When I began as executive vice president, I committed for five years. That is up this summer, but after much transformation of ARPAS programs, and not wanting to hand over responsibilities mid-stream so to speak, I will continue for another year to ensure a better transition. My successor, with Governing Council approval, will be Dr. Wayne Greene of Auburn University. He will shadow me for a year.

We need more input, membership, and help from ASAS in recruiting faculty and graduate students. But, we also need more members in those same categories from other scientific societies that are supporting members of ARPAS. This may well be the first time in a while that presidents of both the American Dairy Science Association (ADSA) and the American Society of Animal Science (ASAS) are ARPAS members. Thus, this is an opportune time to enlist their societies in recruiting more faculty and graduate students as ARPAS members.

Why the focus on faculty and graduate student ARPAS membership?

• Animal science departments and divisions that have multiple and key faculty ARPAS members have more graduate students who become members.
• On the other hand, one major animal science group has only one faculty member and one graduate student member—and both came from other universities. A number of smaller animal science groups have more members than that.
• Graduate students are less likely to become ARPAS members if their professors are not ARPAS members.
• I have found that many faculty and other ARPAS members became members as graduate students.
• Graduate students have the highest qualifying exam rate—about two-thirds pass the first time. And, the ARPAS Foundation pays their initial exam fee. When those who did not pass retake the exam within 90 days, at no additional cost, two-thirds of them pass. So, in two exam takes, about 90% pass!

We have created an incentive for graduate students to take a qualifying ARPAS exam as a group. If a group of five or more graduate students take the exam, ARPAS will pay for their free pizza lunch. Michigan State University pioneered this under the leadership of Renee Harbowy, who led 11 fellow graduate students to take the exam! Other graduate student pizza luncheon exams have been held at the University of Illinois, Penn State University, the University of Arkansas, the University of New Hampshire, the University of California–Davis, South Dakota State University, the University of Nebraska, and maybe some other universities too.

We plan to enlist the services of ADSA, ASAS, the Equine Science Society, the American Meat Science Association, and the Poultry Science Association, which are supporting scientific organizations of ARPAS, to help recruit their faculty and graduate student members to become ARPAS member this year. Recall that full-time faculty who have a PhD no longer have to pass a qualifying exam to become ARPAS members. https://www.arpas.org/Memberships/Join

We also will have a commission under the leadership of Dr. Mike Galyean of Texas Tech University to evaluate ARPAS and its programs. Their charge will be to address this question: What is the future for ARPAS? This will be done over the next six months. So, if you have concerns, ideas, or suggestions, let us know at andhil@swbell.net.

Last, but certainly not least, Novonesis is a new 2026 ARPAS sponsor. https://www.arpas.org/About/Sponsors