Clint Whipple I'm Clint Whipple and I'm an assistant professor in the department of biology. I do research on corn.
And in particular I work with developmental genetics. I try to identify mutants that affect development and identify the genes that are regulating those mutations.
We work down here at the Spanish Fork farm. And BYU has access to this really great resource. So I'm able to grow my corn and make crosses and do my research.
And those little tiny leafy structures are called glumes. And they enclose the flower and keep it protected
And so you can see the flowers are totally exposed and the anthers just kind of stick out.
And we're actually pretty interested in identifying the gene which has been mutated here.
Graduate students and potentially some post-docs as well would undertake the majority of the research out here.
So they would be out here in the farm with particular projects they are working on -- making crosses, setting up mapping populations -- those kind of things.
I personally love to be out here so I come out here all the time and do my own research. But this is definitely things that both undergraduates and graduate students will be involved in.
I was an undergraduate here. I got my BS in botany from BYU. I really feel like I got a great education here.
I didn't realize how great it was until I actually went to graduate school and I saw the education that the students were getting there
and I felt that in a lot of ways my education was far superior at BYU and I was really grateful for that.
And I was actually really excited to have the opportunity to come back and teach at BYU because I know the importance of undergraduate teaching and student mentoring in general at BYU.
And that that would be valued in addition to research and that research was also important but there was enough of a balance between those two. I thought that was great.
