After serving over 127 years combined at Iowa State University (ISU), four Department of Genetics, Development and Cell Biology (GDCB) faculty retired in the 2022-23 academic year. 

Faculty retiring include Professor Emeritus Eve Wurtele (retirement date: July 31, 2022); and Professor Emeritus Thomas Peterson, Professor Emeritus Steve Rodermel and retired faculty Michael McCloskey (retirement date: Dec. 31, 2022).

Eve Wurtele
Wurtele joined ISU in 1988. She organized the first Plant Science Institute symposia series at ISU in 1999. She received the Pioneer DuPont Award for Iowa Women of Research Innovation and Leadership in 2012.

Wurtele received her bachelor’s degree from the University of California-Santa Cruz and her Ph.D. from the University of California-Los Angeles. After earning her Ph.D., she served as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of California-Davis and a research scientist at NPI, Inc. 

Thomas Peterson
Peterson joined ISU in 1993 as an associate professor. At ISU, Peterson received the Regents Award for Faculty Excellence from the Iowa Board of Regents and served as the Pioneer Chair in Maize Molecular Genetics in both GDCB and the Department of Agronomy. The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) named Peterson a Fellow in 2012.

Prior to joining ISU, he served as a National Science Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow at CSIRO, Australia, and a senior staff investigator at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York. He also worked with the Genetics Program at SUNY-Stonybrook. He received a bachelor of science in zoology at the University of California-Davis and his Ph.D. in biochemistry and molecular biology from the University of California-Santa Barbara. 

Steve Rodermel
Named an American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Fellow in 2011, Rodermel joined ISU as an assistant professor in 1990 after serving as a postdoctoral fellow, research associate and lecturer at Harvard University. 

While at ISU, he served as a Visiting Professor with the Research Institute of Innovative Technology for the Earth in Kyoto, Japan, in 1997, and a program director from 2003-2005 in the Integrative Organismal Biology Division at the National Science Foundation in Washington, D.C. He also served three years as Associate Dean for Research in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and received recognition as a Distinguished Professor in 2014.

Rodermel earned his bachelor of arts in philosophy from Yale University, his master of science in zoology and physiology from the University of Wyoming, and his Ph.D. in cellular and development biology from Harvard University.

Mike McCloskey
McCloskey joined ISU in 1989. Prior to joining ISU, he served as a fellow in membrane biophysics at Stanford University and University of California-Irvine, and a research scientist at Irvine.

He earned his bachelor of science in plant science from University of California-Riverside and his Ph.D. in biochemistry from University of California-Davis. 

GDCB thanks these faculty for their many years of service to Iowa State.