October 31, 2025
The University of Maryland College of Agriculture and Natural Resources (UMD AGNR), along with the Harry R. Hughes Center for Agro-Ecology, would like to extend a warm wish for a happy retirement to Dr. Kate Everts, Director of the Wye Research and Education Center and the Hughes Center, after nearly 30 years with the University.
Originally from Wisconsin, Dr. Everts grew up immersed in agriculture and Extension. Her grandparents owned farms and her father had a career as an Extension agent, later serving as the director of the state’s 4-H program. She initially started college at the University of Minnesota with the intention of pursuing a degree in horticulture. One fortuitous guest speaker in a freshman-year introductory to horticulture class sparked her interest in plant pathology, “and it was that moment where I knew exactly what I wanted to do.”
Dr. Everts took an interest in Extension work while attaining her Master's Degree at Colorado State University, and later obtained her Ph.D. in plant pathology from Michigan State University, where she met her now-husband, Mark VanGessel.
The early years of her professional career took her from North Carolina as a postdoctoral research associate and back to Colorado, where she worked in a breeding program as a manager of disease research for Busch Agricultural Resources, and then briefly as a research associate for the University of Delaware. Then, in 1996, Dr. Everts was hired as an Assistant Professor and Extension plant pathologist at UMD in Plant Science and Landscape Architecture. She was located on Maryland’s Lower Eastern Shore, with a 20% appointment to the University of Delaware, replacing a faculty member who had been in that position for more than 40 years.
Dr. Everts said that the mission of land-grant universities to improve the lives of people in the state, enhance agricultural productivity and farm profitability, and improve environmental outcomes has always been a fundamental goal of her career.
“Extension teaching to me was a really rewarding experience,” Dr. Everts said.“I really enjoyed taking what we knew and seeing it put into practice in a farmer’s field—where it could make a real difference.”
Likewise, Dr. Everts’ research at the Lower Eastern Shore Research and Education Center, where she was stationed, focused on a mainstay crop on the Lower Eastern Shore — watermelons. Her most sustained effort was in researching Fusarium wilt in watermelon, and her team was able to identify a new race of the pathogen, and identify better management practices, and help to mitigate disease losses on the Shore.
Dr. Everts went through the tenure process and, in 2008, became a Professor at UMD AGNR in the Department of Plant Science and Landscape Architecture. Then, in 2020, just before the COVID-19 pandemic hit the nation, Dr. Everts was hired as the director of both the Wye Research and Education Center in Queenstown and the Hughes Center for Agro-Ecology, which is also located there.
“I had done a lot of work over the course of my career to help Maryland farmers, and the Director position was a way to do more, in a bigger way for the State of Maryland.”
A goal of Dr. Everts for the Wye REC was to ensure “that the Wye Research and Education Center stayed a premier farm where scientists could conduct agricultural and water quality research.”
At a retirement luncheon for Dr. Everts at the Wye REC on Monday, Oct. 27, the Associate Dean for Research and Associate Director of the Maryland Agricultural Experiment Stations, Dr. Puneet Srivastava, thanked Dr. Everts for several accomplishments: leading both the Wye REC and the Hughes Center through the pandemic; filling vacant positions; helping to facilitate a large donation of land to the Wye Angus program. Beyond that, Dr. Everts said she is proud to have seen Wye REC designated as a teaching location and to bring more students from UMD’s main campus to the Wye REC for hands-on learning. The renovation of an unused office building that was acquired while Dr. Everts led the Wye REC is now the site of regular meetings.
As Executive Director of the Hughes Center, Dr. Everts was responsible for managing and seeking outcomes for several statewide reports requested by the Maryland legislature, including the 2020 Technical Study of Changes in Forest Cover and Tree Canopy in Maryland, the 2022 Study in Preparation for a Maryland Agriculture Climate Vulnerability Assessment, and the upcoming Maryland Climate-Smart Agriculture: Roadmap to Resilience, which builds on the aforementioned 2022 report.
“I’m really proud to see these statewide reports have a legislative outcome. Having that science-based foundation to inform policy and legislation is what the Hughes Center should do to honor its mission,” she said, also noting that the Hughes Center’s annual process of funding scientific research brings solutions to important issues impacting Maryland’s agriculture and forestry sectors and its waterways.
Dr. Everts credits the Hughes Center for providing seed funding for some research initiatives that have since earned Maryland a reputation as a leader in the field, citing the Center’s funding for several saltwater intrusion projects. “It was because our Board recognized the importance of that issue and helped get the initial research going that Maryland scientists were able to leverage more resources and become national and international leaders in the area,” she said.
“The Hughes Center has a special and unique role in improving Maryland agriculture's profitability and environmental outcomes. There are a lot of organizations out there that care about agriculture and the environment. What we do is science-based. The Hughes Center is positioned to identify research that’s needed to move an issue forward, and I think we have to recognize that mission and stay focused on it.”
Dr. Everts credits much of her work and publications, including the three statewide reports from the Hughes Center during her time as director, as “team efforts,” thanking her colleagues, post-doctoral and graduate student researchers over the years who helped advance and publish their research. In terms of the future of agriculture, Dr. Everts is optimistic that Maryland’s forward-thinking farmers will meet and overcome challenges presented to them.
“Maryland farmers are impressive; they are businessmen and farmers, but they also are sensitive and concerned about the environment. I feel that having that kind of a base of people to work with is really encouraging,” she said. “In science, we have gone through, really, a revolution of understanding of molecular processes in plant and animal agriculture and soil microbial processes. We are at a period of time where there are great advancements in science that will help us meet challenges going forward.”