Horticulture and Landscape Architecture department head honored by Conservation Technology Information Center

Story by Katherine Jacobson

Photo by Tom Campbell

July 12, 2024

Linda Prokopy, department head and professor of Horticulture and Landscape Architecture at Purdue University, recently received the Conservation Technology Information Center (CTIC) Hall of Fame award for her leadership in the social science aspects of conservation agriculture.

Ryan Heiniger, CTIC executive director, praised Prokopy’s commitment to working with farmers, policymakers and stakeholders to ensure healthy soil and clean water.

“In more than 20 years at Purdue University, Dr. Prokopy has advanced our understanding of how farmers make decisions about their practices, how they see their role in protecting the environment, and how they weigh the choices that they have to make every day in an industry full of risk and uncertainty,” he said in his remarks.

Prokopy received her B.S. in Natural Resources Policy from the University of Michigan and master’s and Ph.D. in Environmental Planning from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. During her time at Purdue, Prokopy has received numerous awards for outstanding research, extension and teaching, including the 2016 Corinne Alexander Spirit of the Land-Grant Mission Award, and served as director of the Indiana Water Resources Research Center and co-director of the Natural Resources and Environmental Sciences Interdisciplinary Undergraduate Program. She was appointed department head of horticulture and landscape architecture in 2021.

Prokopy also led several multi-million-dollar United States Department of Agriculture research projects, including Useful to Useable, which delivered tools to and changed the conversation on climate issues among farmers. Through the Diverse Corn Belt project, Prokopy led research, Extension and education activities to make Midwestern agriculture more resilient by diversifying farms, marketing and the agricultural landscape.

Reflecting on the CTIC’s position as a well-respected conservation agriculture organization, Prokopy was honored to see her work recognized.

“CTIC has the trust and respect of farmers, government agencies, agricultural businesses and many others, so receiving this award felt like an acknowledgment of my work from a diversity of players in the agricultural sector,” Prokopy said. “I am motivated by all the farmers out there working hard to ‘do the right thing’ for land and water.”

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