UDMessenger

Volume 12, Number 2, 2003


Overseeing 'Harvard of golf industry'

As a University of Delaware plant science student in the late 1960s, John Piersol helped design an experimental golf putting green on south campus.

The work proved to be an emerald omen as today Piersol oversees a golf course management program at Lake City Community College in rural northern Florida that has been called "the Harvard of the golf industry."

Piersol, AG '70, has been an educator and administrator at Lake City Community College for nearly 30 years and chairs the college's Division of Golf, Landscape and Forestry.

As chairperson, he oversees five programs: golf course operations, which trains students
to become course superintendents; landscape technology, which trains landscape managers; turf equipment management, which trains students to work on the expensive equipment being used to maintain courses; irrigation management, which trains irrigation technicians; and forest management, another well-regarded program that trains field foresters.

The golf course operations program has gained an international reputation for excellence in the golf course management community, Piersol says, noting that a number of Lake City graduates are now superintendents of golf courses throughout the country.

Perhaps Piersol's favorite story concerns an inquiry from the United Kingdom that has provided him great fodder for the recruitment of students. "Three years ago," he says, "a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering in Great Britain called. He was interested in golf course management, and his friends in the UK kept telling him to contact Lake City Community College, which they said was the Harvard of the golf industry."

Piersol allows that Lake City is an unlikely place to find a first-rate golf course management program because the community itself has only two courses, with the bulk of Florida's courses well to the south. Yet he has built a solid program that offers a three-year associate in science degree, with training in mechanics, horticulture, agronomy and management.

With the golf industry booming, Piersol says he is enrolling a number of students who have already earned degrees, sometimes even advanced degrees, in other fields.

"This is very exciting," he says. "I feel very fortunate having gotten into education in 1974, and having found Lake City Community College."

Piersol's wife, Kay Paradis Piersol, AS '72 also graduated from UD with a degree in mathematics. The Double Dels are avid University of Delaware fans who loved their experience on the Newark campus and who keep in touch with the institution and friends made during their undergraduate days. They met during an open house at the Kappa Alpha fraternity, which Piersol says "was definitely a highlight of my time at UD."

The couple returns to campus whenever possible. "It is a great school and a great campus," Piersol says. "Delaware always had an Ivy League feel."

After graduation, Piersol served a two-year hitch in the Navy, much of which was spent helping provide logistical support for scientists in Antarctica. That proved to be a unique learning experience, as he came in contact with researchers surveying the relatively pure air of the continent, seeking dinosaur fossils and studying the protein in the blood of fish that acts like antifreeze and helps them survive in 28-degree water.

He then enrolled in the master of horticulture program at Colorado State University, where he developed an interest in community colleges and found his way to Lake City.

In Lake City, Kay Piersol has been a middle school math teacher for 11 years. "Teaching algebra is a challenge but UD prepared me well," she says.

The Piersols have four children, all University of North Florida Ospreys as opposed to Blue Hens, although son Todd claims they are all Blue Hens by birthright.

"In Lake City, there are two sects of football fans, those who root for the Florida State University Seminoles and those who root for the University of Florida Gators," Todd Piersol says. "When asked which team I pledged my support to, FSU or UF, I always responded, 'I'm a Blue Hen fan, but if the 'Noles and the Gators played, I'd pull for FSU.' Of course, what ensued was a lengthy description of what a Blue Hen was, and how I came to be a fan of UD. When the talk turned to Bobby Bowden and Steve Spurrier, I always had to throw a plug in for Tubby Raymond."

Todd was a pitcher at the University of North Florida and earned a degree in finance. He works for The First Tee, a program that teaches golf and the life skills the game embodies to eighth to 12th graders who ordinarily would not be exposed to it.

Oldest daughter Amy is a pediatric physical therapist in Lexington, Ky.; daughter Ketti is a pediatric nurse at Wolfson Children's Hospital in Jacksonville and says she hopes to earn a master's as a pediatric nurse practitioner; and youngest daughter Megan is studying biology at the University of North Florida in hopes of becoming a surgical physician's assistant.

Although Lake City is nearly 900 miles from Newark, the Piersols maintain strong ties to their alma mater and have attended UD Alumni Association events in Jacksonville.

They say they were thrilled when the Fightin' Blue Hens scheduled a game against Georgia Southern University in Statesboro in September 2001. UD didn't fare so well that day, falling 38-7, but Piersol says it was a pleasure just seeing the blue-and-gold uniforms and distinctive helmets once again.

--Neil Thomas, AS '76