Ohio State Professor David Horn says teaching is a lot like being a minor-league baseball manager.”You get this raw material, and you can work with them and give them additional training before sending them on their way,” he said. Horn also said that like a coach, a teacher has to keep things fun and interesting.But Horn takes the comparison to the extreme. He encourages many of his students to join him on a softball team called The Maggots. The team consists of students and faculty in the entomology department.When asked why students like his class, Horn said laughing, “Well, I’m not sure they all do. But I like to think I am able to communicate my enthusiasm to some of them.”This enthusiasm Horn creates with some of his students is one reason he continues to teach. “I like working with my students,” he said. “I also like the range of students, going all the way from the beginning students to the advanced graduate students.”Horn, a professor of entomology at OSU, said he got involved with insects early. He credits his father for instilling insect interest in him by taking him bird watching, hiking and making insect collections.Becoming a summer camp counselor helped inspire Horn to teach. As a counselor, Horn taught a nature study class and coached baseball. “I enjoyed doing it. I thought it would be a nice way to put my career together.”After obtaining his bachelor’s degree from Harvard in 1965, Horn earned his master’s and doctorate at Cornell. He then taught for three years at a state college in the San Francisco Bay area before arriving at OSU in 1972. He has taught pest management here for 28 years.Junior communication major Michael Hinze described Horn as being knowledgeable and passionate about his work. “He tends to get a little excited when he teaches,” Hinze said.”Sometimes he would run around the classroom and get so excited he would run out of breath halfway through a sentence. He made it fun for the class and fun for his workers. His interests rubbed off on me.”Horn’s long career at OSU has allowed him to see changes in the university.”I think it’s become more cosmopolitan,” he said. “We’ve gotten more internationalized in our outlook, and we’re more productive as a research institution.” He also said he thinks the facilities at OSU have improved.Another change Horn has seen at OSU has been the increased difficulty of staying connected with colleagues and the university.”Before I saw my colleagues every day, now it could be two weeks,” he said. Horn thinks the distancing between colleagues may be due to funding being spread out, but he said that e-mail and answering machines have added to the problem.In the future, Horn sees his department going through some changes. He acknowledged there is a significant roll-over in faculty.”I think the new faculty is more research-oriented, and more global in their outlook. This is a good thing,” he said. When asked about plans for future retirement Horn said, “I just can’t imagine a life where I’m not involved with entomology. I’ve been doing this since I was nine years old. I’ll go face down in a pan of bugs, that’s the way I’d like to go. Or over out on some ridge in southern Ohio where the beetles find me first.”