The International Scene Stallworths' Endowment Makes Study-abroad Dreams a Reality

By: Jamie Creamer

In Bill Stallworth's dreams, every student enrolled in Auburn University's College of Agriculture would have the opportunity to spend a semester studying in a foreign country.

He's well aware that he alone can't make that happen. But the Auburn agricultural alumnus has laid the foundation for such a vision with AU International, a for-credit agricultural study-abroad program he and wife Margaret got off the ground five years ago.

Stallworth's enthusiasm for overseas study began several years back when the Stallworths' daughter, Kay, went to Austria for a semester while working toward an international studies degree from the University of North Carolina. Stallworth saw firsthand the positive impact such opportunities can have on students' college experiences, their careers and their lives.

"The chance to cross paths with so many people and to experience a different culture and look at the world and everything going on in it from a different point of view—you can't put a value on that," Stallworth says. "Kay gained so much from her experience. I want us to give students here at Auburn, in the College of Agriculture, that same kind of chance."

AU International is designed to give Auburn students majoring in agriculture or a field related to agriculture—including forestry, wildlife, zoology, botany, food technology and pre-veterinary medicine—the opportunity to experience firsthand agriculture on a global level.

There is no specific course of study for AU International. Instead, working with their advisers, interested students develop and justify their own proposed international study experiences. Programs of study can be set up as formally structured educational experiences, internships or cooperative work assignments.

Since its inception, the AU International Endowment has supported in full or in part six independent study-abroad experiences that sent College of Ag undergraduates to Germany, China, New Zealand, Morocco and Brazil.

And this past summer, AU International covered the $395-per-student study-abroad application fee for 14 horticulture and animal sciences majors who spent the summer semester studying at Myerscough College in England. (See related stories: An International Experience and Equine Study-abroad Venture)

The Stallworths established AU International with an initial gift of $50,000, but Stallworth's ever on the fundraising trail. He's waged letter-writing campaigns and talks the program up every chance he gets. By making tax-deductible contributions to the AU International Fund for Excellence, CoAg alumni and friends will be enabling students to study abroad for what he says is destined to be a "life-changing experience."

"The people the students meet, the conditions they witness and the insights they gain will influence their perspective on the world and will impact the rest of their lives," Stallworth says. "The more global the world grows, the more valuable these kinds of experiences are to our graduates."

The program can be an effective student recruitment tool, too, Stallworth says.

"Having these kinds of opportunities available, I'm convinced, will sway some folks who are considering Auburn into making that decision," he says.

If Stallworth sounds like a salesman, that's because he is one. In fact, a highly successful career in agricultural sales is what has put him in a position to establish AU International and otherwise financially support his alma mater.

"It's how I got what I've got," Stallworth says.

The native of the Beatrice (that's be-AT-ris) community in Monroe County embarked on his road to success in 1960, when, with strong family support and a much-appreciated Federal Land Bank scholarship, he enrolled in ag at Auburn. Four years later, he earned a degree in agricultural administrationÑwhat today would be ag economics.

From Auburn, he went straight to the U.S. Navy for a two-year stint—including a final assignment in Jacksonville, Fla., where he met the young lady who would become his wife—and then landed a job as an agricultural chemical sales representative with Dow Chemical in Charlotte, N.C. His next move was to Hoffman LaRoche, where the natural-born salesman covered the Southeast selling vitamin premixes to the feed industry.

In 1970, Stallworth and two other veteran ag products salesmen, Wayne Buffalo and Joe Kinman, formed The Buffalo Company. Working as manufacturers' representatives, the three covered six Southern states, marketing agricultural products to the feed and horticulture industries.

"The Buffalo Company was very successful," Stallworth says. "We always represented quality companies with quality products and sold to quality customers.

"We built solid relationships with those customers, too," he says. "Our business was based on trust. It was business by a handshake, and we never suffered because of that."

With the retirements of Buffalo in 1975 and Kinman 10 years later, Stallworth became chief principal of the company. Under his leadership, the business continued to prosper. In 1995, though, he sold the company to its employees and declared himself retired. The Stallworths moved to Tallahassee, Fla., to be halfway between his parents—now 89 and 90—in Beatrice and her mother, now 91, in Jacksonville. They made the move to Alabama, to Daphne, three years ago.

Stallworth spends a great deal of his so-called retirement life managing Redstick Properties, a stretch of family land along the Alabama River in Monroe County, for forestry, wildlife and recreation. That's been a monumental challenge in the past year, ever since Hurricane Ivan ravaged the land in September 2004. Cleanup crews that arrived on the scene last December were just beginning to see the light at the end of the tunnel in late summer, and then would begin the long process of restoration.

He and son Tom—another CoAg alum, with a degree in agricultural economics—are partners in The Redstick Company, a venture that includes ownership of Loco's Deli & Pub in Birmingham.

Endowing AU International isn't the Stallworths' only contribution to the College of Agriculture. Several years ago, they endowed the William Thomas Stallworth Scholarship, an award that's designed to recruit to the college high-caliber students who otherwise could be lost to other institutions.

For information on contributing to the AU International Fund for Excellence in the College of Agriculture, contact college development officer Chris Gary at 334-844-1136 or Mark Wilton at 334-844-1198.

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