ice cream-related question. What’s your favorite Creamery flavor and, if you could create any new Creamery flavor, what one are you concocting?
Roush: My favorite ice cream is — hands-down, very easy — Death By Chocolate. And it’s only coincidental that the last five years in a row it’s been the top flavor (in the Creamery’s Flavor Madness competition, which mirrors the March Madness brackets).
Others? I really like passion fruit. A passion fruit ice cream would be a really good idea. Or the other thing is we’re always interested in providing some non-dairy options. And some water ices that have flavors — like, well, I think passion fruit would be an attractive one — but cherry and lime and lemon and so forth. We recognize that some people have non-dairy preferences, so creating a flavor in that area would be good, too.
CDT: We always end our Q&As with a different odd question. So here’s yours: If you could choose between receiving immortality or receiving $1 billion, what would you pick? And why?
Roush: Actually, for me, it’s another no-brainer. It’s $1 billion.
We have so many examples in books and movies of immortality, and it never seems to work out really that well. People lose their friends, etc., etc. So, no, immortality isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. But $1 billion now, to invest in trying to change things for the better, that would seem to me to be a lot more attractive.
I would definitely be focusing on climate change. And, sometimes, when I talk to donors, a lot of people like to put things into endowments, which is sort of the “immortal” option, right? And I say, well, what’s the point in putting money into something that’s going to go on for hundreds of years when what we really need to do is fix climate change now? So I’m sort of opting for the shorter-term investment in both cases.
