Preparing Organizational Leaders in Agriculture through Innovative Leadership Case Studies Contextualized in Agricultural Disasters (2019-2022)

There is widespread acknowledgment of the importance in developing leadership skills of students studying agriculture (Crawford et al., 2011; NRC, 2009). However, faculty in technical agriculture fields may not the requisite knowledge for this task. This project will develop an online academy to teach faculty how to use case studies contextualized in agricultural disasters to embed leadership skills in their technical agriculture coursework. Forty faculty from agricultural disciplines across the southern U.S. will be selected through a competitive process to become POLA Fellows (Preparing Organizational Leaders in Agriculture). POLA Fellows will participate in a 14-week online academy to learn about agricultural disasters, leadership development, and case study teaching.  Under leadership from the project team, POLA Fellows will be organized in to three groups and then will then travel to an area impacted by an agricultural disaster to gather data to create a case study. Developed case studies will be reviewed for technical accuracy and the appropriateness of the embedded leadership competencies. POLA Fellows will then use the case study in their courses. All outputs from this project will be posted in a publicly accessible location for continued usage after the project ends.