Adam Whalen, a graduate student at Mississippi State University, has been awarded the Mississippi Agricultural Consultants Association’s Outstanding Agriculture Student scholarship for 2014.

“We had a number of outstanding candidates,” says Clarksdale, Miss., consultant Bill Pellum, who announced the award at the organization’s annual conference at Mississippi State University, “but Adam was a real standout. We believe he has a bright future in agriculture.”

Whalen, who is from Cleveland, Miss., attended Mississippi Delta Community College and Delta State University before transferring to Mississippi State University, where he was a dean’s scholar and earned a B.S. degree in wildlife, fisheries, and aquaculture, with a minor in biology.

He entered the master’s degree program in 2012, with Drs. Angus Catchot and Jeff Gore as his advisors. Since April 2012, he has worked with Dr. Catchot, maintaining field plots and collecting data in cotton, corn, soybeans, wheat, grain sorghum, and stored grain.

His master’s project is honeybee exposure to insecticides commonly used in row crops.

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“Adam has done a lot of work on this project, and has presented his research at local, regional, and national forums,” Pellum said. “He hopes to carry this on into a Ph.D. project.”

In his master’s program, Whalen has been a straight A student and has been inducted into the Xi Sigma Pi Honor Society, the Pi Kappa Phi Honor Society, and was recognized for his communication skills with a first place awards in the Mississippi Entomology Association’s student paper contest in 2013.

He is a member of the Entomology Society of America, the Mississippi Entomology Association, and the MSU Entomology and Plant Pathology Club.

His career goal is to work in the agriculture industry or academia, with the aim of improving insecticidal compounds and/or traits for insect management in agronomic crops.