I have always said that April is the busiest month on a college campus, and this year is no exception – with advisory board meetings, budget discussions, candidate interviews, evaluations, banquets and more!

In early April, I met with Gary Wheeler, CEO and executive director of Missouri Soybeans, and attended the CAFNR Scholarship Dinner where we heard from four outstanding students about the CAFNR Experience! I met with Missouri Farm Bureau and Mizzou Collegiate Farm Bureau; Food Science faculty; and Andy Stein, the area president for US Foods, St. Louis. And, of course, my annual spring budget planning meeting with Rhonda Gibler and Kathy Haynes. Then for a fun evening – SNR’s Trivia in the Wild scholarship fundraising event. My team did not repeat as champions, unfortunately, but it was great being together in person once again!

I was pleased to be invited to give an update on our college to the St. Louis Agribusiness Club at St. Louis Community College-Meramec. Later this month I will travel to the other side of the state for the Mizzou showcase at the Agricultural Business Council of Kansas City. Sen. Roy Blunt is the invited speaker for this annual event.

In mid-April, I attended the NSF CAREER awardee celebration hosted by President Mun Choi, enjoyed lunch with Ernie Verslues, our spring Executive-in-Residence, and participated in an Institute of Food Technologists committee meeting. I attended the Litton Leadership Scholars and Foundation Engagement event in Chillicothe – what a great evening – and the Greenley Memorial Farm Advisory Board meeting the next day. Today I am at the Land of the Osages Research Farm for an Advisory Board meeting, and tomorrow I will meet with the Hospitality Management Advisory Board.

I am thrilled that we will be honoring outstanding CAFNR faculty, staff and students tomorrow at the newly formatted Celebration of Excellence! I hope you have made plans to join us. I know it will be a wonderful celebration.

Later this week I will speak at the Missouri State FFA Convention and attend the Fisher Delta Research, Extension and Education Center Advisory Board meeting. Next week I will be in Washington, D.C., to meet with legislators and local alumni. I will also attend the Mizzou Faculty Recognition Awards Reception and Ceremony, the Sigma Alpha Symposium, and the Jefferson Club Board of Trustees meeting and dinner, where we will recognize CAFNR alumnus Bruce Mershon and wife Tracey.

The next time I share this newsletter the semester will be over and our seniors graduated! Thanks for all you will do in the next month to finish out our 2021-22 academic year!

CAFNR Proud,

Christopher R. Daubert, Ph.D.
CAFNR Vice Chancellor & Dean

Claire Shipp, a graduate student in agricultural and applied economics, has received the Mark Twain Fellowship, a highly competitive, MU-sponsored award that supports one Mizzou senior or recent graduate each year to pursue graduate study abroad in any discipline. The fellowship includes a $50,000 scholarship to cover tuition. Shipp earned the Truman Scholarship last year, and was planning on using that scholarship to study at the University of Oxford. With the addition of the Mark Twain Fellowship, she said she will now be able to cover the entire two-year program at Oxford, as well as do a year of research. Shipp plans on pursuing a master of science in nature, society and environmental governance at Oxford.

Marci Crosby, instructor in animal sciences, was honored with the Excellence in Advising Award from the Mizzou Advisors Forum. The award recognizes two individuals (one MU faculty member and one MU staff member) who have demonstrated the qualities associated with outstanding undergraduate student advising.

Several months ago, the Division of IT implemented extra protections in Outlook and Teams to ensure that links to webpages are processed through the Microsoft Safe Links service. The goal of the service is to block links that go to known problem sites. Since this has been implemented, we are seeing some of these “Safe Links” links showing up on university webpages. This is easy to do when you copy and paste a link sent to you via Outlook or Teams to put on a webpage.

Please make sure links on websites are the original, unmodified version. This ensures that our website users get the best experience possible. When you are copying a link from an Outlook email or Teams message, it is best to copy the link into a browser and then copy the actual link from the browser after the Safe Links processing has been completed (the page appears in the browser). Digital Service can assist you with these issues if you run into them – just send a request to https://mizzou.us/DSRequest.