Biography

Dr. Bruce McPheron serves as the Dean of Penn State’s College of Agricultural Sciences, effective 1 July, 2009. A professor of Entomology, he was Associate Dean for Research and Graduate Education and Director of the Pennsylvania Agricultural Experiment Station in the College of Agricultural Sciences from March 2002–June 2009. McPheron received his B. S. degree from The Ohio State University and his M. S. and Ph. D. degrees from the University of Illinois. He spent three years working as a county extension educator in Clermont County, Ohio between graduate degrees, and he held a postdoctoral appointment at Louisiana State University before joining the Penn State faculty in 1988.

McPheron is active in agricultural research administration at the national level. He was recognized by the USDA in 2006 for his role in helping to develop a plan for national competitive ag research grants involving multiple land-grant universities, and he presented testimony to the U.S. House of Representatives Agriculture Committee in 2007 on behalf of all land-grant universities regarding the research title of the new Farm Bill. He was chair of ESCOP, the agricultural experiment station directors’ national association in 2007–08, is past chair of the National Agricultural Biotechnology Council, and is chair-elect of LEAD-21, a leadership development program of the nation’s agricultural academic community. In addition, he has held numerous regional leadership roles, including chairing NERA, the Northeast region's association of agricultural experiment station directors, and chairing the Board of Directors of the Northeast Regional Center for Rural Development for several years.

McPheron’s research expertise has been the use of genetic tools to examine population structure in pest insects. Most notably, molecular diagnostic methods for source identification of Mediterranean fruit fly developed in his laboratory have been adopted by USDA-APHIS and several state and international agencies. He was chair of the Tephritid Barcoding Initiative, an international collaboration sponsored by the Consortium for the Barcode of Life, which is developing molecular diagnostic tools for the fruit fly family Tephritidae for use by the research and regulatory communities. He has taught a wide range of classes in entomology and the use of molecular genetic tools in biological research to undergraduate and graduate audiences. His most recent course was a class called “Comparative U.S. and European Agriculture” that challenges students to evaluate and compare food systems in these two cultures.