INDUSTRY
Horticulture outreach recognized UGA's Bauske receives national honor by Josh Paine for CAES News
Contributed photo
UAC MAGAZINE | FALL 2020
Ellen Bauske, program coordinator in the UGA Center for Urban Agriculture, has received the American Society of Horticultural Science’s 2020 Extension Educator of the Year Award.
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Ellen Bauske is a boundary spanner — she’s
people to move as a group in the direction of accomplishment. It's a rare skill."
known as a person who brings people and organizations together on national, regional and local levels.
Harald Scherm, head of the Department of Plant Pathology, agrees. “Ellen has consistently reinvented herself and her Extension programming during the past 15 years,” he said. “She has been remarkably responsive to emerging needs and opportunities.”
It’s one of the many reasons she received the American Society of Horticultural Science’s 2020 Extension Educator of the Year Award, which recognizes an educator who has made an outstanding contribution to extension education in horticulture for more than 10 years.
Bauske currently serves as chair of the National Initiative for Consumer Horticulture, an organization she's worked with to strengthen academic and industry collaboration since 2012. Along with fellow academics, she gathers industry stakeholders and national leaders from nongovernmental organizations to help increase recognition of the human health, economic and environmental benefits of consumer horticulture.
Bauske serves as a program coordinator for the University of Georgia Center for Urban Agriculture in the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences. She has helped develop innovative programming in a variety of disciplines, including integrated pest management, water, consumer horticulture, Master Gardener Extension Volunteer training, community gardens, landscape and tree care worker safety.
The evolution of a 'doer' "Ellen Bauske is a doer,” said Dan Suiter, who is chair of the center’s faculty advisory committee. “Her formal training is in plant pathology, but she has been very adaptable in the many years she's been with the Center for Urban Agriculture. She, like no one I've known, can get
“For the first time in consumer horticulture, we’re making an effort to lock arms with our industry partners, and that’s a game changer. We’ve always paid attention to home gardeners, but now we have also reached out to our industry stakeholders, retailers and the services that meet the needs of gardeners. That includes landscapers, arborists, garden centers, garden writers and the many nonprofits involved in residential food production. We are forging those relationships now to build common ground. We’ve been putting out proposals for grants and they’re getting better and better.” ~ Ellen Bauske
