Laura Rice

I have a passion to live a life that will have lasting impact. The responsibility of being in a position of influence has been formative to my career approach. I began my agricultural education journey teaching high school school-based agricultural education as a Natural Resource Management teacher. I then transitioned to become an agricultural mechanics teacher, which became a passion and area of interest specific to teacher preparation. I am driven in facilitating authentic experiential educational opportunities that curates and stimulates personal development. Drawing heavily from a lifetime of engagement in agricultural education in multiple states, I strive for innovation bridging industry, secondary, post-secondary and community-centered learning in food, fiber, and natural resources.

As a teacher educator, I strive to provide teacher candidates with the training to be confident in pedagogical practices, technical content skill acquisition, and understanding how content pathways cut across STEM disciplines to connect agriculture and science through instruction, exploration, and activities. My objective as a leader is to motivate individuals to develop their own learning interests and critical thinking—to establish a learner-centered environment. 

In my current role, I will be teaching undergraduate and graduate courses in Agricultural Education. As a scholar in Agricultural Education, I also believe teaching and research should go hand in hand. An emphasis of some of my research is improving the teaching and learning process. More directly, my research has focused on identifying the discipline specific pedagogies effective in domestic and international institutions of postsecondary agriculture education. My research addresses the increasing demand to improve post-secondary education and challenging educational researchers to identify the ways of thinking and practicing characteristics of particular disciplines and identify how students are supported in becoming participants of particular disciplinary communities. My research interests continue to evolve to include exploration of pre-service teacher technical skill development and confidence in the realm of agricultural mechanics.