IPSA announces new board members, scholarship winners and a new president.
With the Independent Professional Seed Association (IPSA) Conference all wrapped up, IPSA has announced quite a few things to come with 2021: three new members of the Board of Directors, three retiring directors, a new president and 10 scholarship winners from 2020.
The business meeting started with the approval of the minutes as well as announcing the 2020 IPSA scholarship winners. This year, IPSA was able to give $2,000 to 10 college-level students.
“Over the last couple of years, one of the highlights of the annual conference is getting all of our scholarship recipients together and getting to know them in person,” said Todd Martin, CEO of IPSA. “We’re finding that there’s a lot of opportunity to bring interns on from the scholarship pool as well as new hires. There are some outstanding young people, and I want to compliment the Education committee for the deep work that they did going through 200 applications to come up with these 10 superstars.”
Recipients included:
- Erin Chalupa, a senior in agricultural business and agronomy at Iowa State University
- Adam D’Angelo, a graduate student in plant breeding and genetics at the University of Wisconsin
- Macy Evans, a senior in agriculture in society and agricultural communications at Iowa State University
- Karson Kimpling, a sophomore in agricultural leadership at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
- Gloria Koester, a senior in agricultural economics at Purdue University
- Ian Latham, a freshman in agricultural business at Iowa State University
- Audrey Pelikan, a junior in soil and crop science and environmental horticulture at the University of Wisconsin-Platteville
- Hayden Pester, a junior in agriculture and food business management at the University of Minnesota
- Sadie Vander Wal, a junior in animal science and agriculture communication at South Dakota State University
Finally, one special scholarship — the Tom Burrus Memorial Scholarship — was given to Taylor Hartke, a junior in agriculture communications at Southern Illinois University.
Brett Hodnefield, outgoing IPSA president, presented three new IPSA Board of Directors members to the meeting: Chris Latham of Latham Hi-Tech Seeds, Scott Sanders of Peterson Farm Seed and Matt Goetz of Wyckoff Hybrids. No further nominations were raised, and all three were voted unanimously onto the Board.
The final nomination was Chris Cornelius, of Cornelius Seed, to be nominated as second vice president of the Board; however, that vote is being held at the Board of Director’s first meeting.
Three directors are retiring from the board in 2021: Jeff Meints of Titan Pro, Mark Denzler of 1st Choice Seeds and Tim Bratland of Legend Seeds.
“Gentlemen, you were the first three that were elected when I came on board as CEO,” Martin says. “You stayed for six years. I want to thank each of you, and it’s been great to work with you. You served with distinction and you will be missed on the board.”
The final business meeting agenda to tackle was the passing of the gavel — which, unfortunately, couldn’t happen as normal due to COVID-19. Instead, Martin will be sending the upcoming president, Dan Hogstad of NorthStar Genetics, the gavel for his reign as IPSA president for 2021.
“I’m very excited to be part of this organization and lead it forward,” Hogstad said. “Hopefully, we’ll soon be able to put COVID-19 behind us. I think we’re all ready for that. I wanted to especially thank Brett out for his leadership this past year, because it’s been difficult. He’s held us together. I’d like to also give a big shout out to Todd Martin — though very recently, we decided to go all virtual on this conference. Todd, at very short notice, put this together, and he’s done a really nice job on it. We’re proud of him as our CEO.
“Let’s put 2020 behind us,” Hogstad concluded. “Let’s move forward and create those relationships we all enjoy. I will look forward to seeing you next year.”
