Robert Zeigler joined the Peace Corps and taught high school science in a small school in rural Zaire
Robert Zeigler earned his B.Sc. from the University of Illinois in 1972, after which he joined the Peace Corps and taught high school science in a small school in rural Zaire. Upon return from Zaire he married Crissan, and subsequently earned an M.Sc. from Oregon State University in Botany and Plant Pathology (Forest Ecology), then a Ph.D in Plant Pathology from Cornell University. Their first child, Nicholas, was born in Ithaca.
His doctoral thesis was on the Superelongation disease of cassava, with the field work conducted at the Centro Internacional de Agricultura Tropical (CIAT) in Cali, Colombia. Following completion of his Ph.D., he moved with his family to Burundi, where he headed a small maize improvement program for about three years. Their second child, Claire, was born under the light of a full moon in a small rural mission clinic in Burundi (but, that is another story). In 1985 the family moved back to Cali to take a position at CIAT where Bob served as rice pathologist for seven years and as Rice Program Leader from 1986 to 1992. His research focussed on rice hoja blanca virus (RHBV), bacterial sheath brown rot of rice, and especially rice blast disease. Their third child, Alison Rose, was born in Cali in the midst of some difficult times between the government and the narcotics industry. In 1992 the family moved to the Philippines after Bob took a position as pathologist and Program Leader at the international Rice Research Institute. There his research focused on rice blast disease and he was able to test a number of hypotheses related to the nature of durable resistance and population structure and dynamics of the blast pathogen in traditional rice growing environments. The term "myco-tourism" was coined by jealous colleagues to describe his research in the Indian Himalayas. In 1999, the Zeigler family moved to Manhattan Kansas, after Bob took up the position of Head of the Department of Plant Pathology and Director of the Plant Biotechnology Center at Kansas State University.
