How having fun with insects, the most abundant macro-animals on the planet, became synonymous with Purdue.
Rain or shine, Spring Fest is as certain as taxes in mid-April at Purdue. But lots of people still call the whole thing Bug Bowl. Tom Turpin, the mad hatter-clad professor who emcees the cricket spitting contest, refers to an article in a local newspaper article a few years back with a picture of a young girl who was asked about what she liked best about “Bug Bowl.” Her answer: milking a cow.
Bovine-sized bugs notwithstanding, Spring Fest, the university-wide celebration that incorporates activities and displays from agriculture through zoology, does owe a bit of a debt to the insect world. Crowds as large as 45,000 have tested fickle Midwestern weather to come to campus for the fun. From an outside perspective, it’s the cricket spitting, cockroach races, and mealworm munching that’s grabbed the lion’s share of the headlines over the last two decades. Bug Bowl has been featured in print: Time, People, and The Wall Street Journal for starters; on late night: both Leno and Letterman have mined the bugs for humor; and in a range of television programs: from CNN to Nickelodeon.
Still, the back-story of how Bug Bowl came to be may surprise you. It certainly surprised some dyed-in-the-wool academics in its early days. And the lessons learned: Maybe a dose of humor in these hallowed halls can help the medicine of science (here in the literal form of chocolate-covered crickets) go down.
Science, just not so serious
Turpin, now a professor of entomology, came to Purdue as a scientist. In fact, outside of a graduate level pest management course, he was a full-time researcher. Still, at faculty meetings he opined that there should be a class taught to non-entomology majors. “Not just people who needed it in their disciplines,” Turpin says, “but for those who would become interested in insects because of music and literature and so forth.”
When the department head, then Eldon Ortman, said the time had arrived for such a class, he was quick to put Turpin in charge of teaching it. Thus began Entomology 105, or Insects: Friend or Foe, in 1984. With a class minimum of six, Turpin says they only had five students on the first day. So he opened a window and wrangled a wandering engineering student into the classroom and strong-armed the young man into taking the class. Nearly 30 years later, Turpin says he still gets an occasional e-mail from that now working engineer who says he thinks of his old professor when he sees a squashed bug on the street.
Just like the first couple of Super Bowls weren’t actually called the Super Bowl when they first started, Bug Bowl got off to somewhat of a spontaneous, less-heralded start. In 1990, Turpin planned to have his 105 students participate in a cockroach race for extra credit. On the day of the race, Skip Davis, from WASK radio, stopped by the office to pick up the latest corn rootworm control recommendations for the upcoming season. When students stopped by with brightly painted American cockroaches, Davis asked what was going on.
“Skip went back to the radio station and announced that they were racing cockroaches at Purdue that evening and invited the listening audience to come and watch,” Turpin says. “At race time, the students from the class showed up, and because of Skip’s invitation, so did another 130 people from the Lafayette area.”
Turpin says two things dawned on him with that first cockroach race. First, he thought that there might be possibilities beyond extra credit points when it comes to extracurricular cockroach activities. Second, he wondered about the lack of springtime diversions in the greater Lafayette area.
A year later, with a few other areas of entomological interest added to the mix, Bug Bowl was born and opened to the public. Al York, a professor now retired, and Arwin Provonsha, the curator of the Purdue Entomological Research Collection (PERC), were a couple of Turpin’s early partners in the outreach program.
“We’ve had naysayers all along who thought that we were making fun of our science,” says Turpin, who believes they’ve now come around since seeing the reaction of the crowds. “We are teaching entomology. We’re just doing it in a fun way.”
The fun has evolved throughout the 21 years of Bug Bowl. In addition to cockroach races, Provonsha, the official voice of Roachhill Downs, began using Madagascar hissing cockroaches for tractor pull competitions. They now pull miniature toy tractors with Indiana, Purdue, and Notre Dame flags. Bug petting zoos let children and adults get up close with their favorite, or most feared, creepy crawlies. And the cricket spitting, Turpin’s brainchild, began in 1996. Dan Capps, a motorcycle mechanic from Madison, Wisconsin, set the Guinness World Record by launching a cricket just over 32 feet out of his mouth in 1998. Although Purdue’s Bug Bowl isn’t currently an officially recognized Guinness site, Jake Ivankovig let loose with a cricket spit that traveled nearly 38 feet in 2002. That’s a giant spit for a man.
Entomologists, born and made
Turpin says entomologists come in two classes — those born and those made. As a self-described “made entomologist,” Turpin likens his role to that of a religious zealot in his promotion of the bug world. Growing up in Kansas, he says he had no interest in insects other than the ones found on the family farm.
Provonsha may be more of a born entomologist, according to Turpin. He just needed the stars to align. A converted art major at the University of Utah, Provonsha worked as an illustrator for a professor of aquatic entomology and planned on becoming a high school biology teacher. He was fishing for aquatic samples in the Provo River when the light bulb went off in his head. “You mean I can get paid to do this?” he asked.
After earning his master’s at Utah, Provonsha arrived at Purdue in 1971. He’s the point person for identifying and tagging insects that pass through the PERC, which contains the largest, most complete insect reference collection in Indiana. The collection offers more than 2 million insects representing 150,000 species, and they add approximately 15,000 specimens each year.
In addition to calling the cockroach races at Bug Bowl, Provonsha has been the head judge and coordinator of the insect art contest, which takes K–12 entries and fills up the walls of Smith Hall over the Spring Fest weekend with colorful drawings. Provonsha sees the art contest as another entomology entry point. “Norman Rockwell said, ‘I only know what I draw.’ These kids are learning something by drawing an insect,” he says. “It’s not just artwork.”
Christian Oseto, is perhaps another “made” entomologist. Born in Japan and raised in Chicago, Oseto went from vertebrate embryology to the world of insects. Oseto was head of the department when Bug Bowl started to raise its antennae on Purdue’s campus. He heard the rumblings but wasn’t one of those who said, “This is science and it shouldn’t be fun.”
Like his colleagues, Oseto believes Bug Bowl’s combination of outreach and teaching not only introduces young people to the possibility of a career in entomology, but also helps open the doors to higher education.
Outreach, bridging gown and town
Jonathan Neal, an associate professor of entomology, now teaches Insects: Friend or Foe, a class that has grown from six in its first year to about 220 today. Neal grew up in West Virginia along the Ohio River and developed an early interest in bugs and biology. A high school biology teacher who was working for an advanced college degree inspired Neal to take a closer look at pesticides and pest controls and their environmental effects. He has made contributions to this green field, in both industry and academia, by finding better ways of doing things.
His classroom contributions include giving non-entomology majors both a historical and practical view of the insect world. “Insects are among the first terrestrial animals,” Neal says. “They predate the dinosaurs by hundreds of millions of years.”
The practical advice comes with lectures on termites, bedbugs, and invasive species like the emerald ash borer. “Awareness can make a huge difference,” Neal says. “We really cover the intersection between science and society, and show how the public can help with some of these issues.”
About half of the students in the class help out with Bug Bowl, taking up posts at the various stations. As far as group projects go, Neal says this is one of the more successful ones. From the January callout to the April weekend, students gather materials, learning more about entomology along the way, working toward the event. He says college students don’t want to disappoint the many children and parents who visit Bug Bowl, so they’re inspired to create fun activities. “And the show must go on,” Neal says, “so failure isn’t an option.”
Melissa Shepson, an educational outreach coordinator, is responsible for making sure the fun goes off without a hitch. She’s helped field various media requests, which included a German film crew on hand at this year’s cricket-spitting competition. And beyond the educational laughs to be heard around Bug Bowl, Shepson sees the weekend as an important bridge between the university and the town.
In 2012, Purdue’s Department of Entomology is celebrating its centennial anniversary. Throughout 100 years, the department’s faculty have contributed cutting-edge research to the field and helped educate future entomologists. Maybe a few engineers.
Turpin is fond of saying that we all have relationships with insects — sometimes symbiotic, sometimes trying. The truth is they outnumber us, and in spite of the pests, we wouldn’t live long without them. Through Bug Bowl, Turpin and his two-legged cohorts are simply instilling a deeper appreciation, perhaps lessening some fears, about bugs. And they’re having some fun on the job.