EXCEEDING EXCELLENCE
EARLY ON PLANT AND SOIL SCIENCES PROFESSOR RECEIVES NATIONAL TEACHING AWARD
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tudents need teachers who offer them perspective, who give them an opportunity to grow through hands-on learning, and who are leaders, innovators and trailblazers. Beatrix Haggard, plant and soil sciences associate professor at Oklahoma State University, received the 2021 United States Department of Agriculture Early Career Teaching Award in November 2021 for doing just that. “I always knew I wanted to teach,” Haggard said. “I used to hold study sessions in undergrad for my peers because I enjoyed trying to explain things that maybe others don’t understand.” Haggard grew up in Azle, Texas, a small town northwest of Fort Worth. Although Haggard had no farming or ranching background, her mother encouraged her to get involved with 4-H in junior high. “I saw a person in a 4-H jacket, and my mom said I needed to get involved in that,” Haggard said. “It all dominoed from there.” Haggard saw success early in her 4-H projects. “Literally, my entire agricultural journey started from an English Ivy plant that I grew,” Haggard said. At her first county fair, Haggard won reserve grand champion with her English Ivy plant and said she earned enough money from the sale to purchase her first show steer. 56 WINTER/SPRING 2022
In high school, Haggard joined the Azle FFA chapter and began thinking about pursuing a degree in agriculture. “I always wanted to do geology and that was where I was planning on heading,” Haggard said. “The subject was just fascinating to me.” However, a trip to see her sister who was attending Tarleton State University solidified her decision to pursue a future career in agriculture. “As a high school senior, I went and met the soils professor at TSU,” Haggard said. “At that point I thought, ‘OK, this is a good mix between agriculture and geology.’” Haggard earned her undergraduate degree in agronomy and range management in 2008 at TSU with a soils emphasis and a geology minor. She then attended Louisiana State University, where she earned her doctorate in agronomy in 2012. At LSU also is where she met her husband, Josh Lofton. “She has always been the dreamer,” Lofton said. Lofton, who grew up in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma, said they met during graduate school where at one point their desks were beside each other. “We dated and got married in 2011, and then we both graduated in 2012,” Lofton said. “The first big step in our marriage was trying to figure out with two doctorates in similar fields how we were both going to find jobs.”
Haggard and Lofton started their careers working for LSU — Lofton in a research-heavy position with a little bit of extension and Haggard in an extension-heavy job with a little bit of research, Lofton said. “She always told me that she wanted to teach, and I wanted to move closer to home eventually,” Lofton said. In 2015, the couple packed up and moved to Oklahoma. Here, they both joined the OSU Department of Plant and Soil Sciences. “It was clear during the interview process that Dr. Haggard had a strong work ethic, a positive attitude and a genuine interest in connecting with her students,” said Jeff Edwards, former plant and soils sciences department head. Haggard said the success she has found in teaching is due to her students. Not only does she enjoy interacting with them, but also she wants to see them enjoy agronomy and succeed as they pursue a career in the field, she said. “I try to teach that in the real world problems are not always going to have a clear-cut answer,” Haggard said. In her applied plant class, Haggard works to make the curriculum based on applied crop science principles. Getting her students comfortable with using terminology and addressing concepts that can be difficult to understand, Haggard said, is beneficial for
