July 12, 2017
Agronomy professor, graduate student win national honors
Kevin Donnelly, professor of agronomy, and Garrison Gundy, graduate student in agronomy, recently won national awards at the 2017 North American Colleges and Teachers of Agriculture, or NACTA, conference.
Donnelly received the Murray Brown Leadership Award. This award recognizes one member each year for a distinguished and sustained record of NACTA leadership. Donnelly has been the Central Regional director and president of NACTA, and is currently the NACTA historian. He was the NACTA Judging Conference liason for many years, and recently chaired the planning committee for the 2017 Judging Conference hosted by K-State. He presented an oral presentation, "Progress in Developing the Annual Judging Conference and Experiential Learning as Priorities for NACTA," and a poster, "Development of a New Precision Agriculture Competition for the NACTA Judging Conference," at the conference.
Gundy, a master's degree student advised by Anita Dille, professor of agronomy, won a Graduate Student Teaching Award at the NACTA conference. He presented the oral presentation "Is Classroom Polling an Effective Method for Facilitating Student Interaction?" The award is given to graduate students who are active in classroom instruction and demonstrate excellence as teaching assistants in agriculture disciplines. Applicants are reviewed by a committee of NACTA members and are evaluated based on the graduate student's teaching philosophy, involvement in teaching outside the classroom, self-evaluation, support letters from supervising faculty, administrator and student recommendations.