Dr. Diebel on the Leadership Academy:
I believe the Leadership Academy offers students an opportunity to work on leadership skills in a guided fashion by using the expertise of faculty and other students. The program offers a comfortable setting to self-examine and reflect on a student strengths and weakness; and to share experiences with others.
I believe in providing students with a variety of opportunities to set themselves apart from others in the job market and in life. I am excited about being a mentor because it gives me the opportunity to share in the student experience, provide what guidance I can, and to learn from them as they explore new paths. I also believe that a student’s success in college can be improved by developing a close professional relationship with at least one faculty on campus. I hope to contribute to students’ leadership development by providing the opportunity to develop that professional relationship and by observing the development strategies of current students in order to share that with students of the future.
You might be interested to know:
As an undergraduate I did not take a single introductory economics course! It was not until I started an MBA program that I took an economics course. The faculty member teaching that course reached out to me, helped me develop that professional student-faculty relationship, helped me find my niche in an agricultural and resource economics, and lit the fire that grew into my passion of teaching resource economics and working with undergraduate students. To this day he is my role model.
Role at OSU:
My primary responsibility is undergraduate education in the department of Agricultural and Resource Economics. I teach several courses, mentor students, recruit new students, assist in the design of AREC courses and curriculum, and have worked with the department’s undergraduate student club.
I am also involved in several research projects dealing with local topics including no-till/direct seed adoption, the economics of grass seed field burning alternatives, and other natural resource topics. I also try and keep a small research project each year, which involves studies on student preferences and views of distance education, student retention and recruitment to the College of Agricultural Sciences, and other teaching topics.