Nieyan Cheng, a 4th year PhD student, is selected as one of the ten national finalists for the 2021 AAEA Extension Graduate Student Competition. https://www.aaea.org/membership/sections/extension/graduate-student-extension-competition
She will make an oral presentation of her extension program in Austin on August 1, which, along with the pre-submitted written application materials, will be used to judge and select the national winners. Her program is titled, "Cucurbits under Cover: Assessing the Economic Efficiency of Mesotunnels for Organic Cucurbit Growers."
This is part of a USDA-funded $2 million grant led by Dr. Mark Gleason at ISU Plant Pathology with Wendong Zhang, assistant professor, as the co-PI. The project website is at https://www.cucurbit.plantpath.iastate.edu/
Wendiam Sawadgo ('20 PhD economics) who is now a tenure-track extension economist at Auburn University, was a finalist for this competition in 2019.