State of the Agricultural Economics Graduate Program, Update April 2023

The Fall of 2022 was an active one for our Graduate Program.  We were excited to fund the first ever Graduate Program Networking, Relationship Building, and Recognition Grants in the Department, facilitating trips for several of our students to share their research and graduate program experiences with students at institutions around the country.  In addition, we were excited to devote time to AgEcon Graduate Student community building through our writing retreat at Martel Forest and Halloween and Winter Holiday events in the main office.

Our Graduate Students are working actively in all facets of our Land Grant Mission areas, including guiding in the educational endeavors of our undergraduate students via classroom and extracurricular activities, providing leadership in Extension and engagement activities, and conducting research.  AGEC Graduate Student Spotlights have shared our student’s stories and provided insights into our varying, yet uniting, motivations for AgEcon research, teaching, and Extension activities.

The Department recently received approval to offer a new Professional Masters in International Agribusiness entirely online last year.  This new Professional Masters in International Agribusiness degree allows students to select one Graduate Certificate to complete within (and towards!) their MS degree, either the Online Graduate Certificate in Spatial Data Science offered by the College of Agriculture or the Biotechnology Quality & Regulatory Compliance Graduate Certificate offered by Agricultural and Biological Engineering.  We will welcome students to this online Professional Masters in International Agribusiness for the first time in August of 2023!  We’re excited to offer this new online program for the first time alongside our residential MS and PhD programs, hybrid MS-MBA, and online MS-MJ programs.

We hosted our Graduate Student Recruitment on campus in March.  In addition to welcoming 17 visiting prospective MS and PhD students to our Department, we were excited to host a reception for the Department’s faculty, staff, and graduate students.  We are looking forward to welcoming nine incoming MS students and eight incoming PhD students to our Department this Fall.   We’re excited to continue to nurture the diverse community of scholars comprised of our graduate students, faculty, and staff in the Department of Agricultural Economics.

If you have questions about our AgEcon MS, PhD, MS-MJ, or Professional Masters in International Agribusiness (PMIA) Programs, please reach out to Ryan Good, Graduate Program Administrator, at rrgood@purdue.edu  If you have questions about the MS-MBA in Food and Agribusiness Management, please reach out to MS-MBA Program Manager Taryn Nance, at tnance@purdue.edu

Nicole Olynk Widmar

Dr. Nicole Olynk Widmar

Interim Assistant Dean of Agricultural Research and Graduate Education |College of Agriculture |Purdue University

Professor |Associate Head and Graduate Program Chair |Department of Agricultural Economics |Purdue University

Krannert Building | Room 656 | 403 W. State St. |West Lafayette, IN 47907-2056
Office: 765-494-2567 | Cell: 516-318-1736

Email: nwidmar@purdue.edu | Website: www.agecon.purdue.edu | Twitter: @ProfWidmar