Recognizing the 2024 Spring Winners of APLU’s Academic Programs Section Innovative Teaching Awards

APLU’s Board on Agriculture Assembly’s Academic Programs Section (APS) named winners of its 2024 Spring Innovative Teaching Awards. In their tenth year, the biannual awards are intended to bolster innovation in the post-secondary teaching of agriculture and related fields. Awardees share up to $5,000 per project, plus $2,000 in matching funds. The awards program encourages:   

• New faculty to expand their scholarship of teaching and learning by creating projects with more senior faculty from their own and other institutions.  
• Adoption of innovative teaching and learning experiences for students.  
• Institutional collaboration that expands the impact of creative projects to more institutions and students.  
• Motivation to seek additional funding for the scholarship of teaching and learning from additional sources.  

“This may be the junior faculty’s first monetary award which, when combined with the mentoring by working with senior faculty on the project, boosts their abilities as both a teacher and a researcher,” said Wendy Fink, Executive Director of APS. The 2024 Spring winners are:  

• Using Agricultural Simulations to Increase Students’ Ethical and Critical Thinking 
  Dr. Barry Boyd, Texas A&M University 
• AI-Enhanced Agricultural and Natural Resources Communication: An Exploration of Tools, Skills, and Teaching Practices to Prepare Professional Science Communicators and Scientists in the AI Age 
  Dr. Jamie Loizzo, University of Florida and Dr. Jacqueline Aenlle, Kansas State University