Marcia Eames-Sheavly, Senior Lecturer and Senior Extension Associate in the SIPS Horticulture Section, and Matt Ryan, Associate Professor in the SIPS Soil & Crop Sciences Section, are among fourteen faculty and staff receiving 2020 CALS Dean’s Awards for their outstanding achievements in academics, teaching, advising and professional service.
Eames-Sheavly received the CALS Professor of Merit award. Since 1947, this award has recognized excellence in undergraduate teaching, and is considered particularly prestigious because the senior class chooses the recipient. Marcia has created and taught numerous courses primarily focusing on the intersections between art and horticulture, garden-based learning, and plants and human well-being, including The Art of Horticulture, the Seed to Supper two-semester course sequence, Intensive Study in Botanical Illustration, and several courses with travel experiences to Belize, including Healing Plants and the People Who Use Them. She recently developed Leadership through Peer Mentoring in the Plant Sciences which has served as one of the models for the new peer mentoring model in CALS.
Ryan was selected as the 2020 recipient of the SUNY Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Teaching. The Chancellor’s Awards for Excellence are system-level honors conferred to acknowledge and provide system-wide recognition for consistently superior professional achievement and to encourage the ongoing pursuit of excellence. Ryan teaches PLSCS 1900 – Sustainable Agriculture: Food, Farming, and the Future in the fall semester and PLSCS 3800 – Principles and Practices in Certified Organic Agriculture in the spring. As part of the PLSCS 1900 curriculum, students create short films about sustainable agriculture which are presented at an end-of-year film festival in Mann Library. Students in the latter class give presentations at the annual Organic Agriculture Symposium as part of their coursework.
Several films made by PLSCS 1900 students are listed:
- New Hands by Daniel Chamberlain (2015)
New Hands is a documentary about the need for beginning farmers in America. - The Pittsburgh Project by Emma Volk (2016)
This video serves to promote The Pittsburgh Project’s urban farm initiative. The cultural
benefits of urban farming provided by The Pittsburgh Project are highlighted. - Future Farmers by Meredith Lord (2016)
This documentary examines the individuals who are becoming farm operators with special attention to societal constructs, which are influencing the gender makeup of the farming population. - Sustainability for Profit on a Large Scale by Stuart Thornton (2018)
In this video, a farmer in Alabama shares her thoughts on sustainable agriculture.