Price earns University Cup

The University of Alberta capped off its annual Celebration of Teaching and Learning this year with the announcement of a new scholarship for native studies.

The Dean's Citation in the School of Native Studies is being made possible by Chancellor Eric Newell. Over the next few years, Newell will establish a $250,000 endowment to fund an annual scholarship of $10,000 in perpetuity. The first recipient is to be named at next year's Celebration of Teaching and Learning.

This year's event, led off by a colourful procession of dignitaries, including U of A President Dr. Rod Fraser and Alberta's Lieutenant-Governor Lois Hole, recognized the hard work and dedication of the university's teachers and students.

At the top of the awards list was Dr. Mick Price, who, after 30 years of inspiring students at the U of A, has earned the University Cup, the top honour the U of A confers on its faculty members.

"Dr. Price has an amazing ability to bring out the best in his students - I still remember how much he impressed me when I was his student many years ago," said Dr. John Kennelly, dean of the U of A Faculty of Agriculture, Forestry and Home Economics.

"Dr. Price is a wonderful person. He's friendly and has a great sense of humour, but I think he shines as a teacher because he works so hard and really cares about his students and the subject matter that he teaches."

A past winner of other prestigious teaching honours, including a national 3M Teaching Fellowship and a U of A Rutherford Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching, Price was nevertheless surprised to be awarded the University Cup.

"It's a tremendous honour - they don't give this to ordinary folks. I'm just blown away," said Price, a professor in the Department of Agricultural, Food and Nutritional Science.

Price was born on his family's farm near Herefordshire, England, during the Second World War. After completing high school, Price assumed he'd work on the farm for the rest of his life.

"My father was in his mid-40s then, and it didn't occur to me that he was still young and planned to work for a long time before I could take over. When that dawned on me, I wasn't sure what I would do to fill in the time."

A chance meeting with his headmaster from high school a few years after graduation led Price to a scholarship to attend an agriculture program at University College London in what was then Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) in southern Africa. Success there led him to a graduate program at the University of New England in Australia. He eventually earned a PhD, and was offered a full-time faculty position at the university.

However, Price felt he should do a year of post-doctoral work somewhere else before settling into a position in Australia.

"I had every intention of going back, but I came to do my post-doctoral research at the U of A, and at the end of the year here they made me the proverbial offer I couldn't refuse, and I've been here ever since."

Price researches livestock growth and meat production. His priority is to enhance the long-term profitability and sustainability of farms. He especially enjoys finding inexpensive solutions to expensive problems. As an example, he cites compensatory growth, a biological principle that means when an animal is weak or sick and therefore smaller than normal, it will, once healthy, "catch up" and grow to the size it is genetically programmed to be.

According to this principle, Price's research helped to prove that cattle don't need to be fed much during the winter, because they still grow as big by the next fall as they would have if they were fed constantly.

"Basically, you just need to keep them alive and healthy over the winter and then start feeding them regularly in the spring," he said. "It's expensive to feed cattle in the winter, in both time and resources, and this is one simple way to save money without harming the animals or the sustainability of the farm."

However, after a lifetime spent working on and studying farms, Price knows as well as anyone that success or failure for a farmer can be as fickle as the wind. A reminder of this came in 2003, when it was announced that a single cow in Alberta had been diagnosed with bovine spongiform encephalopathyb(BSE).

"Our research ranch at the U of A is a fully-functioning cattle ranch and entirely reliant on our herd for financial sustenance, and that single case of BSE is costing us between $100,000 and $150,000 a year," he said.

Price's research is not related to BSE, but he feels the key to solving problems on a farm is to fix them at the source rather than try to address all the symptoms. "I like to simplify things by preventing problems and finding solutions before the trouble occurs."

Price estimates he has taught and supervised more than 3,000 undergraduate and graduate students, and says they form something of an extended family to him. But for all the lives he has enriched at the U of A, Price says he is the most grateful one, for having been here.

"It's been such a joy for me to come to work every day. I've often said that I can't believe they pay me to do this, and I really mean it. Of course, you need money to pay the mortgage and such, but, honestly, I'd have happily done it for free."