Teaching Award

 Twenty-someodd years ago as a grad student, I had three major career goals. 

• I wanted to earn tenure somewhere. 
• I wanted to write and publish a book in my discipline. 
• I wanted to earn recognition for my teaching.

I was very surprised to publish the book before I even had a fulltime professor gig! Thanks to working as a post-doc with Per Pinstrup-Andersen, our Food Policy for Developing Countries was published in 2011.

I earned tenure at Tarleton in 2019.  I have expressed before how fortunate I have been to work with the wonderful men and women in this department and College of Business.

Somewhere along the line, I added a fourth goal to someday consult for the World Bank or another top international organization. I have indeed consulted for the World Bank at their train-the-teacher program with the Eurasian Food Security Center, as well as for the OECD, the European Parliament, and UNICEF thanks to working with Development International.

Friday, they announced the winners of this year's awards. One of our finance faculty, Nina Rogers, had been very diligent in gathering materials to help folks in the department get recognized, and I knew she had put me forward for the teaching award. When they were announcing the winners, Leah said they had a Lot of applications this time around. After describing some of my accomplishments in the classroom, she invited the winner to do their best Price is Right imitation and COME ON DOWN!

I jumped up. I screamed. I waved my hands in the air and ran down to get my certificate. I was thrilled. This was truly a dream come true!