Agriculture Workforce Training for Collaborative Leadership (AWT4CL)

by Eric Kaufman -- A few months ago, The Leadership Quarterly published an article on “Zombie leadership: Dead ideas that still walk among us” (Haslam et al., 2024) .  The article focuses on the “strong residual commitment to an older set of ideas which have been repeatedly debunked but which nevertheless resolutely refuse to die” (p. 1).  For example, one of the axioms of zombie leadership is that “leadership is a special skill limited to special people.”  This belief persists, despite “mountains of research” that highlight the detrimental effects of leadership approaches based on elitism (e.g., focusing on “high potentials”).  These zombie ideas are problematic because they limit the potential of leadership development.  As noted in the article: “By only looking for leadership amongst leaders we only find it there and bury all signs of leadership from below. By only recognizing, training, selecting and nurturing a few in positions of leadership we ensure tha...

By Megan Seibel  --   Recently, I had the pleasure of listening to a webinar sponsored by several national agricultural education organizations entitled, “Empowering Agricultural Education: Engaging and Retaining Leaders for Future Workforce Preparation.” Human resource experts from BASF , Elanco , and Syngenta shared insights related to wants and needs of future workforce, and how agricultural education can support both educators and students to address these needs in preparing for the future.  While the primary target audience of this session was educators of secondary students, the topics discussed proved to be in direct alignment with the programmatic goals of post-secondary education and training programs. When it comes to leadership skills sought by employers, there are ways to develop and enforce them at multiple times throughout a student’s education. Interest in particular careers may be planted early, so that they come to community college, university, and ca...

by Samson Adeoye -- With the increasing digitization of agriculture, cybersecurity has become an essential component of the agriculture curriculum ( Drape et al., 2021 ). Agricultural educators at the convergence of agriculture sciences and technology applications need to integrate cyberbiosecurity principles into their curriculum to prepare students to protect digital and biological systems from cyber threats. This integrative education is important not only for protecting sensitive agricultural data but also for ensuring the safety of food supply chains and the development of durable skills ( Aniagolu, 2024 ). The integration of cybersecurity into the agricultural curriculum not only has the benefit of preparing students for technical challenges but also fosters essential soft skills such as collaboration, leadership, and continuous learning. Embedding cybersecurity in agricultural curriculums can transform and empower agricultural students in several ways. Fostering Collaboration ...

by Curt Friedel -- You may have heard something that we have a leadership gap, with several books and articles more recently being written about this phenomenon. What is the leadership gap? In the simplest way, it can be described as the perception of current leaders being inadequate for the challenges of the future. The leadership gap is supported by research. Consider the following: §   Rosenthal, in the National Study in Confidence in Leadership (2012) – Discovered that 69% agree America is in a leadership crisis. §   Bailey 2017 – Fount that 13% of employees said their boss was dangerously incompetent. §   RandstatUSA (2018) – Indicates that 60% of employees left their jobs or are considering leaving because they don’t like their supervisor. A few key points are indicated in these citations. The leadership gap is global, it is across industries and beyond politics and started before the Covid-19 international pandemic. This is a small selection of research o...

by Adam O'Neal -- Based on input from a cohort of agriculture faculty from around Virginia, an Agriculture and Food Systems Peer Group has been constituted by the Virginia Community College System (VCCS) to serve the needs of agriculture program faculty around the Commonwealth of Virginia. Peer groups have existed for other disciplines for some time, but none for this area of study until now. From the shared experiences of the Agriculture Workforce Training for Collaborative Leadership (AWT4CL) cohort members and other agriculture faculty, we understand that collaboration at professional levels has proven challenging. This peer group promises potential benefits to agriculture faculty in unraveling professional challenges and related classroom and teaching concerns. Agriculture is the largest private industry in Virginia, with over 43,000 farms contributing to $82.3B a year in economic impact (Virginia Farm Bureau, n.d.). Though a number of Virginia Community College System ( V...

 By Tom Scales --  The Advisory Group for Southside Virginia Community College’s Agribusiness and Business programs meet every year. It is made up of business and industry leaders throughout SVCC’s 11 county service area. Every year people tell us that the need for the “soft skills” is often greater than their need for job skills when hiring people. A dairy farmer can teach people about cattle fairly easily because cattle are their livelihood. But it’s a different ballgame for that farmer to teach people about time management, politeness, neatness, communication, work ethic, motivation, responsibility, etc. Often, they will tell us, “we hire for attitude and then train for skills.”  Thus, they ask us to prepare our graduates for better attitude, willingness, and communication. For some, they see soft skills as more important than the actual job-related ones. (The milking machine they’d use on the job is probably different from the one I’d teach them on, so the farmer wo...

By Dr. Heather Lindberg --  Internships are a great opportunity for students to bridge the gap between classrooms—which emphasize theory with minimal practice and application—and industry, which focuses on applying theory and solving problems in real time with real consequences. Internships can help to address this gap. Research indicates that internships can help to ease this transition for students—from the classroom to the workforce—by providing dedicated mentorship, training, and experience within the industry setting (Veenstra, 2014) . Roanoke Valley, VA and surrounding areas are encouraging innovation related to agriculture, life sciences, and the biotechnology industry. Programs, such as Regional Acceleration and Mentoring Program (RAMP) , a regional business accelerator, help to support STEM-related startup companies.  Some of these startups will turn into companies, increasing employment opportunities in the region.  With these developments, there will be more o...