The D.W. Brooks Awards recognize faculty who make outstanding contributions to the college's critical mission areas.
The 2021 D.W. Brooks Faculty Award for Excellence in Public Service Extension goes to UGA Cooperative Extension Lowndes County Coordinator Jacob Price. Price began his Extension career focusing on horticulture and green industry issues, and he has led multiple programs to include the green industry, row crops and vegetables, as well as the state's emerging crops, like citrus.
The 2021 D.W. Brooks Faculty Award for Excellence in Teaching goes to Marin Brewer, associate professor of mycology in the Department of Plant Pathology. Brewer teaches two courses on fungi at UGA every year, and her research focuses on the evolution and diversity of fungal threats to plants and people.
The 2021 D.W. Brooks Faculty Award for Excellence in Extension goes to Scott Monfort, Extension peanut agronomist and UGA Peanut Team leader on the Tifton campus. Monfort’s primary focus area is the development of cost-effective crop management systems including seed quality, cultivar evaluation, tillage systems and precision agriculture technologies in peanuts. His primary role is to provide support to county Extension agents in all peanut-producing counties and to provide research-based recommendations to help peanut growers in Georgia to remain economically viable.
The 2021 D.W. Brooks Faculty Award for Excellence in Diversity goes to plant pathology Associate Professor and Graduate Coordinator Shavannor Smith. Smith’s research focuses on the structure, function and evolution of plant disease resistance genes and pathogen virulence genes to understand plant defense mechanisms. Smith has been instrumental in recruiting and supporting students from underrepresented groups and is an advocate for creating inclusive and equitable learning environments to improve innovation and creativity in the sciences.
The 2021 D.W. Brooks Faculty Award for Excellence in Research goes to Zenglu Li, Georgia Seed Development Professor in Soybean Breeding and Genetics in the Department of Crop and Soil Sciences. Li’s research interests are focused on the development of soybean varieties using an integrated classical and molecular breeding approach, the discovery of innovative genetic and genomic solutions to abiotic and biotic limitations of soybean productivity, and the use of genomic and phenomic technologies to improve selection efficiency.
