Graduate Student Wins Watson Fellowship

Yan Xu has been awarded a $5,000 postgraduate grant by GCSAA as one of three winners of the 2008 Watson Fellowship Program.

The Watson Fellowship is funded by a partnership between The Toro Co. and The Environmental Institute for Golf. It is named after James R. Watson, Ph.D., a retired vice president for Toro who pioneered turfgrass research. The winners, students working toward master’s degrees and doctoral degrees, have been identified as promising future teachers and researchers in the field of golf course management. They also receive an all-expense paid trip to next week’s 2009 GCSAA Education Conference and Golf Industry Show in New Orleans.

Xu, who is from Nanjing, China, and earned an undergraduate degree from Nanjing University, is working toward a doctorate degree in turfgrass stress physiology at Rutgers University in New Jersey. The goal of her dissertation is to explore the hormonal regulation of heat tolerance in creeping bentgrass. Part of her dissertation has already been published in the Journal of American Society for Horticulture Science, in which she compared a unique bentgrass species originating from geothermal areas in Yellowstone National Park, to heat-sensitive creeping bentgrass, examining what mechanisms could contribute to superior thermal tolerance.