Guest Column: Connecting Knowledge to Practice in New Ways
When a stakeholder becomes a student, we connect knowledge to practice in new ways. During seven years as a Ph.D. student, Kate Clary was a scholar-practitioner working on green industry challenges.
She's been a shining example of how FNGLA and UF/IFAS working together can discover and disseminate in ways neither can in isolation.
Last month, your director of communications became Dr. Clary. We celebrated with her at UF/IFAS headquarters the day before commencement with a reception.
Her advisor, Dr. Jamie Loizzo, reminded us at the gathering that effective communications is an evidence-based practice, just like high-yield greenhouse production or efficient irrigation. There’s science behind them.
Dr. Clary's rigorous study gave her the grounding to scientifically test her ideas and to share science with the people who can benefit from it -- you. As student and stakeholder, she engaged in discovery she could not have achieved as just a student or just a communications director.
And now, she'll forever be better at connecting academic research to real-world best practices.
Ed Bravo and Heather Blake from the Frontrunners chapter came to campus to celebrate Kate’s achievement. Ed said UF/IFAS had its own challenge in educating Kate – how do you make someone already at the top of their profession even better?
For one, we do it by adding to what we know about communications specifically aimed at the green industry. Clary’s dissertation is “New-Media Marketing in The Green Industry: A Survey of Nursery and Landscape Professionals' Communications Adoption, Barriers, and Perceived Value.”
What she's learned about what prevents you from embracing new media – be it Instagram, Google advertising or artificial intelligence tools – can help her help you. Dr. Clary knows there are ways to take advantage of ways to market your business that maybe weren’t available when you started your business or your career.
In short, she'll now be even better at making FNGLA better.
She's now a triple Gator, but her Ph.D. is her first degree from the UF/IFAS College of Agricultural and Life Sciences. So she even learned where the best college on campus is after two other tries!
But beyond her individual dissertation, she’s now better equipped to bring science to bear on any project she does for you. She has further developed an evidence ethic to guide her understanding about what works and why, and apply it towards her goals.
UF/IFAS greatly appreciates FNGLA's grant support for our researchers. And FNGLA chapters work hand-in-glove with our horticulture Extension faculty to get scientific information out to the people who can benefit from it, such as landscapers and nursery growers.
But we wouldn’t be a great land-grant university without great teaching and great students. Kate has expanded not just what she knows but what we know.
We’re all better for Kate’s academic journey.
Congratulations, Dr. Kate Clary.
J. Scott Angle is the University of Florida’s Senior Vice President for Agriculture and Natural Resources and leader of the UF Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences (UF/IFAS).
