Allie Fafard
UC Agricultural Issues Center Research Assistant
Sustainable Agriculture and Food Systems UC Davis ’18
The Most Outstanding Senior Award recognizes a senior “who has made an outstanding contribution to his or her learning environment through active academic engagement, whether through involvement in a research group or creative production, significant contributions to classroom discussion, leadership in student groups committed to the advancement of learning, or other intellectual pursuits with faculty and fellow students.”
Allie’s role as a student peer advisor for the Sustainable Agriculture and Food Systems major involved organizing and facilitating several meetings with department faculty and staff to ensure the integrity of the major as it transitioned under new departmental funding. She identified graduation bottlenecks in the program and brainstormed solutions with faculty, leading to lasting changes in the major curriculum to benefit students.
Additionally, Allie is recognized for bringing community to students in her program by organizing several events such as faculty “Fireside Chats” and a Career Panel. Allie’s significant contribution to the Sustainable Agriculture and Food Systems major inside and outside the classroom is telling of her future leadership qualities.
While working at AIC since early 2017, Allie has coordinated and supervised a team of fellow students in collecting web-based retail price information and developed descriptive statistics on these data for a major AIC project. She is now engaged studying California-based honeybee enterprises that provide pollination services and marketable honey in order to develop information on beekeeper costs and returns.