Building leaders through community connections

The Auburn University College of Agriculture planted the seeds of agricultural communications and leadership studies more than a decade ago, but in 2023 it ensured those seeds could bear fruit through the hire of Professor of Practice Adam Cletzer. In doing so, it was nurturing more than its programs — it was investing in the future voices and visionaries of agriculture itself.

Agricultural communications is an ever-more relevant subset of the industry that involves clearly and accurately connecting the public to the science, business and culture of agriculture.

“I view the field of agricultural communications as a bridge between the 1.6% of people who work in agriculture and everyone else,” Cletzer said. “Agriculture has a lot of the same issues as science — growing distrust of experts and institutions, lack of information or disinformation about methods, and concerns about ethics and values — and ag communications professionals tell agriculture’s story and build trust with the public.”

As professor of practice, Cletzer practices what he teaches. He directs the agricultural communications and leadership studies programs while writing research stories and press releases for the college’s Office of Communications & Marketing.

pon his hire in 2023, Cletzer received the green light from Associate Dean for Instruction Amy Wright to revamp both the agricultural communications major and agricultural leadership studies minor.

The minor in ag leadership was technically in place when Adam arrived, but it was essentially defunct because the two required courses hadn’t been taught in six years.

“So, I recreated those courses for today’s world — one for leading teams and another for making change in communities,” Cletzer said. “I also changed the minor’s requirements so it’s more flexible to students’ interests.”

Today, the 15-credit-hour minor includes the two required courses — AGRI 3800: Leading People and Teams in Agriculture and AGRI 5840: Leading Organizational and Community Change in Agriculture — and offers a selection of additional courses on everything from global issues in agriculture to environment, society and justice.

Cletzer’s background is in agricultural leadership studies. He received his doctorate in leadership development and social change from Virginia Tech University and master’s in agricultural education and communications from University of Florida. Prior to joining the Auburn faculty, he taught at the University of Missouri.

He brings a new approach to leadership to the college, one that asks, “What if we view leadership not as a role but a relationship?” — a question he asked himself in his Ph.D.

“We underestimate how much the Industrial Revolution impacted the way we think about, well, everything,” Cletzer said. “The traditional view of leadership is that it is something that emanates from the leader — a property, trait or set of behaviors. That is an industrial way of thinking about it, as a product.”

Cletzer said in the early 2000s, leadership scholars began to look at other metaphors for how leadership develops.

“One of those was ecosystems,” he said. “It’s this idea that an ecosystem is not linear. It is not a simple cause and effect. An ecosystem is rife with feedback loops — it’s the straw that broke the camel’s back or the last snowflake that caused an avalanche.”

The resulting conclusion was that leadership is as much a relationship between a leader and followers as it is a set of characteristics.

“The other aspects to consider are sort of economical,” Cletzer explained. “As people became more educated and demanded more autonomy, they were less apt to walk into the workplace and say, ‘Tell me what to do, boss.’

“Leaders are less and less the people who know how to do everything, because everything is increasingly more complicated. So, we’re seeing that leaders are more facilitators, people who bring other people together that have the expertise to solve complex problems.”

n many ways, this is what Cletzer has done for the ag comm program at Auburn. He created an advisory committee comprising Auburn agriculture and journalism administrators, faculty and advisors, as well as students and industry leaders from organizations like Alfa, Sweet Grown Alabama, the Alabama Cattleman’s Association and more.

Meanwhile, he revamped the curriculum by looking carefully at the program’s strengths and weaknesses, determined to fill gaps.

“Ag comm has a couple accepted competency frameworks,” Cletzer said. “Basically, experts have said ‘here are the 50 things they need to be good at.’ So, I looked at the curriculum, looked at every one of those courses and their course descriptions, and checked off those competencies. When done, I could see that this program looked like a traditional ag journalism program would have — strong in writing and storytelling — but there were huge holes for design and comms strategy.”

The industry is looking for agricultural communicators who are well rounded, Cletzer said. Particularly in smaller shops, graduates do not need to be proficient in everything, but capable of anything.

Today, the agricultural communications program is designed to produce graduates who possess exceptional communication skills meshed with a strong science-based background in agriculture and natural resources. This combination of technical subject matter knowledge and communication skills is not found in other curricula, according to Cletzer.

“One of the things that sets ag comm apart is that the students who graduate do have some technical expertise compared to those who graduated from a school of journalism,” he said. “They have the communication skills but may not have any particular contextual skills. I think our students are more marketable because they have both.

“They don’t need to be four courses deep in ruminant nutrition, but they do need to understand the struggles of the industry so they can form a rapport.”

Senior agricultural communications major Breanna Black said Cletzer’s efforts have made the program more welcoming to students.

“He has allowed me to share my thoughts and opinions about the program,” she said. “As a student, I really appreciate him taking the time to hear my concerns and ideas. He was one of the first professors I met when I transferred to Auburn – and what better person to represent Auburn faculty than him. His love for his profession and his students is admirable, as well as his efforts to make the agricultural communications degree program better.”

In revamping the curriculum, Cletzer set out to make it both broader — covering a wider range of agricultural subjects and communications specialties — and more specialized.

“We added a pre-law option,” he said. “I wanted to make the curriculum as broad as possible, but that stresses out the students who like structure. So, we went back in and added that option, and we had people in it immediately. Now, we’re adding new ones, too, in magazine writing and non-formal ed.”

Graduates are prepared to pursue a variety of careers throughout corporate America, institutions of higher learning, government agencies, medical technology operations, lobbyist and advocacy groups, non-profits, and research organizations in the public and private sector.

In cultivating these programs and the students within them, the College of Agriculture is reaping the rewards of its investment. Enrollment in agricultural communications is the highest it’s been in five years, according to Cletzer, and it continues to grow.

Under Cletzer’s leadership, agricultural communications and leadership studies have become fertile ground for collaboration, innovation and growth. And as graduates carry Auburn’s values and voice into the wider world, they can see themselves as part of something larger: an ecosystem of ideas and relationships that defines modern agriculture.