Sydnee Mason, an agricultural education and leadership major from Marshall, Missouri, was named Outstanding Sophomore at CAFNR’s 2019 Celebration of Excellence awards ceremony, held Thursday, April 11.

Mason is a student recruitment intern in the CAFNR Office of Academic Programs, in addition to serving as the CAFNR Ambassadors team leader and as an outreach specialist with Missouri Farmers Care. She served as the Missouri State FFA Secretary from April 2017-April 2018. She is also involved at Mizzou with Kappa Alpha Theta sorority, Mizzou Collegiate Farm Bureau, CAFNR Student Council and the CAFNR True Tigers.

“Sydnee leads with her heart. I’ve never met someone as passionate as Sydnee about making Missouri agriculture better. I’ve seen her lead others working with Missouri Farmers Care to advance the Agri-Ready county designations. Sydnee traveled to each potential Agri-Ready county several times to listen and address concerns from legislators, staff, and producers in counties across Missouri… Sydnee radiated positivity, spoke to her farm values, and worked with producers, consumers, and legislators to build a common purpose of bettering rural Missouri,” said John Tummons, assistant teaching professor, Agricultural Education and Leadership. “Sydnee is a great listener, and she uses listening as a strategy to transform others. She is genuine, leads with her values, and has an uncanny ability to develop rapport among a wide variety of people. Just last week, I was sitting in my office with a prospective student. Our meeting had gone long, but Sydnee knew the prospective student and visited with him for 30 minutes. Only after I returned to my calendar did I see Sydnee gave up her advising appointment with me to work with the prospective student – this is an everyday example of how Sydnee is making agriculture great by paying it forward.”