Tom Paulsen, associate professor and department head for the applied agricultural and food studies department at Morningside College, recently had an article published, and he presented research at the international North American Colleges and Teachers of Agriculture (NACTA) conference in Ames, Iowa.

Tom Paulsen, associate professor and department head for the applied agricultural and food studies department at Morningside College, recently had an article published, and he presented research at the international North American Colleges and Teachers of Agriculture (NACTA) conference in Ames, Iowa.

Paulsen co-authored an article that was published in NACTA Journal. The article is titled “Differences in Critical Thinking Ability According to College Entry Pathway.” It reports results from a study that measured critical thinking skills of students who arrived at a state university as freshmen versus transfer students.

At the NACTA conference at Iowa State University, Paulsen presented a 2017 summer research project he completed with Morningside College student Summer Beery titled “Teachers’ Perceptions of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles in School Based Agricultural Education.” Beery conducted a survey asking Iowa agriculture teachers to rate the importance of teaching different lessons on unmanned aerial vehicles, or drones, in agriculture, as well as their capacity to teach them.

Paulsen joined the faculty at Morningside College in 2016. Previously, he served for 21 years as a high school agricultural education instructor and FFA adviser and eight years as the coordinator of the agricultural teacher education program and professor-in-charge of the student-managed Ag 450 farm at Iowa State University in Ames. He has a doctorate in agricultural education from Iowa State University.