Ellie Sauder was awarded first place in the Minnesota FFA agricultural educator proficiency award this spring at the state convention. Her supervised agricultural experience project was creating a year long introduction to agriculture class for home-schooled high schoolers in a Rochester area home-school coop. Her role included finding a tutor to teach the class, choosing the curriculum, finding tours and guest speakers and keeping the online classwork updated. One of her goals for the class was to keep it a truly hands-on interactive experience, so she incorporated guest speakers, and tours of farms and agricultural companies in the Rochester area.
Ellie is also involved with her family dairy farm and is currently a Dodge County Dairy princess.