Dr. Gaea Hock: 2025 David Mugler Outstanding Teacher Award

Dr. Gaea Hock, a professor in agricultural education, is the 2025 recipient of the David Mugler Outstanding Teacher Award.

Having obtained her bachelor's and master's from K-State, she knows the strength of K-State’s culture and community.

“People who I went to college with are now sending their own children up here to be my students,” Hock said. “I take pride and try to continue the feeling of family. We're all here to try to do the best we can for Kansas agriculture, but also the global agricultural industry feeding our world.”

While thinking about being a College of Agriculture alumna, Hock got emotional.

“It's hard to articulate it. I spent time out of the state. I went and did my Ph.D. somewhere else,” she said. “What we have in Kansas, and the heart of it, the K-State College of Ag… our team of ag education is phenomenal.”

Hock earned her bachelor's degree in agricultural education and her master's in curriculum and instruction. She said it was “phenomenally” important in her teaching career.

“I was able to learn the key skills about how to be a good teacher, and then also advance that further with how to be a good agricultural educator,” she said. “Through the supervised agricultural experiences of my own job, but also learning more about agriculture and how to support the development of our young people through having that… then transferred into whenever I was teaching and training future leaders in our industry.”

During her time as an instructor at K-State, Hock has led two study abroad trips to central Europe.

“Those trips helped me recognize the value of helping our students navigate the world, getting them out of their comfort zone and exposing them to new and different ways that people are [navigating] agriculture,” she said.

“The College of Agriculture, for many years, has done a phenomenal job of getting students outside of the United States to experience the world around them… I interviewed students five years after they went, and it was phenomenal for me to hear they still remember things. They still find value in the 12 days we spent in the Czech Republic.”

Hock’s philosophy around teaching future agricultural leaders revolves around wholly developing students and teaching them to use their resources.

“I care about their content knowledge and agriculture. I want them to be able to be intelligent and answer questions accurately to dispel any myths,” she said. “They should be educating their students at a high standard with the truth that's out there, like science-based evidence. I really try to push K-State Research and Extension publications. How are they using them in their classrooms? How are they using them for their own knowledge?

“My ultimate goal is that I want to prepare the best teachers, because I'm sending them out to the world. I want them to be looked at as respected and valued,” Hock said.