The last few months have been busy for one former ISU professor – he received a prestigious award, retired and was the guest of honor at a party thrown by his former students. Gene Freeman, professor emeritus of animal science, received the American Society of Animal Science 2000 Morrison Award last July 24 in Maryland at the association’s conference. The award is named after F.W. Morrison, a renowned animal science professor. Freeman said he received the award after being nominated by one of his co-workers. “The award is all research-based,” he said. “Don Beitz, a professor in my department, nominated me by listing things I’d done through the years.” Beitz, distinguished professor of animal science, biochemistry, biophysics and molecular biology, said he nominated Freeman because of all he has done for animal science. “He’s been an extremely successful scientist throughout his career,” Beitz said. “I was not surprised he received the award.” However, Freeman said receiving the award did come as a surprise to him. “We’ve had some success since I started teaching here, so the award was very nice. It has a three-dimensional bust of Professor Morrison on it,” he said. Beitz said the department was very pleased to see one of its faculty receive such a high honor. “The animal science department is very proud. I also personally have very much enjoyed working with him – we feed off of each other. He’s a very good friend and also a good colleague,” he said. Beitz also said about a dozen of Feeman’s graduate students put on a scientific symposium in his honor following the awards ceremony. “The students completely organized the symposium by themselves; it was [not] associated with the award. They just wanted to do something to celebrate their professor,” he said. Since he began teaching at Iowa State in December of 1957, Freeman said he has conducted many research projects, but there is one he is particularly proud of. “We developed a way to predict the birth difficulty of calves from sires, which are their mothers. This has been very useful research for us, because 75 percent of our cattle are bred artificially,” he said. “One of my students actually analyzed the data we collected from that study for a research project, and now that information is used all over the world.” Freeman retired March 1, and his former students recently held a roast for him. “Basically what a roast is is that we had a nice dinner and then people told funny stories about me,” he said. “That was a fun day.” Though he no longer teaches classes, Freeman said he doesn’t think he will get bored. “For a while, I plan to still go to the office,” he said. “I also plan to travel with my wife, woodwork and play golf. I don’t think I’ll have trouble keeping busy.”