Dr. Floyd Scott, a Center of Excellence for Field Biology founder, remembered for his compassion
(Posted Aug. 24, 2021)
Austin Peay’s Center of Excellence for Field Biology lost one of its founding members, Dr. Floyd Scott, earlier this year.
“He was the closest thing to a brother that I ever had,” said Dr. Eugene Wofford, a longtime botanist at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. “He was a very kind, very compassionate person, and I miss him dearly.”
Wofford met Scott in 1961, when the two enrolled as freshmen – along with Floyd’s brother, Lloyd – at Austin Peay.
“He was not only my friend, he was my best friend,” Wofford said. “Everybody is going to miss him.”
Wofford and Scott also taught together for a few years at the University of South Alabama before deciding to pursue different advanced degrees.
“He was in herpetology, interested in snakes and frogs and salamanders, and I didn’t much care about snakes, so I decided I’ll just do plants,” Wofford said. “After that, we just stayed in touch.”
Scott was one of the team members who in 1985 wrote a proposal to the state to establish the Center of Excellence for Field Biology at Austin Peay. In 1986, he became one of the original principal investigators at the center.
Scott’s work at Land Between the Lakes goes back to the 1960s when he helped Dr. David Snyder survey the reptiles and amphibians of LBL.
“When I was an undergraduate, we would go out and spend all day and all night working in the LBL region,” Scott said in a 2016 interview. “Along with Dr. Snyder and several other students, we went up and down the roads of that area, working in the woods and around the streams, just trying to catalog all of the reptiles and amphibians we came across.”
That work culminated in 1972’s “Amphibians and Reptiles of Land Between the Lakes.” Scott worked to update the book, which published with the same name in 2016.
Scott died on April 25.
News Feed
View All News
APSU graduate English major Maisie Williams is taking her talents to Boston University's MFA program this fall after earning a highly competitive poetry fellowship. As a first-generation college student, Williams credits her success to the opportunities and support she has received at Austin Peay.
Read More
This semester, five students from Austin Peay State University's Department of Political Science and Public Management interned in various legislative offices with the Tennessee General Assembly and gained valuable experience contributing to the workings of the assembly.
Read More
Austin Peay State University's 12th annual Young Women's Leadership Symposium was held on March 22. This year's theme, "Women who Advocate for Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion," proved to be a transformative experience for attendees, with each workshop and speaker instilling a sense of empowerment and motivation.
Read More