SOMETHING TO CROW ABOUT: 50 YEARS OF TEACHING EXCELLENCE

COLLEGE STATION — Twelve raw eggs broken onto 12 white plastic plates are lined up on a long, narrow table in a Texas A&M University poultry laboratory, awaiting judgment.

To the untrained eye, the eggs are identical—a dozen indistinguishable yolks each encircled by equally interchangeable whites.

The door to the lab opens and in come 10 or 12 students, who begin eyeing the eggs appraisingly. Pen and paper in hand, the students inspect every egg, some of them squatting to peer at the eggs from the side, some glancing at a chart on a nearby wall for comparison.

The students are looking for subtle indicators of quality—how tall the yolk and albumen stand, how jagged the white’s edges are, and how far it spreads out from the yolk. Each student rates the eggs on a scale from 1 to 9, benchmarking them against U.S. Department of Agriculture and poultry industry standards. After each examination, the student scribbles a number on a form and moves to the next egg.

Twenty-two minutes later, all done, the students step back to watch, listen and sometimes argue, as their professor, Dr. Willie Krueger, walks along the table evaluating the eggs.

“Egg No. 1, I’m going to call a 7,” Krueger announces. The students check their sheets for their own ratings, some murmuring assent. An assistant positions a Haugh Unit Meter—a protractor-looking instrument—over the yolk and reads out the actual measurement: Yes, it’s a 7.

The next egg, Krueger pronounces a 5, and when the meter confirms it, scattered applause erupts from the students whose ranking matched his. The next egg is a close call, with some thinking it’s a 2 but Krueger and others arguing 3. He gives credit for both ratings.

Down the line Krueger goes, assessing each egg and prodding the students to agree or disagree with his rating. At egg 7, a student challenges Krueger’s rating of 6.

“I was leaning more toward 7, Doc,” the student says.

“I still think it’s a 6,” Krueger counters. “How many think it’s a 6?” Five hands go up. This time, Krueger won’t bend. It’s a 6.

Scenes like this play out most every Monday, Wednesday and Thursday of the spring and fall semesters at Texas A&M, as Krueger spends much of the afternoons and early evenings teaching students the finer points of poultry judging and product grading. He shows his charges how to distinguish the subtle differences among poultry and poultry products—intact eggs, broken-out eggs, live chickens and chicken carcasses. Krueger wants the students to learn more than what constitutes a Grade AA, Grade A, Grade B or Reject egg. He hopes they also gain confidence and learn to make good decisions and, especially, to defend those decisions well. He continually calls for their assessments and encourages debate.

“I want them to argue with me,” Krueger says. “If I can get my students to argue with me, that leads to discussion.”

“He loves to argue,” says Christine Grabouski, a former student who is now working on her master’s degree in agricultural education at Texas A&M. “If you don’t question and you don’t contradict him, he’s going to be upset with you. He loves students that’ll go up to him and say, ‘Doc, you’re wrong.’ He loves it.”

Krueger has been inciting dissent among Aggies for decades. In 2004 he marked 51 years of teaching poultry science at Texas A&M, having started work at the university in 1953—before many of his students’ parents were born.

For the past 21 years, he has also served as the coach of the school’s poultry judging team. Under Krueger’s tutelage, the team has been at or near the top of the collegiate pecking order almost every semester, winning 18 national championships and finishing second 10 times.

But Krueger and his teams haven’t always enjoyed rousing success. In his first semester as coach, the team placed 15th out of 17 universities.

“That was shocking,” Krueger remembers. “That was eye-opening. I’m a Type A personality. I like to win. I hate to be second at anything.”

The pain of losing was magnified by the response of his peers to the then 62-year-old rookie’s debut. “They laughed at me,” Krueger says. “They made fun of me—‘That old man thinks he can coach.’

“I told my team that we lost because of bad coaching. I taught them the wrong things.”

Krueger adapted his lessons, and the team improved the next semester. But Texas A&M still placed a disappointing 13th. “They laughed at me again,” Krueger recalls.

The third semester, the team took seventh place, and “they didn’t laugh as much,” he says. “I told them, ‘You’re going to regret the day that I started coaching.'”

Sure enough, his next team won the national championship, and Krueger has since enjoyed 17 more last laughs.

“Now they ask me when I’m going to quit,” he crows.

Nowadays some of Krueger’s fellow coaches across the nation say they consider him the “elder statesman” of poultry judging.

“He’s my fiercest competition,” says Dr. Timothy Chamblee, a poultry judging coach and associate professor of poultry science at Mississippi State University. “He’s an excellent coach. Everyone respects him. Everybody’s shooting for him because they know he’s the one to beat.”

Dr. Jason Emmert of the Center of Excellence for Poultry Science at the University of Arkansas says, “His team has been so competitive and so successful, I would look to him as the guru of poultry-judging, at least on the collegiate level.”

Preparing for the judging competitions offers students hands-on experience with the birds, and sharpens their senses as well.

“You’d be amazed at how well you can tell a lot of details by touch and by sight,” says Stacy Christian, a senior poultry science major and former member of the team. “You develop a lot of abilities that you never realized you had before.”

The students also gain confidence that will stand them in good stead after they graduate. “Many of our students have never excelled at anything,” Krueger says. “They really don’t know the fun of succeeding at something.

“I love to take a group of students and bring them along. Take them to a national competition and get them up to a level where they win and see their faces shine when they get those trophies. Just push them as hard as you can push them, and see them win.”

At four times their age, Krueger enjoys a special rapport with his poultry-judging team members. “I love students,” he says. “Even at 83 years old, I love to be around them.

“I hate old people. They complain about their illnesses and their troubles and how hard they work,” says Krueger, who has had six major surgeries. “That irritates me.”

Some students are surprised by the camaraderie they share with Krueger. “You would think that an 83-year-old would be pretty boring,” Grabouski says, “But he’s hilarious. He’ll crack jokes with the best of them.”

On trips to nationals, “every team tries to get something over on him,” says Jason Lee, a former poultry-judging team member and current assistant lecturer in the department. On one infamous trip, a team told him that they were choosing the restaurant for lunch.

They took him to Hooter’s, a restaurant famous for its chicken wings and buxom waitresses.

“He didn’t know what Hooter’s was,” Lee says.

In addition to their affection for him, the student judges also respect Krueger immensely, value his expertise and appreciate the many hours he devotes to the team each semester.

“He’s an awesome, awesome coach,” Grabouski says, echoing the words of several other team members. “Honestly, he is the best thing that ever happened to any of us. He spends a lot of time with you individually. He will work you as hard and as long as it takes to get you where you want to be. He will stay as long as you need him to.”

Grabouski plans to teach agriculture and coach judging teams at the high school level.

“He’s probably what I want to be like when I’m a teacher,” she says. “I want to hold my team to the standards he held us to, which are extremely high.”

Although he’s long past most people’s retirement age, Krueger keeps a busy schedule. Besides teaching the judging class and coaching the team, he teaches two other courses each semester.

The walls in Krueger’s office are lined with numerous awards for teaching excellence and public service. In the spring of 2004, the Texas A&M College of Agriculture and Life Sciences Student Council named him its Honor Professor of the Year. In November, he was recognized by the Center for Excellence in Poultry Science, the University of Arkansas and the Arkansas Poultry Federation for his 21 years of contributions to the National Collegiate Poultry Judging Contest, which is held at the University of Arkansas.

“He works like a 20-year-old,” says Cheyenne Campbell, a former Texas A&M national champion judging team member who’s a master’s student at Stephen F. Austin State University. “He’s in every morning at 8, and three days a week he works until at least 7 or 7:30.”

Back at the poultry lab with his students, Krueger is wrapping up his assessments of the broken-out eggs. Having had one after another of his ratings confirmed by the meter, Krueger looks up with a smile at the students gathered around the room.

“You folks realize, I’m just pretty good, huh?” he teases.

No one argues.

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