The Stewart Professorship for Gene Research

Gifts from Faye and L. L. "Stub" Stewart enabled OSU to establish the Stewart Professorship for Gene Research in 1990. The Stewart brothers are graduates in forestry. Stub received his degree in logging engineering in 1932, and Faye graduated in forest engineering in 1938. Both went on to distinguished careers in the timber industry, and have been involved in a wide variety of industry and public service activities.

OSU has been the beneficiary of their generosity in many ways. Gifts from both brothers have supported the operation of the LaSells Stewart Center, named in honor of their parents. In addition to funding the Stewart Professorship for Gene Research, they have also been generous supporters of the College of Forestry and of marine mammal research. Each has also made gifts to support areas of particular interest—Stub to the L. L. Stewart Faculty Development Award, Faye to the Department of Athletics, and for the benefit of the University as a whole.

Daniel J. Arp

Daniel J. Arp (Ph.D., 1980, University of Wisconsin, Madison) is the third professor to hold the Stewart Professorship for Gene Research, a rotating five-year appointment. Dr. Arp, a professor in the department of botany and plant pathology, is also an affiliate faculty member of the Center for Gene Research and Biotechnology, and the departments of Microbiology and Biochemistry and Physics. Dr. Arp's research deals with bacteria that carry out agriculturally and environmentally relevant processes in soils. One project involves bacteria with the ability to degrade environmental pollutants.

He is currently also the director of the Nitrogen Fixation Lab, and is the former director of the Molecular and Cellular Biology Program. He came to OSU in 1990.

In addition to his lab work and teaching, Dr. Arp is involved in extensive outreach efforts to Oregon public schools. He directs a National Science Foundation-funded project called the GK-12 Fellowship Program which sends OSU graduate students in the sciences, math, and engineering to teach and mentor school children with the intention of fostering their scientific potential from an early age. Dr. Arp says the idea is not just to improve science education in the schools, "but to help these graduate students realize they can and should have a lifelong involvement in the education of our children."

Dr. Arp publishes extensively in a wide range of journals.

The previous Stewart Professor was Christopher Mathews.