New Agricultural Institute director named

Dr. Elizabeth Wilson, professor in the Department of Agricultural and Extension Education at N.C. State University, has been named director of the university’s Agricultural Institute and assistant director of academic programs for the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences.

On May 1, Wilson will succeed Dr. John Cornwell, a former institute director who came out of retirement to serve as interim director following Dr. Barbara Kirby. Kirby served in the position through August 2012.

The Agricultural Institute is a two-year program that provides hands-on technical education in agriculture and related areas. Students have access to the resources of a major land-grant institution as they work toward the associate of applied science degree.

Program areas include agribusiness management, agribusiness management with horticulture option, field crops technology, general agriculture, livestock and poultry management, ornamentals and landscape technology, and turfgrass management.

In addition to serving as a professor in the Department of Agricultural and Extension Education, Dr. Wilson is the undergraduate coordinator for the agricultural education degree. Before joining N.C. State University’s faculty as central region agricultural education coordinator in 1996, she was a high school agriculture teacher in Wilson, Johnston and Durham counties.

In 2000, she was named an assistant professor, teaching both undergraduate and graduate courses in agricultural education. Her teaching and research interests include teaching methods, integrated curricula, working with diverse learners and trends and issues in agriculture.

Wilson has won numerous teaching awards, including FFA’s National Agri-Science Teacher of the Year, the American Association for Agricultural Education’s Southern Region Distinguished Teaching Award, the American Vocational Education Research Association’s Outstanding Beginning Teacher and Scholar Award, N.C. State’s Outstanding Teaching Award and the Regional Teaching Award from the Association of Public and Land-Grant Universities. She is nationally known for her efforts to integrate biotechnology into agricultural curricula.

Wilson holds bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degrees from N.C. State University.

-D. Shore