Wayne Buhler
State ESP Early Career Award

Professional Achievements:
Dr. Buhler is collaborates with faculty members who work with other pesticide and crop management-related programs, maintains effective communication and cooperation with federal (e.g., USDA and EPA) and state (e.g., NCDA&CS) partners to. He has completely renovated the PSEP program. He assessed agent training and program needs, and then presented the training and continues with the production and delivery of high quality training and educational resources. Evaluations and feedback indicate that he has been successful in gaining agent trust and respect by providing them with a plethora of meaningful and audience-appropriate training materials, responding promptly to their requests and inquiries, and empowering them to be effective pesticide safety educators. The new materials and programs he developed for agents have stimulated their interest in delivering high quality educational programs to our state's 39,000 certified pesticide applicators.

Significance:
Dr. Buhler is responsible for developing and distributing educational materials that are used for the certification and re-certification (continuing education) of private applicators, commercial applicators, and dealers of restricted-use pesticides. He instructs Agents assigned as Pesticide Coordinators are instructed on how to deliver these materials at the county level. Training provided within this framework enhances personal contact between certified pesticide applicators and staff of NCCE. The PSEP provides training and continuing education for approximately 24,000 private applicators, 14,000 commercial applicators, and 800 pesticide dealers. Annually16,000 applicators and dealers attend these educational programs.

He established the Southern Region Pesticide Safety Education Center (SR-PSEC) has brought recognition. The SR-PSEC is a training program consisting of an on-line tutorial and a 3-day workshop emphasizing hands-on methods for teaching proper pesticide handling. The goal of the Center is to equip Extension agents and state pesticide inspectors with the knowledge and resources necessary for them to be more effective and credible pesticide safety educators and regulators. His 2003 workshop included representatives from nearly all states in the southern region, 11 other states. His work received national recognition when the Chief of the USDA Pesticide Records Branch adapted and uses the Recordkeeping Manual for North Carolina Private Applicators (Buhler and Burnette, 2000) as the Federal Recordkeeping Book.