Remembering professor emeriti Stehr and Hoopingarner
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EmailMSU Entomology experienced more loss this fall with the deaths of Fred Stehr and Roger Hoopingarner.
Frederick W. Stehr passed away on October 28, 2021. Stehr was a specialist in systematics with a focus on Lepidoptera and immature insects in general. He also made important contributions to the biological control of agricultural insect pests especially the cereal leaf beetle and alfalfa weevil. He is perhaps best known for authoring the two-volume “Immature Insects.” Long-awaited, this treatise became the primary means for identifying immature insects and continues to be the only comprehensive reference in the world.
Stehr served various roles within the Department during his career. As advisor of Entomology’s graduate student programs, he championed student excellence and success and participated in virtually all exams. He also served as director of the 1.5 million-specimen, A. J. Cook Arthropod Research Collection, one of the most important arthropod collections in the country. Stehr was an outdoors man and world traveler.
Roger A. Hoopingarner died on November 6, 2021. He specialized in apiculture for nearly 60 years and was one of the discipline’s foremost researchers. In retirement, he spoke and consulted at beekeeping associations and universities throughout the world on biology and management of honey bees.
One of his most noteworthy accomplishments was developing a research program around creating parasite-resistant bees, that would enable them to fend off the parasite-borne diseases that can easily decimate a bee population. In his later years he created the Roger and Barbara Hoopingarner Endowed Graduate Fellowship in Entomology to fund graduate assistants, and most recently, the Roger Hoopingarner Endowed Professorship in Apiculture and Entomology.
