NACTA Newsletter - January 2025 (Eastern Region)

January 2025 (Eastern Region)

NACTA President Cheryl Wachenheim's Message
NACTA 2025 Conference Call for Poster and Oral Abstracts
New NACTA Members
How to Renew Your NACTA Membership
Featured NACTA Eastern Region Member: Mark Russell
Featured NACTA Eastern Region Student Member: Emma Steely
Eastern Region Publication Highlights
Eastern Region Events
Eastern Region Teaching Tip
Eastern Region Announcements
Eastern Region Open Content

NACTA Roundup with President Cheryl Wachenheim

Happy New Year!!!

January is awesome. Plenty of time to enjoy winter sports; a fresh semester with new students; and the opportunity to reflect on the past year as we work on annual reports.

This January marks for me a return to the faculty after serving for one year as interim chair to
accommodate a sabbatical. I learned a lot in the role. The role reinforced how thankful I am for our practice of building leaders in NACTA, and that our policies and processes reinforce that members are welcomed and encouraged to use their voice from the day they join. I have been a member of NACTA for approximately three decades and yet each week I seem to learn something new; often from the questions or challenges of a new member. This week I took an opportunity to reread our bylaws and standing rules to refresh myself on the framework and rules we have set for ourselves. I challenge you to do the same.

I am so very thankful for each of you, and look forward to working with you in 2025! Here is to a great new year. Reach out at any time.

Cheryl.

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NACTA 2025 Call for Poster and Oral Abstracts

The deadline is January 15, 2025!

For more information and how to submit your abstract, click here.

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New NACTA Members

Southern
Shannon Phillips, NC
Erin Vines, FL
Samrat Sikdar, MS
Rachel Biderman, FL
Tae Y.H. Young Lee, FL
Carissa Wonkka, FL
Kimberly Wiley, FL
Shane White, FL
Dengjun Wang, FL
Quenton Tuckett, FL
Troy Tarpley, FL
Zachary Siders, FL
Jacinto Wendell Pereira, FL
Luiz Passalacqua, FL
John Lai, FL
Bachir Kassas, FL
Daniel Hofstetter, FL
Marc Hensel, FL
Sebastian Galindo, FL
Kate Fogarty, FL
Stephen Flory, FL
Evelyn "Prissy" Fletcher, FL
Heather Enloe, FL
David Diehl, FL
Valerie De Anda Torres, FL
Thomas Anderson, FL
Peyton Beattie, FL
Charity Stallings, NC
Josie Bryan, FL
Fredy Altpeter, FL

Eastern
Nancy Dreschel, PA
Sudarshan Adhikari, OH
Andrew Conroy, NH
Deniz Cekmecelioglu, PA

Central
Bernadette O'Rourke, WI
Sophie Westbrook, KS

Canadian
Natacha Hogan
Jo Ann Chew
Leila Hickman
Anne Laarman

Other
Kristen Jakstis

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Renew Your NACTA Membership

NACTA is the largest professional development organization that focuses specifically on the scholarship of teaching and learning in agriculture, food and natural resources. Need to renew your membership? Want to invite a colleague to join? Want to change your membership status? Visit the  membership page here . We appreciate your NACTA membership!

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NACTA Eastern Region News

Featured Member: Mark Russell

Photo Above: Russell visiting with a leading mango and papaya farmer in Trinidad during a July 2023 Farmer to Farmer assignment where he focused on extension course planning and design of topics including Integrated Flood/Drought Management, What is IPM and How to Implement and Chadon beni Value Added Potential.

Why did you join NACTA? What does NACTA do for you?
As an animal scientist focused on Extension and teaching, I was seeking a community and organization that focused on “how and why” we conveyed the natural sciences education and not the content of those methods. At my first conferences in 1999 (Virginia Tech University, Blacksburg, VA) and 2000 (Delaware Valley College, Doylestown, PA), NACTA legends stressed that “if you care most about teaching and learning of students, then you are at the right conference”.

Describe a time you tried a new teaching method and how it went.
I have always believed in the 4-H “Learning by Doing” motto and thus have become a true fan of experiential learning and reflection methods. Fully applying Kolb’s Model and designing your teaching in ways that require student experiences in teams and then assigning written or video reflections are now my “go to” methods. These work well in the classroom and in international learning scenarios.

Tell us about your family.
I have been married to the same person for 46 year and Laurie and I have three “children”. The best collective story is their experiences is about living and learning in Armidale, NSW Australia during a sabbatical assignment at the University of New England. We spent the year learning new sports, traveling extensively across Australia and New Zealand and all catching the “international travel bug”.

What's your best introduction question or statement when meeting someone new?
When meeting new students, I find the question “What is your Best Next experience?” very useful to make them consider not “what you want to be someday” but how will you get prepared to move in that direction. Very few of us are ending our career doing anything at all what we thought we would do when we were in high school or college.

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Featured Student Member: Emma Steely

Photo Above: A photo of my father and myself at the Penn State Student Farm’s Summer Solstice celebration. I am a Summer Solstice baby, which means there is more time in the day to celebrate! If I could harness the warmth of the sun to share with others, I would.

What does NACTA do for you?
At this current point in my career, NACTA has afforded me the opportunity to collaborate with fellow graduate students, as well as industry professionals, to inspire me to push myself to innovate. Hearing the successes of others has inspired me to set my ideas into motion!

Describe a new teaching method you are contemplating doing and why.
I am considering incorporating physical wellness into my teaching philosophy. For example, giving students 30 seconds at the beginning of class to feel grounded in their learning. This stems from a practice I learned in my choir, where we would spend the first 10 minutes stretching our limbs and centering ourselves.

What is your most unique hobby and why do you enjoy it?
Though perhaps a bit boring, I enjoy taking myself out on excursions, like going out with a book and a drink. Though I am grateful to have amazing friends, I also am blessed to feel content in my own company.

Describe a moment of celebration/positivity: One moment you remember or had happen recently (within the past month) which brought joy or happiness.
Last month, I went home to teach an Introduction to Soils lesson to kids at a local farm/market. I received free barbeque from the restaurant upstairs for attending. I went home with enough barbeque for my mom and myself, as well as a carton of fresh strawberries and another filled with cherries. We turned on a period drama, and we sat and ate together before I returned home later that evening. What a blessing!

Publication Highlights

Our Regional Publication Highlights:

Title: Gendered Differences in Gendered Differences in Acknowledgements for Doctoral Acknowledgements for Doctoral Advisors at a Land-Grant University
Author List: Carolyn A. Copenheaver, Thomas J. Meacham, and Bryan A. Black
Corresponding author: Carolyn Copenheaver, Virginia Tech
Link: https://nactajournal.org/index.php/nactaj/article/view/177/97

Title Identification of Educational Gaps Identification of Educational Gaps in Data Science Training Across in Data Science Training Across Agricultural Genomics Agricultural Genomics
Author List: Gabriella Roby Dodd, Cedric Gondro, Tasia M. Taxis, Margaret Young, and Breno Fragomeni
Corresponding author: Breno Fragomeni, University of Connecticut
Link: https://nactajournal.org/index.php/nactaj/article/view/153/98

Events in the Region

We will be releasing a survey in the February issue to gather information about your interest in creating an Eastern Region Learning Community. This would enable us to meet monthly (virtually) to share tips, get advice, and mingle as a community.

Teaching Tip

If you have a favorite teaching tip you would like to share with our Eastern Region community, please share it with us!

Announcements

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Open Content

A little bit of humor to start the semester...

Source: http://doug-johnson.squarespace.com/blue-skunk-blog/

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