Jim Donohoe's first-class honours in agricultural science at the University of Queensland, an Australian Postgraduate Award and the Ben Brown Memorial Medal followed a secondary schooling in which he says he "didn't do well at all".
"I wasn't really into it," he said of his pre-university time. "It was just playtime."
But a love of the bush from holidays on relatives' properties at Oakey and Augathella led him to list agricultural science as his first teritary-education choice.
"I think I only just got in," said the Brisbane student, 21, who received an OP10.
But he went on to shine in the university world, choosing plant genetics as his career direction. His studies focused on biotechnology work on bananas, including investigating possible genetic causes of dwarfism in Cavendish bananas.
The Australian Postgraduate Award, a federal grant given to high-quality students, will allow Jim to undertake intensive research over the next three years and lead to a PhD degree.
The Brown Medal is in memory of former agricultural science student Ben Brown who graduated with first-class honours in 1990. He contracted cerebral malaria in Thailand and died in hospital in Singapore. He had also won a University Medal and had planned a PhD.
Jim Donohoe, along the way to completing his four-year degree course last year, received a Slade Scholarship for second-year agricultural science studies and won the Downing Brothers Bursary for academic discinction in third year.
The thrust of his postgraduate work will be with grain and fodder sorghum, looking to reduce genetically the plant's production of cyanide which makes it toxic to animals at certain stages of its growth. Jim's longer-term aim is to co-ordinate research programs in agricultural science and to teach.
University of Queensland 1998 graduate in agricultural science Sarah Meibusch, of Crows Nest, has won a Rotary Ambassadorship for a year's study for a master of professional studies degree at Cornell University in the United States.
For her agricultural science degree, Sarah majored in animal sciences, particularly in the fields of nutrition and genetics.
Through her interest in cattle judging - she was Australian Young Judge in 1997 - Sarah, 21, has won an Australian Simmental Association study tour of Canada. She will spend May, June and July visiting Canadian cattle studs before taking up her Cornell studies.
University of Queensland Gatton College student Suzanne Robertson has won an Australian Postgraduate Award after gaining her Bachelor of Applied Science in Rural Technology with a double major in agronomy and plant protection.
Suzanne, 26, of Pomona, who was awarded the College Medal and gave the graduand speech at the College's graduation ceremony, intends to do her PhD research in farming operations where crop management is integrated with animal production.
For futher information, contact Associate Professor David Edwards, Deputy Head of the School of Land and Food, the University of Queensland, telephone 07 3365 2058.
