Melissa Hageman

I grew up on a farm as the oldest of 5 kids, and I wanted to teach agriculture to give my brothers opportunities I might not have had in FFA in high school. I really wanted to encourage hands-on learning so students could apply it to real-life situations. What really drives me is that less than 2% of the population are farmers, but a lot of people make decisions about where their food comes from based on people who are two or three generations out from farming. I thought it was valuable for students to know not only where their food comes from, but the science of how it gets to the grocery store, to the consumer. I graduated high school with 30 college credits done, went to Northeast Iowa Community College to finish my agriculture degree, then transferred to UW-Platteville where I got my agriculture education degree and teaching license for Iowa and Wisconsin. I returned to my home school in 2011 where I graduated from and began teaching there - my brothers were 10th graders when I started, which encouraged me to give them the best education in agriculture they could have. Over the years, I've gotten 9 CASE certifications (Curriculum for Agriculture Science Education) and my master's in Agriculture Education from Iowa State. My biggest thing in life is I want to make an impact and be remembered for what I did, and I just want to find a positive way to do that.