Agriculture instructors Annie Kinwa-Muzinga and Daniel Witten were awarded the Teaching Award of Merit by NACTA.

Sioux City, IA – Morningside agriculture instructors Annie Kinwa-Muzinga and Daniel Witten were awarded the Teaching Award of Merit by the North American Colleges and Teachers of Agriculture (NACTA) Organization.

Kinwa-Muzinga and Witten were nominated by the Regina Roth Applied Agricultural and Food Studies Department Head, Thomas Paulsen, who stated of the recipients, “We are very proud of Dr. Kinwa-Muzinga and Mr. Witten’s contributions to the Applied Agricultural and Food Studies Department. They are both very student-focused and work hard to help students apply the theory of their disciplines through practical, real-world examples. We are extremely pleased that they are part of the Applied Agricultural and Food Studies family.” 

Kinwa-Muzinga is a professor of Agribusiness and teaches Agricultural Economics, Agricultural Business, Accounting for Agribusiness, Futures and Risk Management, and Agricultural Entrepreneurship. She previously served as a professor and Agribusiness Program co-chair for the School of Agriculture at the University of Wisconsin-Platteville. She earned her B.S. degree in Economics from the University of Kinshasa with a Financial Management emphasis and earned her M.B.A. in Finance and Ph.D. in Agricultural Economics with specialization in Food and Agribusiness Management and Strategic Management with a significant Marketing component from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She joined Morningside College in the fall of 2018. Her research interests cover a broad array of projects related to agriculture as well as scholarship of teaching including service-learning projects for women in agriculture, scholarship of teaching and learning, and agricultural growth and development. 

Witten is an assistant professor of agriculture at Morningside. He was raised on a family farm near Ida Grove, Iowa. Upon graduation from Iowa State, he taught at Central High School in Elkader, Iowa. In 1999, he was hired to teach and coach at Westwood High School in Sloan Iowa, where he spent 19 years prior to joining Morningside. As a member of the Morningside faculty, Witten has focused his research on the scholarship of improving student learning through the use of a variety of experiential learning techniques. 

North American Colleges and Teachers of Agriculture is a professional society that focuses on the scholarship of teaching and learning agriculture and related disciplines at the postsecondary level. Members of NACTA are from two-year and four-year colleges, public and private. Formed in 1955, the mission of NACTA is to provide a forum for discussion of questions and issues relating to the professional advancement of agricultural instruction for all postsecondary teachers of agriculture, seek improvement in the postsecondary teaching of agriculture, and encourage, promote, and reward instructional excellence in agriculture and the research supporting this instruction.

The Morningside College Regina Roth Agricultural and Food Studies program prepares students for careers in agricultural and food studies, agriculture education, agribusiness, environmental policy and law, agronomy, and food safety. Learn more about agriculture studies here.