E. T. York

Infobox Person
name = E. T. York


image_size = 130px
caption = E. T. York
birth_date = July 4, 1922
birth_place = Valley Head, Alabama
education = B.S., M.S., Alabama Polytechnic Institute(now Auburn University), Ph.D., Cornell University
occupation = Agronomist
Educator
Administrator
spouse = Vam Cardwell

Dr. E. Travis “E.T.” York is an American agronomist, land-grant educator and administrator, and U.S. presidential adviser who served as an Alabama Cooperative Extension Service director, federal Extension administrator and interim president of the University of Florida.

Early life

York was born July 4, 1922, in the Valley Head community in DeKalb County in northeast Alabama, during the Depression era. His first exposure to Alabama Polytechnic Institute (now Auburn University), where he later would earn two of his degrees, was while attending a state Future Farmers of America state convention held on the API campus.

He enrolled at API in 1939, earning his bachelor’s degree in 1942. After U.S. Army service in World War II as a Field Artillery captain, York returned to API and completed his master’s degree in soil science. Also during this period, he met and later married Vam Cardwell, of Evergreen, Alabama, a business major and president of the Women’s Student Government Association.

Upon completion of his master’s degree in 1946, York then was accepted into the doctoral program at Cornell University, studying under nationally renowned soil scientist Richard Bradfield, who passed along to York his interest in international agriculture, particularly how food shortages contributed to chronic hunger in much of the developing world.

Much of York’s later career would focus on ways to harness the resources of the U.S. land-grant system to alleviate world hunger. [http://www.ag.auburn.edu/adm/comm/agillustrated/Winter06/lifetime.html Creamer, Jamie, “A Lifetime of Achievement: AU Ag Alum Makes Mark on the World, Ag Illustrated (Alabama Agricultural Experiment Station), Winter Issue, 2006.] ]

North Carolina State University

After completing this doctorate at Cornell, York was hired as an associate professor of agronomy, eventually assuming the chairmanship of the Department of Agronomy at North Carolina State University. In 1956, he left to work as a regional director for the Potash Institute. [http://yorklecture.ifas.ufl.edu/ETYork.htm "Problems of Global Hunger and Malnutrition — Was Malthus Right After all?" York Lecture Series, University of Florida IFAS, Fall, 1994.] ]

Alabama Cooperative Extension Service

In 1959, York returned to his alma mater, still known as API at the time, to succeed the retiring P. O. Davis as director of the Alabama Cooperative Extension Service. York remains the youngest individual ever to serve as Alabama Extension director.

His tenure at Auburn, though brief, nonetheless was considered a watershed event in Alabama Extension history, reflected in several laudatory remarks in newspaper accounts of the time, including the Andalusia Star, which described this brief period as “a new and enlightened era” in Alabama farming.

York’s vision of Alabama Extension was of an organization committed to the economic betterment of the state as a whole rather than only to the farming sector or to urban Alabamians with lawn and gardening problems.

He also was a vocal supporter of cooperation with other groups, calling on Extension educators to “make these other groups members of our own team rather than [to] compete with them by attempting to do the total job by ourselves…”

Perceiving the need for a highly trained and qualified staff, York also developed a liberal study program to allow Extension professionals to qualify for leave to pursue advanced degrees while earning full pay. York also established a practice of replacing vacancies only with professionals with advanced degrees — a policy credited with greatly enhancing the quality of Alabama Extension programming.

York also is remembered for ending what was perceived in some quarters as a longstanding Alabama Extension entanglement in local, state and even national politics. Yeager, Joseph and Stevenson, Gene, "Inside Ag Hill: The People and Events That Shaped Auburn's Agricultural History from 1872 through 1999", Chelsea, Michigan: Sheridan Books, 1999, pp. 364-65.]

Administrator, Extension Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture

At the urging of then-U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Orville Freeman, York took a brief leave of absence as director of Alabama Extension to serve as the administrator for the federal Extension Service (now the Cooperative State Research, Education and Extension Service) in Washington, D.C. [http://www.ag.auburn.edu/adm/comm/agillustrated/Winter06/lifetime.html Creamer, Jamie, “A Lifetime of Achievement: AU Ag Alum Makes Mark on the World, Ag Illustrated (Alabama Agricultural Experiment Station), Winter Issue, 2006.] ]

Provost for Agriculture, University of Agriculture, University of Florida

Instead of returning to Auburn, as previously planned, York was hired as provost for agriculture and, later, as vice president for agricultural, natural and human resources at the University of Florida, where he is credited with implementing far-reaching changes. He is best remembered for joining the College of Agricultural Life Sciences, the Florida Cooperative Extension Service, and the Florida Agricultural Experiment Station under the Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences (IFAS) [http://yorklecture.ifas.ufl.edu/ETYork.htm "Problems of Global Hunger and Malnutrition — Was Malthus Right After all?" York Lecture Series, University of Florida IFAS, Fall, 1994.] ]

Interim President and Chancellor

In 1974, York was named interim president of the University of Florida. In 1975, he was appointed chancellor of the State University System of Florida, serving in that position until 1980, when he retired to devote his fulltime efforts to fighting global hunger, primarily by improving the agricultural infrastructure in developing countries.

York is the author of more than 100 technical papers and books and has lectured at more than 40 universities throughout the United States and the world. He also has served as an advisor to Presidents Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter and Reagan.

In 1997, York was named a Great Floridian by the Florida Museum of History, becoming one of only 12 individuals honored for “shaping the state of Florida as we know it today.” [http://www.ag.auburn.edu/adm/comm/agillustrated/Winter06/lifetime.html Creamer, Jamie, "A Lifetime of Achievement: AU Ag Alum Makes Mark on the World," Ag Illustrated (Alabama Agricultural Experiment Station), Winter Issue, 2006.] ]

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