With tuition support from the UF Employee Education Program and a flexible, online learning format offered through the Master of Agribusiness degree, recent alumnus Ian Bennett found himself perfectly positioned for a return to higher education that would allow him to take his career to the next level.
“I would not have gone back to grad school if it was not for the EEP program.”
UF’s Employee Education Program (EEP) helps full-time TEAMS employees, like graduate Ian Bennett, continue their education and advance in their careers. For any full-time TEAMS employees who have been in good standing for at least 6 months can take up to six credits of EEP-eligible coursework for free every semester with their supervisor’s approval.
“I would encourage anyone that is interested in the program to look into it,” Bennett said. “I think it was something that in my stage of life worked out really well because I was able to continue to work full time and go back to school full time.”
Bennett became a TEAMS member in the UF Health Cancer Center with the intention to pursue a Master of Agribusiness (MAB) degree from UF’s Food and Resource Economics Department.
“It’s a program that teaches me a lot about the things that I’m interested in, and there’s a lot of opportunities to grow and move forward within it, and even after the program is over,” Bennett said.
After successfully completing the program and graduating from UF with his Master of Agribusiness degree in the summer of 2024, Bennett advanced into a new role at UF as a Research Development Strategist in the Office of Strategic Development.
Through this position, Bennett supports large grant proposals above $10 million in total funding and plays a significant role in gathering, interpreting, and sharing intelligence with the campus community. He credits the MAB program with preparing him for his new role, as many assignments had a direct connection to what he does on the job.
Not only do students in the MAB program study principles of finance and budgeting in agribusiness, but they also complete an in-depth internship or special project to apply the course material to a real-world situation.
Bennett’s special project involved research into a genetic disorder in cows with significant economic implications. Research on this disorder in cattle has only been conducted on European cattle. Bennett wanted to look at American datasets to determine the effect of the disorder on cattle health and economic outcomes in the American cattle industry.
Cattle research is especially important to Bennett, who grew up on his family’s cattle farm in Valdosta, Georgia. Throughout the program, he would apply the concepts learned in the course to his family’s farm and consider how they would affect decision making. He hopes to eventually return to the farm and use his education to continue his family business’s legacy.
“It’s been interesting learning more about the economics behind how things work,” Bennett said. “Coming from a family farm background, I understand a little bit about how agriculture works as a whole and about how the whole cattle industry works, but to really get a real education in how that stuff actually takes place has been a real helpful thing for me.”
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