R. Kent Crookston

R. Kent Crookston’s Ph.D. in plant physiology is from the University of Minnesota. He held post-doctoral positions with Agriculture Canada and Cornell University, then researched and taught at the University of Minnesota for twenty-five years. He was head of the Department of Agronomy and Plant Genetics at Minnesota (1990–1998), and dean of the College of Biology and Agriculture at Brigham Young University (BYU) (1998–2005). Since 2007 he has directed the Academic Administrative Support Program at the BYU Faculty Center. In addition to researching academic administration he researches and teaches effective decision making. He has written numerous professional and popular articles on various subjects, and on four occasions won the Excellence in Agricultural Journalism Award from the American Society of Agronomy.  

From 1988 to 2002 Crookston was the founding director of the Minnesota Institute for Sustainable Agriculture (a research and educational partnership of faculty, farmers, politicians, and activist groups). At Minnesota he co-founded a national program on researching and teaching decision cases in agriculture and directed an undergraduate educational reform project with a grant from the McKnight Foundation. At BYU he directed a complete reinvention and restructuring of the college of 100 faculty and 2,500 students.

Crookston served as resident coordinator (1984–1986) of a USAID development project in Morocco (assisting in the establishment of a major agricultural university). From 1999 to 2007 he co-directed a project to improve the health and economy of a rural region in the Middle Atlas Mountains. He has consulted with research and educational institutions in Armenia, Ecuador, England, France, Ghana, Mexico, Morocco, Niger, Nigeria, Oman, the Philippines, Rwanda, and Senegal.   

Crookston is a fellow of the Crop Science Society of America and the American Society of Agronomy, and the holder, since 1999, of an honorary professorship at the Institut Agronomique et Vétérinaire Hassan II, in Rabat, Morocco.