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ALUMNI AWARDS FOR EXCELLENCE
IN EXTENSION
Harry Haney Jr.
By Lynn Davis
For his far-reaching efforts to help families keep "the family farm, in this case tree farms, from being eaten up by estate taxes," Harry L. Haney Jr., Garland Gray professor and Extension specialist in the College of Forestry and Wildlife Resources, has earned Virginia Tech's Alumni Award for Excellence in Extension.
For more than 23 years, Haney has been assisting forest landowners not only in how to manage timber properties to achieve their objectives, but also how to transfer holdings to their heirs with minimum tax disruptions.
Haney is among a mere handful of national experts in the forest community on timber taxation. Harold Burkhart, forestry department head, praised, "Haney's Extension program in forest investment and analysis and timber taxation is highly regarded and widely recognized throughout Virginia and the nation."
A colleague at Purdue University asserted, "Harry is conducting the best Extension program of its type in the U.S." His assessment was echoed by a forest-economics professor at North Carolina State University, who added, "Harry's economics training, practical experience, tax expertise, and outgoing personality have enabled him to package and communicate technical material in a manner that makes it directly usable by timber growers."
Also making Haney's work worthy of exceptional recognition is the fact that his program is extremely relevant to current issues--as attested by workshops that are well attended and receive rave reviews.
Perhaps the most publicly visible mark of the man is his bus-tour program, where he offers forest owners and members of the public four to eight tree-farm tours each fall throughout Virginia, so they can learn about up-to-date practices and solutions to contemporary problems.
Haney has received numerous honors for his effective work, including the national Technology Transfer and Extension Award by the Society of American Foresters, Man of the Year in Forestry Award from the Virginia Forestry Association, and the Outstanding Forestry Alumnus Award from Auburn University. He was the first Extension faculty member of his college to be given a named professorship and is the first to receive the Alumni Extension Award.
A sought-after conference speaker, Haney has lectured on forestry investment analysis in China and Hawaii. His tree-farm tours (more than 150), workshops, short courses, and seminars have reached out to more than 25,000 people. Burkhart said, "It is safe to conclude that Harry's Extension work has increased the value of forest resources by millions of dollars, not to mention the untold value of improving the environment. He is a superb ambassador for Virginia Tech."
Richard Nunnally
By Mary Ann Johnson
Richard A. Nunnally, director of the Virginia Cooperative Extension Chesterfield County office since 1975, has been honored with the Virginia Tech Alumni Award for Excellence in Extension.
"His goal is to help county residents and businesses improve and maintain the quality of their environment," said C. Clark Jones, director of Extension, "and he offers a wide variety of educational programs for the many audiences in this rapidly growing urban locality where program demands are great."
Nunnally uses every opportunity to gain new information about emerging situations to see where Extension might help. As he saw needs, he and the other Chesterfield County agents sought grant funds to supplement state-and-local funds to increase efforts to offer programming to meet county needs. The grant dollars currently total $134,700.
Because of his ability to "have his finger on the pulse of the community," said Susan Craik, Extension agent who is a co-worker at Chesterfield County, "his programs and those of the Chesterfield Office remain on the cutting edge of programming."
His major emphasis is environmental horticulture. For example, he taught urban best-management practices to garden-center workers so, in turn, they could help individual property owners. One of his educational techniques was known as SOD, featuring the recommendations for fertilizing turf in September, October, and December. Now it is the SON program, with September, October, November recommendations, a change to earlier in the year that was made for environmental considerations.
The Chesterfield Master Gardeners, trained by Nunnally are some of the most active in the state. This year, 72 master gardeners donated 3,080 hours fulfilling 13,668 requests for information. Chesterfield County administrators found this a valuable program and they fully funded the managing of the Master-Gardener program by making the unit coordinator a county department director.
Water-quality programs have included a series based on the theme, "Don't Feed the Lake." News articles, public meetings, and brochures were developed to help educate residents on the proper way to manage nutrients without endangering the water. He also created the "Chesterfield to the Chesapeake" program teaching people that what they do in their yards, gardens, and homes affects the local water supply and the Chesapeake Bay.
Nunnally is educational advisor for the Richmond Nurserymen's Association and coordinates its annual short course. He also provides pesticide re-certification classes and coordinated the writing of two of the new manuals to prepare prospective applicators for the certification test. He provides education programs for several commercial horticulture groups including the annual Commercial Horticulture Seminar.
He holds bachelor's and master's degrees from Virginia Commonwealth University. Two of the top honors that Nunnally has received are the Distinguished Service Award from Epsilon Sigma Phi, the Extension honorary organization and the Distinguished Service Award from the National Association of County Agricultural Agents.