PSU Teach Ag! Team: Laura Sankey Rice

Mrs. Laura Sankey Rice

"A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops." This quote by Henry Brooks Adams is a favorite of Laura Sankey Rice and it really does apply to her future goals. Rice (@LauraSankeyRice) is one of the newest faculty members here at Penn State in the Agriculture Education department and she hopes to continue to help develop the teacher preparation program to be one of the best in the nation.

She got her undergraduate degree from Penn State in 2007 then also got her Masters at Penn State in 2011. She is currently working on her PhD here at PSU so it is safe to say she has blue and white in her blood. When asked about her decision to work at Penn State Laura said, “I have a great respect for the teacher preparation program and the faculty within the program and was honored to have the opportunity to work with such great role models and help make a positive difference in the lives of students wanting to become well rounded, innovative agriculture educators.”

Before coming to PSU, Laura taught at Keystone Central Mountain and Clearfield Area High school. She also was a summer intern with Clearfield County Cooperative Extension. While teaching, Laura received a PAAE nomination for the “Teachers Turn the Key Award” in 2010 and also received a local grant to endorse and promote composting among the teachers at the school.

While she has many goals and hopes for the Agriculture Education program here at Penn State, the most important things in her life right now are her husband and their baby that’s on the way! Stop in the Ferguson building to say hello to Mrs. Sankey Rice and welcome here to the Ag Ed Family!

To learn more about starting on the path to having a career that makes a positive impact on the lives of students across the globe by becoming an agricultural educator, please contact the agricultural teacher education program at teachag@psu.edu. Follow us on Twitter at TeachAgPSU, on Facebook, or on our blog!

Laura Metrick 

2015 Student Teacher 

Twitter: @Its_LauraBeth

2014 Teach Ag Avenger

Newest Addition to the Ag Ed family: Feature on Jon Seaman

Students working on the Rain Garden
Project!

With the recent amount of people interested on teaching agriculture, events to go to, and meetings with potential students, it is hard trying to find time to organize everything. Jon Seaman (@JonSeamanAgEd), a Penn State graduate from 2007, has been hired to facilitate and run a lot of the programs that the Agricultural Extension and Education major has to offer, which includes, watching over the recent cohort of student teachers, looking over the Teach Ag! Avenger team, and much more!

Some students actually were allowed to run the machinery
for the garden project!

Mr. Seaman was a teacher before he came to PSU which allows us to get his personal insight on what we could do better  as teachers. He taught for 5 years at the Chambersburg Area Senior High School as an agriculture teacher and then at the Chambersburg Area Career Magnet School as applied STEM. During his times at both of those schools, he had his students rolling out several hands on assignments that gave them experiential learning! During his time there, he applied for several grants to help his school programs. He received a $5,000 grant from PA DEP to help support his schools community rain garden. He also received a $10,000 grant from the PA DEP again and used that money to install a 3,000 sq. ft. living roof on a portion of the high school. That project required to have the kids take over 21 tons of engineered soil up three stories one wheelbarrow at a time. All of the hard work and determination that the students had made the project amazing.

Students still working on the project!

By coming to Penn State, Jon is bringing all of his big dreams and plans to the college. In some short goals that he listed, he wants to establish a cross- curricular network of partners within the university as well as continuing to meet new students and build relationships with them. Looking into the future even more, he wants to get agricultural educators excited and trained to incorporate STEM, nanotechnology, and robotics, into their curriculum to keep agricultural education competitive with other curricular content areas.

With some many awesome goals and plans for the future, we are so happy to have Mr. Seaman at State College! If you ever want to stop by and say hello to Mr. Seaman (which he highly encourages!) his office is in 206 Ferguson!

To learn more about starting on the path to having a career that makes a positive impact on the lives of students across the globe by becoming an agricultural educator, please contact the agricultural teacher education program at teachag@psu.edu. Follow us on Twitter at TeachAgPSU, on Facebook, or on our blog!

Olivia Murphy-Sweet
Student Blogger
Teach Ag! Avenger
Twitter Handle @OSweetMurph
2016 Agricultural Education Student Teacher