Alumni Spotlight

Name: Zachary Callaghan
Current Title: Agriculture Teacher and FFA Advisor
Organization: Chanute High School
Major: B.S. Agricultural Education ‘20, M.S. Agricultural Education and Communication ‘24

Ag Ed Graduate Brings Hands-On Learning to Uganda

Zachary Callaghan, ‘20, ‘24, spent four weeks in Uganda over the 2025 summer. With a grant from the U.S. Department of Education’s Fulbright-Hays program, Callaghan was part of a team that joined the Global Teach Ag Network to teach high school students in northern Uganda about agriculture by implementing hands-on projects.

“There are a lot of issues in terms of a lack of resources for these schools. A lot of what they do teaching-wise is just lecture-based,” Callaghan said. “They don’t have a lot of resources to do hands-on labs, things of that nature.”

The GTAN team partnered with Field of Hope, a non-profit organization dedicated to developing agricultural education in Uganda. They work to empower local teachers, farmers and students through training, access to financial resources and education. GTAN provided grant money to the high schools so they could construct facilities to house animals and grow crops on school grounds.

“My group of three teachers worked at a school called Hill City College,” Callaghan said. “Over the spring before we got there, they built a chicken coop… After we got there, we helped them introduce 200 chicks into the chicken coop.”

At Hill City College, students were taught how to care for the chickens and keep records, and about feeding programs and nutrition. Teachers were taught how to take the curriculum from their classroom and apply it with their students at the coop.

“[Teachers] can lecture a little bit during class, then stand up, leave the classroom, go to the chicken coop and actually practice what they just taught,” Callaghan said. “That’s something that would be viewed as simple or very commonplace in the U.S. for ag education.

“There, they just don’t have the resources or even the teacher training to know how to implement those kinds of projects… the project-based learning aspect is what we were really working on while we were there.”

Before he traveled to Uganda, Callaghan knew the importance of traveling abroad to see new perspectives. While completing his bachelor’s degree in agricultural education at K-State, he visited Peru with Dr. Gaea Hock to present research they worked on together.

“For me, as an agriculture teacher, I can see how agriculture is different around the world,” Callaghan said. “[Agriculture] is the most important industry we have… in terms of how many people it employs, but also because it feeds and clothes everybody. Everyone is impacted by it.

“What we view as agriculture here in the state of Kansas isn’t what agriculture might be viewed as in the southeast part of the U.S., or in the northwest, let alone in other countries.”

Callaghan said the month he spent in Uganda showed him the valuable differences in agriculture.

“I can now bring those perspectives back to my students to talk about how different agriculture is and how our methods aren’t always the ‘right’ methods,” he said. “They’re not wrong either, but what they’re doing isn’t right or wrong… they’re doing what they can with the resources they have.

“I talk a lot about how that affected me as a teacher, but I think anyone in any profession could benefit from traveling abroad and learning how business is done, or education is conducted and make them better at whatever they’re doing.”