Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, February 8, 1995 TAG: 9502080054
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-3 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: ALLISON BLAKE STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: BLACKSBURG LENGTH: Medium
Say the bread doesn't rise. The pastry clumps up.
"I've had people call and say, 'I've got a whole carload of wheat. What do we going to do with this?'" she said.
As an expert on the properties of flour, Johnson can tell them what's gone wrong. But she may not have as much time for those calls in the weeks and months ahead, as she takes on a new job with Virginia Tech's College of Human Resources.
Johnson was named interim dean of the college Feb. 1, filling in for the departing dean, Peggy Meszaros, who has become Tech's provost.
Originally from Indiana, Johnson came to Blacksburg in 1972 after she completed her Ph.D. in foods from Cornell University.
"At the time, I thought I would probably be here five or six years and move on," she said.
But life intervened. She met her husband, the recently retired director of Virginia Cooperative Extension, Jim Johnson. The couple has two children, Kevin, a freshman at Northwest Missouri State University, and Sarah, a sophomore at Blacksburg High.
Among her other duties at Tech, Johnson served as acting associate provost for research two years ago. She has worked widely within the extension service, and has helped out with such tasks as helping to create internal grievance policies for misconduct regarding scholarly activities.
She comes to her new position at a critical time. State legislators appear to have restored much of the $14 million in lost funding to Tech's extension agriculture programs. But the final decisions won't be in until Feb. 25, when the General Assembly adjourns. Upwards of 35 professors in Johnson's college are paid, at least in part, by extension funds.
"We are certainly staying right on top of the budget process as it goes through the legislature," Johnson said. "We have been planning all along for the difference scenarios."
Even with the pressures of her new job, Johnson is trying to keep up with her teaching. At the moment, one of her classes is taping a public access TV show for the "cooking illiterate" - the folks who can't find their way around the kitchen except to open the fridge.
by CNB