The Institute of Applied Agriculture (IAA) prides itself on having top-notch teachers—and this year’s College and University-wide awards highlighted how great they are! Between them, IAA faculty members Roy Walls and Meredith Epstein have been honored with four major awards that highlight their contributions to teaching, advising, and promoting the College of Agriculture and Natural Resources’ (AGNR) mission.
Walls, who has taught for the IAA since 1990, won AGNR’s prestigious Paul A. Poffenberger Award for teaching and advising. Recipients of the Poffenberger Award must display high standards of teaching; creativity and innovation in the classroom; and a strong record of service to students. Roy embodies each of those qualities. A lifelong teacher of agriculture, Walls brings new technologies and methods into his classes at every opportunity. Nearly every IAA student takes Walls’s course, INAG 250: Agricultural Mechanics, which covers electricity, plumbing, welding, woodwork, metalwork, and introductory GPS technology, along with project planning, implementation, and safety protocols. Walls starts from the most basic principles to ensure that every student understands not just what to do, but also why. His students learn to problem-solve, plan and manage projects, and think critically about the needs of a particular situation.
Additionally, Walls won the 2019-2020 Provost's Excellence Award for Professional Track Faculty for his outstanding teaching. This campus-wide award, established in Fall 2015, recognizes the contributions of professional track faculty across all schools and colleges at UMD. In her award letter to Walls, the Provost commented, “The selection committee was struck by your commitment to teaching, your meticulous preparation for your labs, and the innovative techniques you employ in the classroom to instill confidence in your students. I was so pleased to learn that for many years you have also invested significant time on efforts that support the Institute of Applied Agriculture and agricultural education in the state.”
Outside the classroom, Walls is an invaluable resource for IAA faculty, staff, and students who need advice or assistance with technology. His efforts shape the educational experiences of all of the students in IAA courses. Additionally, he serves students through his work with the IAA’s scholarship committee and his volunteer work with the Maryland Agricultural Teachers Association and Maryland FFA. Walls loves opportunities to meet and encourage the next generation of agriculture students. His commitment to the full spectrum of education, from grade school through college and into careers, reflects both the University’s land grant mission and the spirit of the IAA, as this well-deserved award attests!
The IAA’s Sustainable Agriculture lecturer and advisor, Meredith Epstein, has also been rewarded for outstanding work; she was chosen as the recipient of this year’s Professional Track Faculty On-Campus Excellence Award. Epstein excels in many dimensions at the IAA: hands-on teaching; supportive, personal advising; and active collaboration to promote agriculture all over campus and beyond.
Epstein’s courses combine fundamental science and economics with practical skills. She also helps students build their consciousness of social justice and the human costs embedded in our food systems. She pushes her students to pursue critical thinking alongside ethical judgment and cultural understanding. Her I-Series course, INAG 123 (People, Planet, and Profit: Digging into Sustainable Agriculture) was voted one of the top ten most popular courses toward the UMD Sustainability Studies minor.
In addition to her work as a teacher and an advisor, Epstein strives to connect people and accomplish projects all over campus. She manages the Community Learning Garden (CLG), a living classroom for teaching urban agriculture and bio-intensive methods. The CLG was designed, built, and funded by partners from departments and units from all over the university—a testament to Epstein’s ability to bring partners together to accomplish a project—and ordinarily hosts events for all ages and audiences, from yoga classes to seed swaps. The garden always donates part of every harvest to the UMD Campus Pantry, which supports food-insecure community members. During the COVID-19 epidemic, all of the produce of the garden is being donated to the Campus Pantry. At the same time, as a co-chair of the College of Agriculture and Natural Resources Strategic Implementation Team for Optimizing Urban Environments (more commonly called the Green Team), she is committed not only to improving and expanding urban agriculture but to changing and expanding public awareness of modern agriculture.
In 2014, Epstein launched the Sustainable Agriculture Tuesdays lecture series, which has brought an average of ten speakers to campus every spring semester to present on a wide range of topics connected to food and farming. The lectures are open to the public and available either in person or via WebEx. This year, the College of Agriculture and Natural Resources has provided support for the series, which has been retitled the Sustainable Food Systems Lecture Series. To the IAA’s delight, this lecture series received AGNR’s brand-new Cornerstone Award, which recognizes contributions from AGNR faculty, staff, or external partners in an area defined by one of the college’s Strategic Initiatives—in this case, the initiative to Establish a Healthy Food System and Ensure Global Food and Nutritional Security.
Along with Epstein, this award recognizes the partners who have elevated this year’s series: strategic initiative team co-chairs Rohan Tikekar and Lisa Lachenmyer, AGNR Communications Director Graham Binder, and AGNR’s information technology guru Brad Paleg. Tikekar and Lachenmyer were instrumental in acquiring higher-profile speakers and providing travel stipends for them, and Binder (and the entire team in the AGNR Communications Office) led event promotion for the series. Paleg has attended every talk for the past two years of the series to provide technical support and manage the online audience; his support was particularly essential this year when the lectures were held remotely.
“Teaching is our top priority,” says IAA Director Glori Hyman, “and we’re fortunate to have some of the best teachers at the university working for our students.”
