Dr. Hampton Savors Time as Professor, Matchmaker at BVU
After 26 years of service to BVU, Dr. James Hampton is set to retire. His legacy with the University endures through the Stine Endowment as it challenges and encourages eager students in a variety of fields.
As a child and young man, Dr. James Hampton resided in 17 places for at least one year. That’s the reality—and perhaps the benefit—of having a military father who also worked for the U.S. State Department.
“Moving that often emphasized the importance of family and an excitement about different people and cultures, but it also created an appetite for a center to my life,” he says.
Hampton finally found his “hometown” in Storm Lake and a new sense of family at Buena Vista University, upon his arrival in 1994. He retires this month, thus closing the book on a 26-year career serving BVU’s renowned School of Science.
“The attraction to BVU involved the beautiful facilities, the hardworking students, and what I viewed as a capable and caring college,” says Hampton. Then an Assistant Professor of Biology who taught botany, genetics, and cell biology, among others, Hampton joined forces with colleagues Dr. Rick Lampe and Dr. Gerald Poff, both of whom preceded him in retirement.
The Lake Preservation Association and the Izaak Walton League played roles in Hampton’s emergence as a leader on campus and within the community. “I became interested in water-quality testing on Storm Lake with students and those efforts were funded by a number of local organizations, which got me excited about attracting resources and matching them with interested research assistants. I sought out eager, capable undergraduates who wanted to see a particular task accomplished. I’d put the talent and money together, like a matchmaker.”
“We felt that if we could make the education of our students be 10 or 20 percent better, then as graduates they would go on to be 100% or 200% more successful. You end up getting what amounts to compound interest for our society for the rest of their lives.”
Dr. James Hampton
His work with students and those organizations on Storm Lake some two decades ago helped build figurative moorings for Storm Lake’s eventual 11-year dredging effort, a herculean task championed locally and by the Iowa Department of Natural Resources. Dredging gave rise to Project Awaysis, which secured $10 million in Vision Iowa funding and a 74-percent affirmative bond vote in Storm Lake, all of which resulted in the community’s greatest tourism and economic development undertaking in a generation, King’s Pointe Waterpark.
Hampton’s hands-on instruction expanded through his founding of a peer-mentored plant-tissue endeavor where students began manipulating the DNA of cells, a process that serves as the basis for genetically modified corn and soybeans. He began to train students in molecular biology cell culture as careers blossomed in the field. Fourteen sophomores who had taken Hampton’s biology course, students he referred to as his “Green Team,” answered his call to help train 80 freshmen in tissue culture techniques. Funding for the four-year effort came from a world leader in the field, agribusiness entrepreneur Harry Stine, CEO of Stine Seed Company, of Adel.
“I met Harry in 1999 and he was brilliant,” Hampton says, recalling the first of many trips to Stine’s farm. “I could tell immediately that his command of plant genetics was formidable and his business sense off-the-charts. His relentless focus on yield and the careful control of the resulting germ plasm have made him the most successful plant breeder since two other notable Iowans, Henry A. Wallace and Norman Borlaug.”
Stine helped fund dozens of research efforts, internships, and experiential learning endeavors involving travel for BVU students over the next several years. Ultimately, with Hampton’s leadership, Harry Stine established the Stine Endowment, which has already changed the lives of a generation of BVU students who’ve gone on to become doctors, researchers, educators, and business developers. Stine Endowment experiences have taken BVU students to six continents and dozens of countries, studying plant genetics, administering health care, tracking sharks, and diving into the latest advancements in computer science, to name a few.
Again, the effort involved matching eager, capable BVU students with the visionary Stine who could generously commit resources to bring experiences to fruition, changing lives in the process.
“We try to identify really good students and use our educational ability to fertilize and cultivate their interests and passions,” says Hampton, the Inaugural Stine Chair for High Impact Learning Strategies. “We felt that if we could make the education of our students be 10 or 20 percent better, then as graduates they would go on to be 100% or 200% more successful. You end up getting what amounts to compound interest for our society for the rest of their lives.”
Hampton asks each BVU Stine Fellow to submit a one-page paper of photos and text describing their work in the program, efforts Hampton edits for an annual Stine Report. Students also send Harry Stine a handwritten thank you note on a postcard from the location where they are serving their Stine Fellowship.
“We sponsor dozens of students per year and Harry ends up getting cards from all over world,” Hampton says. “He can see his impact in those postcards which reinforce that BVU students are doing some cool things as they change their lives and work to change the world around them. Most important, he can see that they are grateful for the experience.”
Hampton, too, is grateful for the program, excited about BVU’s continued emergence in the world, and both satisfied and humbled by his place within the equation.
“I will miss not being able to watch our students go from scared and uncertain to confident and expert,” says Hampton, who plans to continue his efforts matching financial resources with the drivers of discovery. “I’ve enjoyed seeing our program grow, and I’ve enjoyed having an effect on students. As I look back, I have this deep sense of satisfaction that our students have gone on to do great things for our society. It has been a pleasure for me to help leverage forces to generate better outcomes for my adopted home and our complicated and fascinating world.”
To compound the interest, one might say.