Paul Patterson received the Southern Agricultural Economics Association Lifetime Achievement Award at its annual meeting in early February. Patterson is dean of the Auburn University College of Agriculture and director of the Alabama Agricultural Experiment Station.
The SAEA Lifetime Achievement Award recognizes significant and enduring contributions in scholarship or public service to southern agricultural economics.
“Dr. Patterson’s leadership, management and advocacy for agriculture in general and ag economics in particular is broad and deep,” said Josh Duke, head of Auburn’s Department of Agricultural Economics and Rural Sociology. “As dean and director, he has supported new initiatives, shifted resources to priority areas, rewarded excellence, hired the best people and substantially increased financial support for research in agricultural economics. Dr. Patterson has shaped this college, his home department, extension, outreach, instruction and research well beyond that which any professor, extension specialist or department head can make.”
Before becoming dean and director in 2016, Patterson served as associate dean for instruction in the university’s College of Agriculture. Among other roles, he previously served as dean of Arizona State University’s Morrison School of Agribusiness and as an agricultural economist for the USDA Foreign Agricultural Service.
At its 2024 annual meeting, Auburn faculty received two of SAEA’s seven faculty awards. Dennis Brothers, an associate extension professor in agricultural economics, received the Outstanding Extension Project Award for his New Farmer’s Guide to the Commercial Broiler Industry.
