The 2023 North American Colleges and Teachers of Agriculture (NACTA) national conference was a great opportunity for Morningside AAFS faculty to display their teaching activities and knowledge at the national level.  NACTA Platform has given us the opportunity to share with other colleagues our innovative ideas of teaching agricultural concepts to the next generation.  The North American Colleges and Teachers of Agriculture (NACTA) is a professional society with a focus on scholarship of teaching and learning agriculture and related disciplines at the postsecondary level.  NACTA holds its national conference in June of each year at different college and university campuses across the US and Canada. In 2023, four faculty from the department of Applied Agricultural and Food Studies attended the 69th NACTA conference in Las Cruces, New Mexico from June 20-24, 2023.   Four abstracts from AAFS faculty were accepted for either poster or oral presentation to the 2023 NACTA national conference. 

●       Assessing Learning across VARK learning styles in an Ag Economics course (Poster).

Dr. Kinwa-Muzinga, Dr. Muzinga (School of Business), and Dr. Paulsen.

●       Contemporary Consumer Response to Ethical Violations and the New Standard for Corporate Social Responsibility (Poster).

Dr. Muzinga, Payton Redinius, and Dr. Kinwa-Muzinga

●       Award-Winning Assessment: The Role of Capstone Agriculture Course in Institutional Essential Skills and Programmatic Outcome Attainment (Poster).

Dr. Paulsen and Dr. Kinwa-Muzinga

●       Using a Collaborative Learning Project to Investigate Variability in an Introductory Precision Systems Course  (Oral)

Dan Witten

During the NACTA national conference, we had the opportunity to tour some agricultural businesses in Las Cruces and its surroundings.  Tom, Karen, and Annie visited the Pecans farms located in Dona Ana County, which is one the largest counties in pecan production in the US.  We also learned about the processing of beer in New Mexico University's brewing curriculum.  We finally sampled some local brewery products. Dan decided to sightsee the Santa Teresa livestock crossing area.  This is the largest land cattle crossing between Mexico and the United States.  Over 3000 head of cattle cross the border here each day.

Dr. Brooks and Dr. Kinwa-Muzinga were the recipients of two awards.  Dr. Annie Kinwa-Muzinga received the 2023 Educator Award and Dr. Keren Brooks was awarded the 2023 Graduate Student Teaching Award.  We are looking forward to the 2024 NACTA national conference in Wooster, OH. 

Dr. Annie Kinwa-Muzinga, Professor of Agribusiness in the Regina Roth Applied Agricultural and Food Studies Department was awarded the 2023 Educator Award from the North American Colleges and Teachers of Agriculture (NACTA) organization at their annual conference in Las Cruces, New Mexico in June.

The NACTA Educator Award recognizes Kinwa-Muzinga for her dedication and excellence in the teaching of agriculture at Morningside University. Kinwa-Muzinga previously received the NACTA Teaching Award of Merit in 2020. The NACTA Educator Award is a criterion-based award and is awarded upon successful peer review by a committee of NACTA members. 

“I have learned that it is difficult to change the world at once,” said Kinwa-Muzinga. However, if I can affect the life of one or two students, with the spillover effect, they will continue to influence others. I seek to display a positive attitude and enthusiasm toward my students and courses and encourage them to take the opportunity of studying abroad and undertake independent research projects that I supervise. As a teacher, I encourage my students to think independently. I welcome views that differ from mine, and I provide students with the means to support their intuitions by employing a rigorous critical framework for learning.” 

Kinwa-Muzinga has been a member of the faculty since 2018 and has been integral to the development of the agribusiness curriculum In the Regina Roth Applied Agricultural and Food Studies Department at Morningside. She previously served as a Professor and Agribusiness Program co-chair for the School of Agriculture at the University of Wisconsin-Platteville, where she had taught since 2002. She earned her B.S. degree in Economics from the University of Kinshasa with a Financial Management emphasis (1988). She also received both her MBA in Finance (1993) and Ph.D. in Agricultural Economics with specialization in Food and Agribusiness Management and Strategic Management with a significant Marketing component from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (2001). 

Kinwa-Muzinga’s research interests cover a broad array of projects related to agriculture as well as the scholarship of teaching including service-learning projects for women in agriculture, and agricultural growth and development. Her most read publication is on Gender Assessment of the Agricultural Sector: The Case of the Democratic Republic of Congo. This research was in collaboration with the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI). 

Besides dedicating time to UW-Platteville, Dr. Annie is also very family-oriented, being married with three children. Her husband Dr. Lawrence Muzinga is an Associate Professor at Morningside College.  She is an active advocate of diversity in Sioux land where she is the Vice-president of the Siouxland African Association.  

Dr. Keren Brooks, recently hired Assistant Professor of Agronomy in the Regina Roth Applied  Agricultural and Food Studies Department, was awarded the 2023 Graduate Student Teaching Award from the North American Colleges and Teachers of Agriculture (NACTA) organization at its annual conference in Las Cruces, New Mexico in June.

The NACTA Graduate Student Teaching Award recognized Brooks for her dedication and excellence in classroom instruction as a graduate student member of the organization. The award is criterion-based and reviewed by a committee of NACTA members. To qualify for the award, a graduate student must have been involved in classroom teaching at the postsecondary level for at least one year.

Brooks discovered her love for agriculture while riding in her dad’s Gleaner combine through the wheat fields of Kansas. She discovered her love for teaching as an undergraduate teaching assistant in crop science at Kansas State University where she received her undergraduate degree. While a PhD candidate at Virginia Tech University, she participated in the Graduate Teaching Scholars Program where she taught World Food Crops and Agricultural Global Food Security and Health classes and trained the 2019 Virginia Tech crops team.

"The joy I experienced teaching crop science lab is what motivated me to pursue graduate school; and it was the hope of teaching future agriculturalists that incentivized me to finish my degree," said Brooks. "I love to showcase the wonder of plants and explain how soil sustains life. I’m excited to inspire the next generation of plant and soil scientists at Morningside University."

Dr. Brooks recently began her service to Morningside University as an Assistant Professor on July 1 st . The Morningside University Regina Roth Agricultural and Food Studies program prepares students for careers in agricultural and food studies, agriculture education, agribusiness, environmental policy and law, agronomy, and food safety.

The Applied Agricultural and Food Studies Department hosted two professional development courses throughout the week of July 10-15, 2023. The courses, Managing a Greenhouse to Optimize Teaching & Learning, and Implementing Vertical Grow Systems, were both held in Morningside University’s new state-of-the-art Lags Greenhouse at the Rosen Ag Center. They were taught by Morningside’s Agriculture Teacher educator, Dr. Thomas Paulsen, leading horticultural industry expert, Don Josko from Sioux Falls, SD and Aundria Kirkhhoff with Tower Farms from Lincoln, NE.

This teacher training course was developed for agriculture and science educators focused on pursuing a greenhouse project at their own schools. Participants in the first course learned how to successfully manage a school greenhouse for effective experiential teaching and learning, the basics of a greenhouse design, including ventilation, irrigation, artificial lighting, and other typical greenhouse environmental control systems, and developed skills for managing aquaponic and hydroponic systems with a focus on facilitating student learning. Participants in the second course learned how to successfully manage hydroponic tower farms to effectively facilitate experiential teaching and student learning.

Dr. Kinwa-Muzinga Selected for the Global Learning in Agriculture (GLAC) Cohort

The Global Learning in Agriculture (GLAG) is a community of like-minded educators sharing ideas related to food security locally and in the world.  The mission of the GLAG is to empower educators through quality professional development in global agriculture and food security.  Membership to the GLAG community is available at no cost to any educator. 

The founders of this community wanted to explore the role that educators play in achieving global and developmental goals as agents of change and diffusers of innovation.   In collaboration with the World Food Prize Global Guides program, twenty-five (25) educators are selected every year to collaborate and contribute to different issues of global food security and Food Security Education.  Dr. Annie Kinwa-Muzinga of Morningside University is one of the 25 educators for the 2023-24 cohort aka Cohort 5.  This cohort regroups educators from across the world, representing various disciplines, all focused on addressing global challenges like food insecurity from August 2023 to March 2024.  The 9- month program consists of pre-immersion zoom activities every two weeks (From August 17 to October 12), face-to-face immersion conference in Des Moines, IA (October 22-27), and post immersion zoom activities (Dec –March 28, 2024).   Dr. Kinwa-Muzinga looks forward to sharing her experience related to diversity in food production and consumption. 

VentureWell Grant

In December 2022, a grant proposal “ Establishing an Interdisciplinary Experiential Entrepreneurship Ecosystem “ was submitted on behalf of the School of Business and the department of AAFS with Dr. Annie Kinwa-Muzinga as a CO-PI (Principal Investigator).  The purpose of the grant was to create an entrepreneurial ecosystem for students of all levels to engage in interdisciplinary student teams to experientially develop entrepreneurial skills.

This will be accomplished by creating, offering, and assessing the effectiveness of two courses, one covering the Foundations of Entrepreneurial Ventures, and the other an applied course in Applied Agricultural and Food Studies. The 2023 VentureWell grant was fully funded for three years.  As required by the grant, she attended VentureWell’s OPEN conference and the Innovation Futures Fellowship workshop in Alexandria, VA from March 20-25, 2023.  She continues to meet monthly with VentureWell team and other grantees for updates of the progress of the project.

National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Grant Training

Iowa Association of Agricultural Educators (IAAE) Conference 

In June Dr. Paulsen and Dan Witten attended the Iowa Association of Agricultural Educators Summer Conference.  The conference provided our faculty a chance to interact with over two hundred secondary teachers from across the state.  During the conference, faculty attended workshops and update sessions from the Department of Education and Iowa FFA Foundation.  As part of his IAAE board of directors duties, Dan facilitated multiple post-secondary sessions.  He also helped organize a workshop for pre-service undergraduate students.  During this workshop, thirteen students from four different post-secondary schools attended, including Jakob Jerabek from Morningside.  Jaokb noted that  “The experience opened my eyes and allowed me to connect with professionals and educators in the business.  It gave me an idea of what to expect next year when I start my teaching career”.  

Cassava Experience at the Morningside Garden