WIU School of Ag Honored as a Top Nationwide Program – Western Illinois University News

WIU School of Ag Honored as a Top Nationwide Program

January 6, 2022

“The success could be discovered on the coronary heart of WIU, Dr. Baker,” based on an NAAE information launch. “Dr. Baker has led this system since 1999, thus offering continuity of focus for all issues. Baker has the first duty for coordinating and delivering the ag schooling curriculum, supervising college and assist workers, and coordinating all actions related to the University farm.”

The NAAE pointed to a number of WIU programs which have helped the University develop into a chief in agricultural schooling, together with the Summer Experience in Ag Education, the place college students are interviewed for pupil trainer placements. They additionally praised the WIU program for establishing partnerships all through the state, together with working with St. Paul School in Macomb to show youthful youngsters concerning the agriculture trade, and with the Illinois Farm Bureau to sponsor the Collegiate FFA Greenhand Motivational Conference.

Baker mentioned it’s a true honor to have the University’s agricultural schooling program acknowledged by the nationwide group.

“This honor really displays the exhausting work and dedication of our graduates in securing instructing positions, and their potential to retain these positions, plus safe tenure,” mentioned Baker. “It can also be a privilege and honor to be nominated by your friends inside the state of Illinois to qualify for a Region IV award. It is a precedence of mine to make sure that our graduates take satisfaction of their institutional selection, as effectively as try to be the perfect educators they are often, and that their choice to develop into agricultural educators is by selection and never by likelihood.”

In addition to the WIU award, 2015 University alumnus Trent Taber, the agriculture trainer and FFA advisor at Cambridge School District, was additionally honored by the NAAE. Taber and the Cambridge High School agriculture program had been one of six agricultural teaching programs nationwide to obtain the 2021 NAAE Outstanding Secondary/Middle School Program award in the course of the nationwide conference.

More than 50 % of the scholars at Cambridge High School are enrolled in an agriculture class, the place the Three-Circle-Model of Agriculture Education is applied.

“Mr. Trent Taber has organized and managed the Cambridge agriculture program to be nationally-acknowledged in a selection of actions, and is greater than deserving of his Region IV award,” mentioned Baker.

The NAAE mentioned by way of Taber’s work as FFA chapter advisor at Cambridge High School, he stresses the significance of management improvement for all college students and encourages their participation and involvement of their chapter.

“This award recognition is a direct reflection of the exhausting work that the scholars, faculty workers, administration, alumni and neighborhood have put in to develop the long run of agriculture in Cambridge,” mentioned Taber. “We are so blessed as a small faculty to have stakeholders who see the worth in agricultural schooling.”

NAAE, with workplaces in Lexington, KY, is the skilled group for agricultural educators, with over 8,000 members nationwide. It gives skilled networking and improvement alternatives, skilled legal responsibility protection and in depth awards and recognition applications to its members. The mission of NAAE is “professionals offering agricultural schooling for the worldwide neighborhood by way of visionary management, advocacy and repair.”

For extra details about the WIU School of Agriculture, go to wiu.edu/agriculture.

Posted By: University Communications (U-Communications@wiu.edu)
Office of University Relations