UNL ORCA Interview Series
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Date of this Version
7-6-2026
Document Type
Article
Citation
Transcript, July 6, 2026
Abstract
Stephen Baenziger awarded the ORCA in 2011. He was born in 1951 in Toronto, Canada. When he was an infant, his family immigrated to the U.S., where he grew up in Des Plaines, Illinois. He earned a bachelor's in biological chemistry magna cum laude from Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Next, he earned a master's and doctorate in plant breeding and genetics at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana. Over the next decade, he worked for the USDA at Beltsville Agricultural Research Center in Maryland and then at the Monsanto Corporation in St. Louis, Missouri. In 1986, he joined the University of Nebraska-Lincoln as an associate professor of agronomy, later agronomy and horticulture, and rose quickly through the ranks while studying the genetics and breeding of small grains such as wheat, barley, and triticale. He retired in 2021 and still lives in Lincoln.
Included in
Agriculture Commons, Agronomy and Crop Sciences Commons, Higher Education Commons, Higher Education and Teaching Commons, Plant Breeding and Genetics Commons
Comments
Copyright 2026, Mark Griep. Used by permission.