Dr. Robert Jones is the new president of our region’s largest educational and research hub. He took the helm at the University of Washington in August, and when we sat down recently, he shared a bit about his background and path to Seattle.

Jones says his parents were sharecroppers farming peanuts and cotton in southwest Georgia.

“Where most people would tell you the last thing you should have anything to do with if you grew up as a son of sharecroppers. I was innately curious about science, and particularly became very curious about plants”

It’s ultimately what set him on his academic path: Crop physiology.

“And in my case, it was corn, and the whole goal was to understand the impact of environment on physiological processes that would be disrupted and cause a reduction in the yield of a major agricultural crops under a global climate change scenario. 

This was before the term global climate change was coined, and so that's what I spent 34 and a half years trying to understand, how do we make corn more tolerant to heat and drought stress? 

And that basic physiological research has led to what is now most of the major agricultural crops being able to withstand temperatures and drought longer than they ever had before in the modern history of production agriculture.”

Jones spent more than three decades teaching and doing research at the University of Minnesota. He later led the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, where the enrollment grew by 25% and they launched a new medical school during his tenure. 

The University of Washington has a similar enrollment size to Illinois – more than 60-thousand students and 30-thousand faculty and staff.

So Soundside wanted to hear from the new university president… Roughly 100 days into his tenure, what’s his read on the biggest challenges and opportunities facing the school? 

We should note we are a self-sustaining service of the University of Washington, with editorial independence.

GUEST: University of Washington President, Dr. Robert Jones

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