Jeffrey H. Dorfman

2004 D.W. Brooks Award for Excellence in Teaching

Department: Agricultural and Applied Economics

Dr. Dorfman brings an unusual combination of intellectual rigor, enthusiasm, and appreciation and belief in the power of economics to each of his classes. He has been recognized with numerous teaching awards, including the department's graduate teaching award in 1991 and 1992. He was awarded the undergraduate's teaching award in 1998, 2001, and 2003. In 2004, Dr. Dorfman was presented the Southern Agricultural Economics Association Distinguished Teaching of a Course Award in recognition of his teaching AAEC 4760 - The Economics of Agricultural Processing and Marketing. This course helps prepare students to work in a wide array of food industry jobs, including the processes applied to food after it leaves the farm until it is consumed. Students learn to apply basic economic principles to real world situations and are prepared to solve economic and management problems that will likely face them while working in the food industry.

For eleven years Dr. Dorfman taught the department's graduate level classes in applied econometrics and dynamic optimization. He has also taught graduate microeconomic theory and graduate Bayesian econometrics. At the undergraduate level, he currently teaches a senior-level agricultural marketing course and microeconomic theory at the intermediate level and the introductory level. Dr. Jeff Dorfman's teaching ability is held in such high regard that he was entrusted with teaching microeconomic principles to introduce students to the field of agricultural and applied economics and recruit new majors. Not surprisingly, his teaching efforts were greatly successful with enrollment in the course increasing by 50 percent and excellent student evaluations. Though demanding in terms of the depth and breadth of material that students are responsible for assimilating, Dr. Dorfman exhibits concern for how well students are learning.