Jon Fridgen '98 shares his life after UMC in his own words

I graduated from UMC in May of 1998 with a B.S. in Plant Industries Management-Agronomy. At that time, I had made arrangements to attend graduate school at the University of Missouri in Columbia, Missouri.

The University of Missouri-Columbia (the other UMC) was quite a change from Crookston. The biggest change was the size of the campus - over 22,000 students, approximately 4,000 of which are graduate students. You could walk the same sidewalk every day and not see the same person.

After leaving UMC, I was very interested in the emerging field of precision agriculture or site-specific crop management (SSCM). I liked the concepts being developed and the use of technology to make more effective management decisions. Although my M.S. degree was to be in agronomy, all of my research would focus on SSCM. After much discussion with my thesis committee, the objective of my research was defined: to develop a repeatable process for the delineation of within-field management zones using georeferenced field data.

Jon Fridgen is outstanding in his field, actually he is pictured in a research field in Missouri.

Management zones mean different things to different people, but they are basically regions of the field that can be managed in a similar way. My research would eventually require me to develop my very own software for the delineation of these management zones. Reviewing all of the literature, developing and testing the software, and writing the thesis took a little over two years.

Graduate school was quite different from undergraduate work. Although you still have a major field of study, the course work is more tailored to your field of study. Because of the strong agronomy/soils background I had from UMC, I didn't have to take many plant or soil science courses. A majority of my course work was in geography and statistics. I found these departments to have the classes that best suited my research and interests.

While I was working on my thesis, Jennifer Lough came to the University of Missouri to pursue a PhD in soil science. Jennifer and I became very good friends, and in October of 2000 we began dating. By the middle of January 2001, we were engaged. Our wedding will be on October 6 of this year near Cape Girardeau, Missouri.

Having successfully finished and defended my thesis, I graduated from the University of Missouri in December of 2000. At that time I worked for the University of Missouri as a senior research specialist. In that position, I was one of two people responsible for the analysis and interpretation of the data acquired through our research in SSCM.

One of the best parts about being a graduate student was attending conferences and professional meetings. I have given several presentations at international conferences throughout the United States. These conferences are a great place to network with other people and get the latest information on research and job availability.

In April of 2001, I attended the annual meetings of the American Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing. While at these meetings, Jennifer introduced me to some people from the Institute for Technology Development (ITD), located at NASA's John C. Stennis Space Center near Gulfport, Mississippi. After visiting with them, I learned they had an open position at their southeast area office.

Ever since I was a little kid, I had dreamed of working for NASA. In June of 2001, that dream came true as Jennifer and I moved to Slidell, Louisiana-about 30 miles east of New Orleans-and I began working for ITD as a research scientist at NASA's Stennis Space Center.

When you tell people that you work at NASA, the first thing they ask about is the space program. Stennis is responsible for the testing and flight certification of the engines used on the space shuttle and numerous other spacecraft. The testing and certification program was initiated in the 1960's as a part of NASA's effort to put a man on the moon. It is often said, "if you want to get to space, you first have to go through Hancock County, Mississippi." NASA typically conducts engine tests two to three times a week. Believe me, you know when those tests are being conducted; the windows shake in our office building.

The Stennis Space Center is also the headquarters for NASA's Commercial Remote Sensing Program (CRSP). Through CRSP, the Ag20/20 program was created as means to develop and disseminate simple, innovative information tools that increase production efficiency, reduce the economic risks, and diminish environmental impacts associated with farming. Utilization of remotely sensed imagery-airborne or satellite-plays a key role in all these objectives.

My involvement is primarily on projects related to cotton, but we also conduct research with corn, soybeans, and wheat. Cotton is a high input crop. It costs roughly $460 to grow an acre of cotton. This cost is primarily due to inputs such as pesticides, plant growth regulators, fertilizers, etc. With the assistance of remotely sensed imagery and variable rate application equipment, we are able to target areas of the field that are in greatest need of pesticides, PGR, or other inputs.

Essentially, we are applying the practices learned in classes like "Introduction to Field Crop Production" or "Plant Pathology" to create variable-rate prescriptions for the fields. The key point stressed in these courses was that insects and diseases are more likely to occur in areas of the field exhibiting the most vigorous growth. The vigorous areas are identified in remotely sensed imagery through the use of vegetation indices such as the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI). Simply put, the NDVI quantifies the amount of vegetation present at a particular location in the field.

I believe UMC gave me an excellent background for not only my graduate education but also for my current and future careers. Outside of my agronomic background, I think the computer experience gained from UMC was invaluable. The technology background is especially important for the image processing, geographic information systems (GIS), and statistical analysis work that I perform.

In summary, I love living in the south! The people are very friendly, and the climate is wonderful. I enjoy my job, and I am looking forward to starting a life with Jennifer. Being on the cutting edge with the new technology is very exciting and promises to change the way things are done in the future.

If you would like more information about the Stennis Space Center or NASA's Commercial Remote Sensing Program and its agriculture-related research, visit www.ssc.nasa.gov or email me at jfridgen@iftd.org .