“Don’t ask what the world needs…what the world needs is people who have come alive.” I come alive in learning about others' experiences, passions, and goals toward pursuing the best versions of themselves. I use my research to connect systems of in-career teacher support, agricultural education, teacher improvement and retention, and student success, around issues of teacher migration. I'm especially interested in applied and collaborative solutions to real issues facing practicing ag teachers.

As a wife, mom, dairy farm kid, teacher, and researcher, I'm driven by a desire to aid young adults in their route to becoming educators, so they too can better others.  Prior to joining the Department of Applied Economics in the Agricultural Education, Communications, and Marketing program, I completed my Ph.D. at Oregon State University in Education with an Agricultural Education option. Before that, I harnessed my strengths of learner, belief, positivity, responsibility, and individualization as a high school agriculture teacher.  During my five years as an agriculture teacher and FFA advisor, I worked to cultivate community relationships to aid in the development of students at all levels. I believe learning happens through experience and challenge, usually when we have the opportunity to fail first.

“Consciousness, being intentional, throws itself outward toward the world” (Greene, 2004, p. 130). Learning for learning’s sake will not do. A readiness of students to throw themselves into making the world a better place is the paramount call of education. Through my teaching, research, and opportunities to assist with coordinating graduate student onboarding I’ve been privileged to interact with others making their world a better place. SBAE is positioned as an ideal platform offering intentional inquiry, but it must go beyond intentional inquiry to prepare students to situate their perspectives and make an impact on the world. With redefined intelligence, students are empowered to act in partnership with their teacher as a facilitator of meaningful experience and reflection on that involvement. After all, I don’t have all the answers. I am a partner in attempting to learn more than I now know.