The director of the Arkansas Cooperative Extension Service announced Wednesday that he plans to retire from his position in June 2020.
Rick Cartwright, senior associate vice president for agriculture-extension at the University of Arkansas System's Division of Agriculture, became the director in August 2017. He had been interim associate vice president for agriculture-extension since Sept. 1, 2016.
Cartwright, who grew up on a farm in Stone County, started at the Division of Agriculture in 1992. He worked in its two primary units, the Agricultural Experiment Station and the Cooperative Extension Service. He has international recognition as a rice pathologist and earned his bachelor's and master's degrees at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville. He got a Ph.D. in plant pathology at the University of California-Davis.
The Division of Agriculture conducts research and provides information that includes agricultural production, protection of natural resources, family and consumer sciences, and 4-H programs. Each county in Arkansas has an office.
A nationwide search to find a new director for the Cooperative Extension Service will begin in the near future, said Mark Cochran, vice president-agriculture for the University of Arkansas System and head of the Division of Agriculture.
Metro on 08/16/2019