February 2021

In this issue:

President's Message
NACTA Featured Committee - Membership and PR
#NACTA21 Registration Officially Open
2021 NACTA Judging Conference Canceled
New NACTA Members
Renew or Become a New NACTA Member

President's Message

The signs are all there! Presentation abstract submissions and award nominations are in! Committees are hard at work! And the registration site is up and running! This must mean we are excitedly gearing up for the 2021 edition of the Annual NACTA Conference, June 21-24, 2021!

In this issue, you will learn more about NACTA’s Membership & Public Relations Committee. This committee has been very active, and along with the NACTA Regional Directors’ renewed efforts in their respective regions, there is a sense of renewed and reinvigorated commitment, vision, and purpose toward the continued growth and improvement of the organization and its members. We take this opportunity to thank Tracy Dougher (Montana State University) for her years of leadership and service as the outgoing Chair of this committee, and we welcome Shelly Sitton (Oklahoma State University) as the committee’s new Chair. If you have been meaning to get involved in NACTA at the committee level, right now may be an excellent time to take a closer look at the NACTA Membership & Public Relations Committee!

I would also like to extend a sincere thank you to Drew Cotton (Black Hawk College), Brad Ramsdale (University of Nebraska), and Hutchinson Community College for their work in planning the proposed 2021 NACTA Judging Conference. Even though we will not be able to meet this year, I hope and look forward to when we can hold a live event in the near future.

J. Marcos Fernandez
2020-21 NACTA President
Purdue University

NACTA Featured Committee - Membership & Public Relations

From a recorded interview with Shelly Sitton, Chair of NACTA Membership and PR Committee, on January 27, 2021.

What can you tell us about the Membership and PR Committee? Who are the members, what are the goals, and what projects are you currently working on?
I feel like our committee is very active and our members are excited about helping. We have a couple of young faculty members who have been on (our) calls and are very excited about getting involved.

Currently, we are working toward reaching out and engaging two-year colleges. Recently as we looked at the roster of institutional members, we noticed that there were quite a few two-year schools who paid membership solely to participate in a competition (like the annual Judging Conference). I believe there is a doorway there to share NACTA and the benefits of the association outside of just an annual competition. We are looking to see where we can grow membership and, to me, reaching out to these schools is a no-brainer. We can show these guys and gals the value of membership.

What kind of NACTA member is perfect for the Membership and PR Committee?
It would be a person who is passionate about NACTA. Someone who can make time to reach out to other people and talk about the benefits of NACTA. The people who make great committee members are people who see how others can benefit from membership. We do end up with folks in Communication but it doesn’t mean that we can’t use people from all different backgrounds. For me, what has always made NACTA wonderful is the diversity of disciplines that we have. That, and the passion of teaching. Having that same diversity on our committee allows us to speak the language of our peers better and enables us to better reach out to educators from all different disciplines.

What I’m trying to do is keep that enthusiasm going. It is super critical to our organization to get those young faculty members participating. They are our future leadership.

I got a lot of good help from Linda Martin and I wouldn’t be engaged in (NACTA) if it wasn’t for her. I think we need to leave the world in a better place than we found it, pay it forward, as it were, and for me it is going back to what she did for me. I really want to see other people take advantage of that same opportunity and help work toward that end.

Any final thoughts?
I would invite anybody to our meetings who want to help other people learn about NACTA.

#NACTA21 Registration Officially Open!

We are pleased to announce that registration for the 2021 NACTA Virtual Conference, to be held June 21-24, 2020 is now open. At this annual meeting of the North American Colleges and Teachers of Agriculture (NACTA), you will be able to connect with and learn from others who share the same passion for the improvement of teaching and learning in agriculture, food and natural resources. The annual NACTA conference will provide you with new teaching techniques, ideas and resources. It is also one of the best professional development activities for networking with other teaching professionals where the common discipline is “teaching.”

By registering for the virtual conference, you will gain access to your choice of workshops, each of the accepted poster presentations, oral presentations, award presentations and the annual business meeting. Some events, like the poster and oral presentations, will be presented on demand and available for 60 days after the conference. Please note that you will need to register and be signed-in to view any conference events or presentations.

Additional meeting details and registration can be found at www.nactaconference.org.

2021 NACTA Judging Conference Canceled
The 2021 NACTA Judging Conference at Hutchinson Community College, Hutchinson, Kansas, has been canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic, which continues to result in travel restrictions and other health protocol challenges for many colleges and universities. The NACTA organization considered and made this decision with everyone’s best interest in mind. NACTA expresses our great appreciation to the faculty and staff at Hutchinson Community College for their commitment to the contest and we look forward to partnering again in the future. Due to the logistical challenges and limitations for many of the agricultural contests, a virtual option is not being pursued.

New NACTA Members

NACTA had 51 new members in the last month. We hope you will join us in welcoming them!  

Renew or Become a New NACTA Member

NACTA is the largest professional development organization that focuses specifically on the scholarship of teaching and learning in agriculture, food and natural resources.

Need to renew your membership? Want to invite a colleague to join? Want to change your membership status? Visit the membership page here.

We appreciate your NACTA membership!