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  Purdue University

  
  
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• Biography

  I grew up on a dairy and grain farm surrounded by brackish tidal marshland in New Castle County, Delaware. Our farm is an oasis for wildlife and migratory birds. I have witnessed first had the importance of preserving agricultural heritage through the signing of the Delaware Farmland Preservation Act on our farm in 1991. I am passionate for the environment and sustainable agriculture. I started my college career at the University of Delaware and transferred to Cornell University, where I received a B.S in entomology. While I was studying at Cornell, I had the chance to become a member of the International Agriculture Program. I traveled to Honduras to evaluate agroecosytems and to Panama to study the communication and behavior of a stingless bee at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI). I completed my Master�s of Science at Cornell in 1998, specializing in grassland agronomy. My research involved evaluation and calibration of a commercial rising plate disk meter designed in New Zealand to estimate pasture biomass for United States. While at Cornell, I also participated in projects designed to increase the sustainability of dairy farms by improving persistence of white clover in pastures. I co-authored with Dr. Gary W. Fick a teaching publication, �Concepts of Sustainability and the Pasture Ecosystems" to give undergraduate students a broad understanding of the principles of sustainability specific to managed grasslands.
  
  In 2003, I completed my Ph.D. at North Carolina State University with Dr. Paul Mueller in the area of silvo-pastoral agroforestry. I studied the leguminous tree, black locust (Robinia psuedoacacia) and generated data on the herbaceous biomass production, as well as the intake and digestibility of the black locust foliage fed to meat goats. I worked on laboratory estimates of forage quality (IVDMD, NDF, ADF, and minerals), as well as amine and tannin content. As a graduate student at Cornell and at NCSU, I became heavily involved in the undergraduate teaching of grassland ecology, pasture management and forage production. This is when I knew my passion was to teach agriculture.
  
  Currently, I am an assistant professor (teaching and research) in the Agronomy Department at Purdue University. However, I started my career at the University of Florida as a Lecturer, where I developed curriculum in Plant Sciences, and academic technology such as the Comprehensive Resources for Observing Plants in a Visual Interactive Enhancement Window: CROPVIEW (http://www.purdue.edu/cropview), which hosts additional modueles with plant and seed idenification, and climatic biomes supporting agronomic crops. Most recently at Purdue, I have been working with dairy farm systems in Costa Rica. My regional research is based on cropping systems research for bio-fuels, including grain feed for beef production. Most of all, I strive to help the local small-scale farmers both locally and internationally.