The Meet & Greet tour wraps up this week with visits located at our Research and Extension Centers in Clarksville (Tuesday) and Keedysville (Thursday). It was great meeting everyone who has attended the events of the past two weeks. While conversations are brief, we will continue to have opportunities to meet in the future.
Last week’s campus Meet & Greet converged with the rain, perhaps changing plans for some who had planned to attend. It was fun to see a few students in attendance! Yesterday’s ‘Welcome Back’ event was another nice way to get to know some of our students. We had a good turnout for that with lots of energy and excitement about the year ahead. I am thinking about ways to interact with as many students as possible and hear how things are going for them. I need to brainstorm a bit with Joe Sullivan and the Academic Programs team. Time gets away quickly, but with an emphasis on retention of those students who choose AGNR upon admission, I need to determine how to make limited time most impactful. It is easy to get caught up in research, Extension, or meeting with partners but we all chose to work in higher education and need to keep students at the forefront of our priorities.
Last week I met with Provost Rice to talk through priorities and goals for AGNR during this upcoming year. While constant churn, chaos even, may challenge goal attainment, goals offer a focal point to keep us moving forward and not get distracted. As the AGNR goals for the year are finalized, I will share them so that we can all work together to surpass our targets. Retention of students who enter into AGNR is one of our key priorities.
In addition to the events this week, I have several individual meetings with partners and supporters this week. Often our donors have deep connections to AGNR with generations of alumni and agriculture and natural resource practitioners. Zoom works well for meeting those who are out of state, saving travel time and allowing more introductions to occur yet I look forward to those more personal in-person meetings.
I took advantage of the cooler weather this past weekend and walked around campus, visiting the various Testudos and hoping to stockpile some good luck. Students are already paying homage to Testudo in hopes of strong quiz and test scores. Later this week I have an investigator training so if there is a quiz at the end, I should be in good shape for it. I took advantage of the rainy period on Saturday to read the First Year Book. There is no question individuals may interpret the same words differently, but I thought it important that I remind myself of the actual words and not the interpretation of them by others. Next on my reading list is Perils and Promise.
Here’s a fun quiz: What Maryland institution has a center that has at its focus two projects; one about sustainable food systems and the other centered on the Jones Fall Watershed? The answer? It’s the Maryland Institute College of Art’s Center for Creative Impact. The Center Director, Lee Davis, is a recipient of MEIF funding, like our very own Martin Rabenhorst. I would be willing to bet AGNR could find some interesting partnerships with similar disciplines across our campus.