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Your Land Grant Partner

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February 2025 FloridAgriculture eNewsletter

dr angleBy J. Scott Angle
[email protected]
@IFAS_VP

 

At UF/IFAS we’re making another investment in artificial intelligence (AI) to support Florida farmers. It’s not a machine. It’s a dean.

I can’t think of anyone who has devoted more time and thought to preparing the future workforce for an AI-driven world than Kati Migliaccio. That’s a big part of why I chose her to be the first new dean of the UF/IFAS College of Agricultural and Life Sciences (CALS) in a decade.

Dean Migliaccio (far right) takes a moment to celebrate the groundbreaking for the Department of Agricultural and Biological Engineering W.W. Glenn Teaching Building, a modern makerspace and hands-on mechanical workshop paired with an engineering design space, bringing together students majoring in biological engineering and agricultural operations management. We refer to the groundbreaking in the column.

As AI in Florida agriculture evolves, Migliaccio will reshape the education of the people who will work in it, some of them in jobs that don’t even exist yet.

In fact, she’s been doing it for years already. She led the group that developed a university-wide plan to ensure all students have access to opportunities to acquire AI knowledge and skills.

Migliaccio is an engineer and brings that problem-solving mindset to complex challenges. During her six years as chair of the UF/IFAS Department of Agricultural and Biological Engineering (ABE) she championed a holistic approach to innovation, encouraging teams to consider how individual problems and solutions interact and contribute to the bigger picture, rather than addressing each issue in isolation.

She has also marshalled the expertise of other UF colleges, especially the Herbert Wertheim College of Engineering, to seek solutions to agricultural challenges.

As dean, her focus on AI-related instruction will also now benefit students in departments such as Family, Youth and Community Sciences or Food Science and Human Nutrition.

Her engineer’s focus on practical solutions to real-world problems has helped drive a campaign to build a new workshop for ABE. We held a groundbreaking in the fall to kick off construction of the facility. When it’s done, it will be a hub for hands-on learning, where students can learn to use tools and develop technological prototypes you’ll be using as the AI-literate corps of graduates begin working for and with you.

She has also emerged as a leader in standing up agricultural technology workforce development programs statewide through our state college partners.

Engineers like Migliaccio also share an ethic of striving for continuous improvement and experimentation. That’s what has kept her department near the top for so long. At a university with lots of engineering departments, ABE ranks by far the highest, perennially in the top 10 nationally.

Migliaccio brings this ethic to her new job. CALS is already one of the top schools in the nation. To become the best, we need someone who never stops trying to improve things.

Migliaccio demonstrates and fosters the culture of excellence I seek across all UF/IFAS. With few peers matching our level of distinction nationally, a culture of excellence will help us compete with ourselves—striving to be better this year than last. To do more for our farmers and ranchers and foresters and fishers, as well as those who manage our natural resources.

A culture of excellence supports students with a world-class education, combining great instruction with practical experiences like internships. CALS will continue to produce graduates ready for work, advanced studies or service.

Those graduates will be ready to help you help Florida feed the world.

J. Scott Angle is the University of Florida’s Senior Vice President for Agriculture and Natural Resources and leader of the UF Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences (UF/IFAS).

 

 

 

 

Your Land Grant Partner

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October 2023 FloridAgriculture eNewsletter

dr angleBy J. Scott Angle
[email protected]
@IFAS_VP

When the Florida Farm Bureau Federation and UF/IFAS work together, we can help a youth from Live Oak develop into a voice for farmers and ranchers nationwide.

John Walt Boatright has returned the favor with years of service to both our organizations.

In fact, he started serving while he was still a student at the UF/IFAS College of Agricultural and Life Sciences (CALS). As a CALS ambassador, Boatright was the student speaker at our first Dinner of Distinction in 2012.

It’s our annual event honoring our staunchest supporters. Boatright has attended nearly all of them.

UF/IFAS Advancement’s Dinner of Distinction 2023. Photo taken 09-15-23

Boatright got to the podium again this year. This time he was silent as someone else spoke. Dean Elaine Turner told an audience of hundreds, “We are proud to have a part in his story through college and beyond,” before announcing Boatright as the recipient of the 2023 CALS Alumni and Friends Horizon Award for outstanding contributions to the College.

On the path from student speaker to guest of honor, Boatright established himself as a leading voice for agriculture policy. During his five and a half years in Gainesville, he regularly shared insights from his job as your FFBF director of national affairs with our faculty and students.

In fact, Boatright says, he understood that sharing those insights with UF/IFAS to be part of his job. He was told a major part of the reason FFBF headquarters is in Gainesville is to be close to UF, IFAS and CALS.

His sharing has taken many forms. Boatright served on the UF/IFAS Department of Agronomy’s industry advisory committee as well as on the Leadership Council for the UF/IFAS Department of Food and Resource Economics (FRE), his academic home as an undergraduate. He has spoken at every FRE Agricultural Policy Outlook Conference since his start at FFBF.

He’s been a repeat volunteer for CALS “Coffee and Careers” events on campus at which he meets with current undergraduates to review resumes and talk about his path from undergraduate to national leader.

CALS and FFBF both helped him along that path. Boatright acknowledges current FRE Chair Lisa House, who was his agribusiness management instructor a decade ago. FRE’s Mike Olexa taught him agricultural law.

Then-FFBF assistant to the president Kevin Morgan helped Boatright find just the right place in the organization. And Boatright’s former boss Jaime Jerrels mentored him in the policy arena.

So, it all seemed a bit surreal to Boatright to be held up as an honoree with his double-Gator Dad and House and Morgan in the audience, a dean handing him an award, a photographer documenting the moment, and this year’s CALS ambassadors greeting him.

As an FFBF professional and CALS Ambassador alumnus, Boatright has connected our two organizations in many ways, including speaking at meetings of the UF chapter of Collegiate Farm Bureau. It’s yet another way UF/IFAS and FFBF are growing Florida’s future.

Boatright wouldn’t be who he is and where he is if not for both our organizations. We thanked him for the decade he’s spent thanking us with his service.

Scott Angle is the University of Florida’s Interim Provost. Since 2020 he has served as UF’s Senior Vice President for Agriculture and Natural Resources and leader of the UF Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences (UF/IFAS).