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195 Marvin Pritts hated picking berries when he was growing up in rural Pennsylvania. It’s ironic, because his position as a professor at Cornell University is focused on berry crops. In this profile, he recounts how he ended up at Cornell, and why and how he has built long-term public relationships with berry growers and others across the Northeast (and beyond) in his work as an academic professional. The brief practice stories he tells along the way reflect a path that is different from his predecessors’. Instead of framing his academic and public work narrowly as responsive service aimed solely at helping growers make more money, we see that he integrates responsive service and proactive change agent roles by gently pushing growers to think about larger issues related to environmental sustainability and responsibility. What we end up seeing in his profile is a scientist and educator who listens as much as (or perhaps even more than) he speaks, and who has a great deal of respect for the growers he works with, a profound sense of humility about his own knowledge and roles, and a strong sense of public purpose. I’m a professor in the Department of Horticulture at Cornell University. My official appointment is 55 percent Extension, 35 percent research, and 10 percent teaching in the area of berry crops. I’ve been here seventeen years as of last week. I remember the date because someone just asked me, “How long have you been here?” It happened to be my seventeenth anniversary, so I said, “Oh, seventeen years today!” The focus of my research, teaching, and Extension is not specifically defined. The subject matter area is berry crops: things like strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, currants, gooseberries , which are minor crops that people love in the Northeast. The intention of my research and extension responsibilities is that I work with growers in an applied research program focusing on things that they can take and use on their farms. As for my teaching, C H A P T E R 1 1 My Path Has Been Different from My Predecessors’ A Profile of Marvin Pritts Professor, Department of Horticulture, Cornell University Interview conducted by Scott Peters, October 16, 2001 C H A P T E R E L E V E N 196 I have a course in berry crop production every other year in the fall semester. It’s a threecredit course. I also participate in teaching many other courses, giving lectures here or there. Cornell Orchards, located right off campus, is a real popular place. Plant pathology and entomology classes take field trips there, and often times I’m the one who gives the orchard tour. All week long the lab sessions go out there, walk around the orchard, and talk about whatever they’re interested in related to fruit crops. My interest in berry crops started way back in high school, when I was interested in biology , and continued when I was an undergraduate and a biology major. I was always interested in nature, so biology seemed like a natural to study. Ever since I was very young I collected bees. I loved collecting bees and butterflies in jars and identifying trees. I grew up in southwestern Pennsylvania, in a rural community down near West Virginia. We lived out in the country. We had a three-quarter-acre plot of land, and we had a small garden. You could go miles and miles behind my house and never hit a road. It was very rural.When I was only six years old, I would take off all day with my seven-year-old neighbor. My mom never knew where we were, but we always showed up about suppertime. I have a five-year-old and an eight-year-old now, and when I think of them running around the places I ran around, it scares me. My mom must have bit her tongue a lot. My grandmother, who lived about a quarter mile away, had more land. We would grow strawberries and vegetables there. I remember picking wild strawberries and blueberries from surrounding meadows when I was younger. My mom would make jelly. We would go out with this bucket, and we had to pick until the bucket was full. I hated it. The berries were so small it took forever. I’d rather be playing softball or running around the woods. Berries were interesting to me, but working with them wasn’t something I envisioned...

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