By Faith Peppers
University of Georgia
Jeffrey H. Dorfman, a University of Georgia professor of
agricultural economics, received the 2004 D.W. Brooks Award for
Excellence in Teaching Oct. 18 in Athens, Ga.
The award includes a framed certificate and $5,000 cash.
An outstanding teacher, Dorfman has been recognized with many
awards, including the department’s graduate teaching award in
1991 and 1992. He received the undergraduate teaching award in
1998, 2001 and 2003.
In 2004, Dorfman was presented the Southern Agricultural
Economics Association Distinguished Teaching of a Course Award in
recognition of his teaching “The Economics of Agricultural
Processing and Marketing.”
Effective teaching
This course helps prepare students to work in food industry jobs.
Students learn to apply basic economic principles to real-world
situations. The course prepares them to solve economic and
management problems they will likely face while working in the
food industry.
Dorfman was entrusted with teaching microeconomic principles to
introduce students to agricultural and applied economics and
recruit new majors. His teaching efforts were greatly successful.
Enrollment in the course increased by 50 percent, and students’
evaluations rated the course excellent.
Other winners
Other Brooks honorees this year were Debbie Purvis, county
extension programs, Bill Hurst, extension, Paul Bertsch, research
and Jack Houston, international agriculture.
The Brooks teaching award was first given in 1981. Two years
later, the awards were expanded to include research, extension
and county extension programs. An award for international
agriculture was added in 1988 and is given in even-numbered years.
Before the awards ceremony, Mark Drabenstott delivered the D.W.
Brooks Lecture, “The Brave New World for Land-grant
Universities.” Drabenstott is vice president and director of the
Center for the Study of Rural America at the Federal Reserve Bank
of Kansas City.
The lecture and awards are named for the late D.W. Brooks,
founder of Gold Kist, Inc., and Cotton States Mutual Insurance
Companies. Brooks was an advisor on agriculture and trade issues
to seven U.S. presidents.
(Faith Peppers is a news editor with the University of Georgia
College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences.)
