Giving to the Department of Agricultural Leadership, Education and Communications

To honor the lasting leadership legacies of Dr. Chris Townsend and Dr. Joe Townsend in the Department of Agricultural Leadership, Education, and Communications and the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at Texas A&M University, this funding will endow a chair in Leadership Education and Student Excellence. “Dr. Chris” and “Dr. Joe” established themselves as forward thinkers and are credited with the creation and development of signature academic initiatives related to leadership education theory and student development. They sought ways to find the best in students and help those students reach excellence.

ALEC is a community of faculty and students collaboratively engaged in innovative teaching and research.

1. Support for an innovative teaching laboratory. Classroom design often dictates teaching practices and student learning and engagement, especially for larger classes where lecture dominates. We seek support to fund the renovation of a classroom so that it can better support innovative teaching and function as a living laboratory to enhance student learning.

2. Support for a speaker series that seeks to bring in outside researchers and practitioners who can enrich our classes and research programs.

3. Funding for an Alumni Fellowship for top-notch graduate student applicants. This fund would support these special students for 4 years, including tuition and benefits. Such a fund would help the Department to recruit the absolute best students early before they had committed elsewhere.

There is a strong need for funding that supports and advances our high impact learning programs for undergraduates, including internships, service learning and undergraduate research programs. These capstone experiences are instrumental in supporting student intellectual and professional development.

1. Support for a service-learning program that engages undergraduates in solving real-world problems as part of existing courses. The problems identified by collaborating organizations such as Texas A&M AgriLife Extension, the Texas Rural Leadership Program, or our industry partners.

2. Support for study-abroad scholarships for undergraduates. Preparing undergraduates to be global citizens, comfortable working with people from other countries is a priority of the department. Our study-abroad programs are instrumental in meeting that goal.

3. Support for undergraduate research for Honors Students and/or those who aspire to attend graduate or professional school after graduation, specifically funding given to undergraduates to support their collaborations with faculty and their research teams.

The core mission of a great land-grant university like Texas A&M University is to engage in research that directly benefits and engages the public. Developing researcher-practitioner collaborations and partnerships from scratch is often challenging. To better address emerging societal grand challenges, we seek:

1. Funding to support short-term collaborations with companies, schools, nongovernmental organizations, and other types of organizations. These collaborations can expand our expertise in developing educational and research programs that address societal grand challenges as well as advance our understanding by placing academic knowledge within specific contexts. These types of collaborations are often crucial in developing successful proposals for larger federal grants.

2. Funding campaign to support Endowed Chairs or Professorships for assistant professors or associate professors with term limits.