Brandi Miller |
MANHATTAN, KANSAS, U.S. — The Kansas State University (KSU) IGP Institute recently named Brandi Miller as its associate director. Along with her administrative duties, she will continue in her role as the distance education program coordinator.
“Under Brandi’s leadership the distance education program has grown significantly,” said Gordon Smith, IGP Institute director and grain science and industry department head. “We are excited to have Brandi’s innovative ideas for capitalizing on the grain science faculty strengths and fully leveraging the IGP Institute team to increase our global impact.”
Miller joined the institute in January2010. Since that time, the distance education offering has grown from nine courses in 2010 to 42 in 2016. She was promoted to assistant director in September 2014 to assume some of the administrative duties of a growing IGP Institute program, and in November 2015 she was named interim associate director.
She holds a bachelor’s degree in bakery science and management and master’s degree in adult, occupational and continuing education. Both degrees were obtained at KSU.
“I am excited grow our current staff to capitalize on their strengths to further support our courses and the faculty initiatives more fully,” said Miller. “The value of teaching adults is that they have life experiences so the key is to relate our course information to something they already know.”
Miller hopes to leverage the KSU grain science faculty to bring new courses to the IGP Institute. This will be done by following the direction set by the IGP stakeholders and matching that vision with the faculty expertise.
“We really need to listen to what the stakeholders are telling us and take their direction moving forward,” Miller said.
As part of the process of setting the direction for the future, the IGP Institute will be hosting focus groups with staff, faculty and our stakeholder partners. After that process is complete, Miller hopes, “we have a clear vision of who we are so we can set the path moving ahead.”