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Jackie Mundt, ag advocate

By Ron Wilson, director of the Huck Boyd National Institute for Rural Development at Kansas State University

Growing food and growing people. Those two are not the same, but they both have to do with positive development for the future – and they are the two motivating priorities that inspire one young Kansas leader daily. They have helped propel her to not one, but two national agriculture awards.

Jackie Mundt
Jackie Mundt

Jackie Mundt is communications and marketing manager for Kanza Cooperative Association and a two-time winner of national awards from the American Farm Bureau Federation. She and Marc Rundell live on Marc’s family farm in Pratt County.

Jackie grew up on a dairy farm in Wisconsin. She was active in FFA and was elected national FFA president in 2004. Her duties involved traveling to FFA chapters, schools, and other meetings across the United States and beyond. One of those meetings was the state FFA convention in Fresno, California.

“I fell in love with the people and the campus there,” Jackie said. She ultimately enrolled at Fresno State University and earned a degree in agricultural communications. Along the way she met Kansas farmboy Marc Rundell. Continue reading “Jackie Mundt, ag advocate”

Joel Lovesee, Bluestem school

By Ron Wilson, director of the Huck Boyd National Institute for Rural Development at Kansas State University.

What was in your school classroom? I remember desks in straight rows, colorful posters on the wall, and a big blackboard up front. Today we’ll meet a school which has such classrooms, but also non-traditional places of learning such as a working barn and a downtown business. These innovative projects are being implemented by a school district in rural Kansas.

Bluestem Mercantile
Bluestem Mercantile

Joel Lovesee is superintendent of USD 205, which includes the Bluestem schools in Leon, Kansas. Joel grew up in Kinsley and went to Fort Hays State University where he met his wife Sonya. He became a teacher and later a school administrator. In 2008, he and his family moved to Leon where he became school principal. He was promoted to superintendent in 2013.

He takes an innovative approach to school leadership. Continue reading “Joel Lovesee, Bluestem school”