When Roland Roth was 8 years old, growing up on a rice farm in Stuttgart, Ark., his grandmother gave him a coffee table-style book entitled Birds of America. Now a professor in the Department of Entomology and Applied Ecology, Roth said he recalls looking at it a lot of times and being intrigued by the pictures. While attending the University of Arkansas as an undergraduate, Roth got interested in ornithology, and at the University of Illinois, where he received his master's and doctoral degrees in zoology, he majored in ecology and minored in vertebrate zoology. I think there is something in my upbringing that tells me to be of service and do a conscientious job, to do things right. Probably, I have that attitude from being raised among an extended family of Methodist farmers in a small-town setting.
Students come here to talk about a lot of different issues.
A certain amount deals with course selection, but there also are questions about careers, internships, graduate school, jobs. I get a lot of students who are trying to find themselves, to find a major. Students from other majors and colleges come to talk about what we offer. I see students who don't know what they want to do or, if they do, how to do it. You know you can't stay where you are.