The Southern Rural Development Center is proud to honor Dr. Ronald Hustedde as the 2016 recipient of the Bonnie Teater Community Development Educator Lifetime Achievement Award. Dr. Hustedde has been working with University of Kentucky’s Cooperative Extension Service for 25 years, and is currently serving as Extension Professor in the Department of Community & Leadership Development.
Dr. Hustedde began his Extension career at the University of Kentucky’s Sociology Department in the College of Agriculture and maintained this position, although the department evolved into the Department of Community & Leadership in 2002. Throughout his career, Dr. Hustedde has been recognized for his Extension programming and continues to make significant contributions in the field of community development.
His largest contributions are his work with public deliberation and dispute resolution, entrepreneurship, and conceptual framing of community development. The impacts Dr. Hustedde has made in the community development field are evident both nationally and internationally, having been invited to give workshops at universities in Northern Ireland, Italy, Korea, and Indonesia. State colleague Lori Garkovich said, “I can think of few colleagues who have contributed to Kentucky, national, and international communities as much as Ron Hustedde”.
As president of the Community Development Society in 1998, Dr. Hustedde was able to secure a sizeable grant from the Kellogg Foundation, and in the years since his presidency, has been able to obtain millions of dollars in grants from various organizations. His colleague from the society, Gisele Hamm, said, “Overall, Ron Hustedde continues to be one of the most energetic and productive people we have in the field of community development education.”
Throughout his career, Dr. Hustedde has written a number of publications, the most impactful being his SRDC training manual Public Conflict: Turning Lemons into Lemonade. With this manual and associated workshops he has been able to advance both knowledge and skills of those seeking to help resolve conflict in their communities. “Dr. Hustedde argues that the heart of his Extension mission is to build solidarity and capacity around issues that matter to people in our communities,” claims colleague Larry Jones.
Due to his extensive career, which focused on innovative Extension programming impacting rural communities across the globe, it is most fitting that Dr. Ronald Hustedde be honored as the 2016 recipient of the SRDC’s Bonnie Teater Community Development Educator Lifetime Achievement Award.