News

Prof. Jim Squires has been re-appointed as chair of the Department of Animal Biosciences for a three-year-term beginning May 2020.

The Department of Animal Biosciences is pleased to welcome Dr. David Huyben to the department as an Assistant Professor in aquaculture. Huyben will begin his role in July 2020.

The Department of Food, Agricultural and Resource Economics (FARE) is pleased to welcome Dr. Jose Nuno-Ledesma as an assistant professor in Food Industry Economics and Management. He began in his role on January 2, 2020.

Prof. Amar Mohanty, an internationally renowned researcher, has been appointed as the Ontario Agricultural College (OAC) Distinguished Research Chair in Sustainable Biomaterials effective February 1, 2020.

Mohanty, director of the Bio-Products Discovery and Development Centre (BDDC), focuses on engineering new sustainable materials and innovations in bioproducts to reduce society’s use of fossil fuels for mitigating climate change.

Meagan Griffiths
Precision Agronomist CCA-ON, 4R NMS, FS PARTNERS
B.Sc. (Agr.) Crop, Horticultural and Turfgrass Sciences, 2012; M.Sc. Plant Agriculture, 2014

Meagan Griffiths works in precision agriculture. It’s not a career she planned on pursuing, but she’s found a fit for her interests and skillset in this dynamic part of the sector. She shares more about her current role and tips for current students who are staring off their careers.  

A new director has been appointed to the University of Guelph Arboretum. Justine Richardson, an experienced manager focused on facilitating interdisciplinary research and community engagement, will step into the position effective February 3.

Christopher Naese graduated with a B.Sc. Agr. in Dairy Science in ’85. He was one of rare co-op students at the time, but his work experience helped him land a job that set him on a prosperous and exciting career trajectory. Today he’s the Vice President of Business Development for Florida Food Products and took some time to share insights on food industry business trends.   

So what do you want to do after school?” It’s a question that every university student is asked, and probably more times than they’d like.

For Ashley Knapton, B.Sc. (Agr.) ’13, the answer was simple: become a dairy classifier.

Classifiers, an unbiased thirdparty group of trained people, score dairy cows based on industry-outlined criteria. They travel from farm to farm to evaluate the physical structure of the cow. It’s a service that helps producers make informed decisions and is often used as a pride point for dairy breeders.

When I returned home to Eastern Ontario after completing my first year at U of G, I was so excited to share the stories of my experiences at Guelph. One day, I told a farmer about my friend Clayton McWilliams, whom I had met at Guelph. The farmer immediately asked if Clayton was related to Wyatt McWilliams. I didn’t know. Wyatt was a new name to me. But it was clear that Wyatt was a well-known person in agriculture, and his story was one I wanted to hear.

So, I began asking questions. And the more I learned about Wyatt, the more I wanted to know.

We see them every day, all around us: the interconnections between the natural and humanmade worlds. A lot of hard work and critical thought have gone into the design of parks, school playgrounds and local streets. But who did this work? Most likely a landscape architect.

Colleen Mercer Clarke describes the profession of landscape architecture as “being architects for nature.”