A new gift from the Amos family in memory of John Spencer will strengthen a longtime relationship between the Odum School of Ecology and the Jones Center at Ichauway, creating a scholarship for graduate students to work with faculty at both institutions.
The Odum School has a long relationship with the Jones Center, dating back to when the research institute was founded in rural southwestern Georgia nearly 35 years ago. At the time, advisors—including Eugene Odum—were working with the Robert W. Woodruff Foundation to create a plan for 29,000 acres that had served as a quail-hunting reserve for the long-time chair of The Coca-Cola Company.
When the foundation established the research center at Ichauway in 1991, the first director, Lindsay Boring, left a professor position at the University of Georgia to lead the new institute, but continued as adjunct faculty in the Odum School of Ecology and Warnell School of Forestry and Natural Resources.
Over the years, 170 graduate students, including many from the Odum School, have performed research at the Jones Center.
“Through Dr. Boring’s connections to Odum and his colleagues that he’d worked with over the years, he built the center from the ground up,” said Kier Klepzig, who became the Jones Center’s second director in 2017.
Students and faculty from universities across the Southeast have collected important ecological data at Ichauway, findings that help to conserve the unique longleaf pine and wiregrass ecology of that part of Georgia but also answer environmental questions important to other parts of the country.
While UGA has remained connected to the Jones Center over the years, some of the formal relationships ended as early leaders retired, Klepzig said.
“When Mark Hunter became dean at Odum, it was one of his priorities to rebuild that relationship,” he said.
“I was fortunate enough to visit the Jones Center many times during the 1990s,” said Hunter, Odum Chair in Ecology. “The combination of its unique ecology and its world-class research staff make it an exciting place to work and a wonderful opportunity for Odum’s students.”
Kathelen Amos, who established a fellowship at the Odum School in 2016 in memory of her son, John Spencer, felt the same when she visited the Jones Center in early 2024 in her role as a trustee of Emory University.
“I was fascinated by the breadth and variety of the subjects they were studying,” she said. “It seemed to me with my son’s love of the outdoors that he would have found the place fascinating—both in how it’s managed, but also in how carefully they measure all of the things that can affect wildlife habitat.”
When he died in 2016, John Spencer was a master’s student at Odum and was well known for his hard work, ready laugh and enthusiasm for the natural world. Adding to the family’s gift, more than 370 friends, classmates and colleagues contributed to the original scholarship fund, which supports two graduate students pursuing a degree and career in management and conservation of aquatic ecosystems.
Exploring the Jones Center, Amos thought how well the current fellowships were going and that it might be time to create another.
“I found myself, when I walked around the Jones Center, thinking, ‘Oh, I wish so much John had had an opportunity to come here.’
“And, subsequently, I’ve had an opportunity to meet people who have studied at the Jones Center, and each person just could not say enough about how much that experience informed and continues to provide inspiration for the work that they do.”
The first John Spencer Distinguished Fellow at Ichauway started studies in fall 2025. Isabelle “Bell” Scherick is originally from Los Angeles and graduated from Rice University in Houston, where she majored in ecology and evolutionary biology and minored in statistics. She is interested in fungal plant interactions and the downstream effects that fire has on soils.
She is seeking a Ph.D. in ecology and working with Jones Center plant ecologist David Mason, as well as Odum School associate professor Richard Hall and plant biology professor Anny Chung.
As Jones Center and Odum School faculty jointly supervise Spencer fellows, the students also will be jointly funded by the Odum School and the Woodruff Foundation. The cost sharing was intentional so that the research is truly a joint venture, Klepzig said.