BETTER BUILDINGS TO ACCOMMODATE INCREASINGLY SOPHISTICATED SCIENCE AND A TALENTED FACULTY ABLE TO USE THE FULL CAPABILITIES OF THOSE FACILITIES ARE POINTS OF PRIDE FOR RICHARD C. HEIMSCH, WHO PLANS TO RETIRE LATER THIS YEAR.

As Idaho Agricultural Experiment Station director and associate dean of the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences, Heimsch helped lead the way toward both goals. “I guess I’m sort of a practical person,” said Heimsch, 60. “An analogy I often use is I enjoy cutting the grass because you see what you’ve done. I think a tangible of my legacy may be, if someone looks at it 10 or 20 years from now, the facilities improvements we were able to make.”

His good fortune in helping to make that happen rested on good programs and being in an era of having resources the university was able to use wisely. The benefit will play out both now and in the future of agricultural research within this college.

A microbiologist by training, Heimsch spent the earliest phases of his career at Wisconsin, where he studied the toxin Clostridium botulinum, a bacterium commonly found in the environment and responsible for the food-borne disease botulism.

He spent nearly a year at Oregon State University before joining the UI faculty in 1972. At Oregon State and later at UI, much of his research focused on employing microbes to produce usable products, such as high-quality protein, or discovering ways to use byproducts, such as converting potato processing waste to potential trout feed.

He was also active in faculty governance. Heimsch served as chairman of the UI Faculty Council while active in teaching and research.

A pioneer for integrated research at UI Heimsch said one of the most rewarding aspects of that stage of his career was a joint effort with chemical engineering professor Roger Korus. “In my world, at least, it was one of the first true collaborations across colleges and disciplines,” Heimsch recalled.

“There were probably other examples of integrated research on campus but I take pride in and think fondly of those days because I think we were a fairly early model for integrated interdisciplinary, multidisciplinary programs. And it just happened naturally; it wasn’t fostered by any higher level administrator and formal program. It just happened because it made sense. It was good science.”

WHEN DREAMS BECOME BUILDINGS

His career shifted most dramatically in 1986 when he became assistant and then associate director of the Agricultural Experiment Station.

As a professor of microbiology, he had long before taken an interest in campus facilities. He was active in the process that led to the design and construction of Richard D. Gibb Hall, the modern addition to the Life Sciences Building completed in 1986.

By 1990 Heimsch started work on a new dream he and others shared, the new Agricultural Biotechnology Laboratory adjacent to the agricultural science buildings. Eleven years later, he joined Dean Larry Branen to celebrate the grand opening. Although he wrote the first proposal for the project, he credits many others for helping to keep it going and put their own imprint on it.

Heimsch became the experiment station director and associate dean in 1995, and continued to concentrate on efforts to improve facilities available for faculty members. He counts as wins property acquisitions at Genesee and Parma, and improvements to existing facilities at Aberdeen, Kimberly, and Parma. More work is in the pipeline for Tetonia and elsewhere across the statewide system.

Heimsch also helped initiate western livestock systems research at the Nancy M. Cummings Research, Extension and Education Center in Salmon, the first such center added to the university’s system in decades.

A LION READY TO ROAR

“The most fun was positioning the University of Idaho and its Agricultural Experiment Station to be a lion that’s about ready to roar in terms of the talent of the faculty and the facilities we were able to provide them,” Heimsch added.

The goal was to ensure the faculty members had fewer barriers and more facilities to help develop robust programs. “I don’t want to take anything away from the root faculty initiative that made that happen in terms of grantsmanship and the strength of programs, but I think the experiment station in cooperation with departments did a lot to help select, to help recruit and position these faculty to make an impact.”

He does not rule out continuing to play a role in science policy after retiring, perhaps in helping others work on marrying faculty talent with proper facilities. He also finds that he remembers with fondness his days as a researcher and teacher.

“I do miss that part of an earlier phase of my career. Or maybe it’s absence that makes the heart grow fonder. You take a step away, then you realize how precious that was.”