The Alumni Association of the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at Cornell University will honor six alumni and two faculty members at the association's annual alumni awards banquet Friday, Oct. 2.

The event will be held at Cornell's Statler Hotel in the Carrier Grand Ballroom at 6 p.m. Individuals may register for the banquet by contacting the Agriculture and Life Sciences (CALS) Alumni Office at 276 Roberts Hall, Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y. 14853, by Sept. 22. For information, call (607) 255-7651.

The Alumni Association is celebrating the 22nd anniversary of the Outstanding Alumni Awards and the 11th anniversary of the Young Alumni Achievement Awards. Ninety-three of the college's 44,000 alumni have been honored, including this year's recipients:

Stephen B. Ashley '62, MBA '64, is chairman and chief executive officer of the Ashley Group in Rochester, N.Y. He has been a member of the Cornell Council since 1971, and he was recently elected as a university trustee. Currently, he serves as chair of the Albert R. Mann Library Endowment Campaign Committee. He is among Cornell's Foremost Benefactors, having established the Stephen B. and Janice G. Ashley Graduate Fellowship in CALS in 1991. The Ashleys also own a farm and have three children, including Jillian, who received her Cornell bachelor's degree in 1996 from the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences.

Carole Friedman Bitter, Ph.D. '81, of Butler, Pa., is president and CEO of Friedman's Supermarkets, a 97-year-old, privately held family business with stores in Pennsylvania and West Virginia. For years she has returned to Cornell each spring as a guest lecturer in the food marketing classes. She currently serves on the Cornell Council, the Cornell Advisory Committee on Personal Enterprise and Small Business Management Program, as well as the Cornell Food Industry Management Advisory Board. In this capacity she directs a subcommittee which led the effort for the first ever "Food Industry Management Alumni Symposium," held on campus this summer. She also has been named as one of Pennsylvania's Best 50 Women in Business by the Business Journals of Pennsylvania.

Alfred H. Hicks '62, MBA '63, of Westbury, N.Y., has been president of Hicks Nurseries since 1967. He served on CAL's Advisory Council from 1990 to 1994. His gifts have been useful to Cornell Cooperative Extension and its efforts to meet the needs of local consumers and horticulture professionals.

Elwyn G. Voss '64, M.S. '72, owns Elwyn Voss and Associates in Norwich, N.Y. Prior to starting his own business over two decades ago, Voss worked for Cornell Cooperative Extension and earned the Outstanding Young Agent Award while working in Chenango County. He shares his expertise in estate planning as the chair of the college's Planned Giving Committee. He also was a member of Cornell Council, served on the CALS Advisory Council and the recent Cornell Campaign. He volunteers with 4-H and serves as a trustee of the New York State 4-H Foundation.

Thomas H. Wickham '62, M.S. '67, Ph.D. '71, is partner and general manager of Wickham's Farm in Southold, N.Y., a farm that is celebrating its quadcentennial this year. He was one of the early participants in Suffolk County's program of purchasing development rights to preserve farming. Prior to joining his family farm, he worked in the Philippines with the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) to carry out groundbreaking work on rice irrigation, and later he was selected as the first director general of the Irrigation Management Institute in Colombo, Sri Lanka. Wickham has served on the CALS Advisory Council and is often consulted for advise by those in the Department of Agricultural and Biological Engineering at Cornell.

Young Alumni Achievement Award:

John M. Clark '80, MBA '86, of Mohawk, N.Y., is the Northeast area manager for Alpharma Inc., an animal health and pharmaceutical company. For six years, he served as director of the ALS Alumni Association, including service as treasurer, vice president and president (1996-97), and he served on the Alumni Auditorium campaign and the most recent dean's search committee. He participates in local 4-H groups and projects and is an active member of the Eastern New York State Draft Horse Association.

Faculty Awards:

David L. Call '54, M.S. '58, Ph.D. '60, served as the Ronald P. Lynch Dean of Cornell's College of Agriculture and Life Sciences from 1978 to 1995. He had been the H.E. Babcock Professor of Food Economics and served as director of Cornell Cooperative Extension. During his tenure as dean, he started the American Indian Program, the Entrepreneurship and Personal Enterprise Program, the Cornell International Institute for Food, Agriculture and Development, the Center for the Environment, the Pro-Dairy Program, the Biotechnology Program and many facilities improvements. Also he was appointment by President George Bush to chair the National Nutritional Monitoring Systems Advisory Council in 1992. He lives in Ithaca.

Henry M. Munger '36, is a professor emeritus of plant breeding. For over 40 years, he worked in plant breeding, developing improved varieties of cucumbers, squash, melons, onions and tomatoes. Remarkably, over 95 percent of the cucumbers and nearly all carrots grown in the United States trace germplasm back to his breeding programs. His fight against diseases of vegetables has also left its mark, including the development of cucumbers, squash and melons resistant to virus diseases, powdery mildew and Fusarium wilt disease. Most significantly, he was the first U.S. recipient of the World Seed Prize in 1994, he was inducted into the Hall of Fame for the American Horticultural Sciences in 1995 and was awarded the Luther Burbank Award in 1996. He lives in Ithaca.