Maria Navarro, CAES assistant professor in the Agricultural Leadership, Education and Communication department, was named 2006 Sigma Alpha National Advisor of the Year and was awarded the Early Achievement Award by the Association for International Agricultural and Extension Education for her service, leadership and scholarly activity in international agricultural and extension education.
Real-world learning a true test for Navarro's students
Maria Navarro pictured the world's population in her mind and rattled off the numbers:
- 60 percent live on less than $2 a day and struggle to get clean water, food and shelter.
- 25 percent meet their basic needs but may live on the edge of poverty.
- 15 percent have a nice meal every day, choices in almost everything and security to enjoy them.
To show her students the real world, Navarro, an assistant professor at CAES, organizes a World Hunger Banquet every semester on UGA's Athens campus. Of every 20 people who go to that banquet, 12 will get a little bit of bread and tainted water and will leave hungry. Five will eat rice and beans. Three will have a nice meal.
It's the way the world works and Navarro's trying to change its engineering.
Her journey to Georgia started at the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya in Barcelona and then Lleida, Spain. Navarro, who was born in Barcelona, majored in agricultural engineering with an emphasis on plant breeding.
Out of college, her goal wasn't to use her knowledge to build, breed or research. "I wanted to work in international development to solve the problems of world hunger and poverty," she said.
Through the International Centre for Advanced Mediterranean Agronomic Studies, she became a coordinator in plant production, doing organized training for agricultural development. After six years, she married Andrew Paterson (now a UGA plant geneticist) and got her doctorate in agricultural education from Texas A&M.
"I found that I, as an individual, could probably do more by educating people than through fieldwork and policy development," Navarro said. "It started as a coincidence, and now I love it."
As a female in agriculture, Navarro has "had my problems. But I've also had people who have supported me to extremes."
She now supports her students through Sigma Alpha, a professional sorority for women in agriculture, and her teaching. "It's not something we can do," she said. "It's something we have to do, doing our part of mentorship to create situations where students, both females and males, can enhance their abilities better without so many barriers."
The World Hunger Banquet and a World Food Day teleconference give her students a window to the world. Then she opens the door to show them where they can help now.
"My first focus is on world hunger," she said. "But the world is also at home. We can also contribute to fighting the high poverty rate in Athens."