2019 - 20 Alumni Award Recipients

Louis Andre Swiger
Dean Emeritus Virginia Tech’s College of Agriculture and Life Sciences
Former head of the Department of Animal and Poultry Sciences
Blacksburg, Virginia

The 2019 inductee to the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences Hall of Fame is Dr. Louis Andre Swiger. The College of Agriculture and Life Sciences Hall of Fame recognizes the college’s alumni and friends who have distinguished themselves professionally in their careers and who have given exemplary service to the college, the university, or the agricultural and life sciences industries.  

Dr. Swiger grew up in Waverly, Ohio on a purebred Hereford cattle operation.  He was the high school co-valedictorian with Mary Belle Kinney, who became his wife.    Andy received his Bachelor’s from The Ohio State University.  After a time in the Marine Corps, he completed his master’s and doctoral degrees at Iowa State University in Animal Breeding and Genetics.

He worked at the University of Nebraska, and then went back to the Ohio State University for a time.  Then Virginia Tech recruited him to be the department head of Animal Science.  Later, he became associate dean for research, and then was appointed dean of the college of agriculture and life sciences.  He served as dean until he retired in 2003.  

Dr. Swiger is known for his efforts to further animal agriculture and the agricultural industry.  His programs in research, teaching, and extension were directed toward the application of genetic principles to the improvement of livestock for economic traits such as growth, leanness, feed efficiency, meat quality, and reproduction.  He has impacted the breeding practices of industry seedstock enterprises, especially performance testing of beef cattle and swine.  He is also a strong supporter of the land grant system and as an administrator he promoted a balance of basic discovery and applied research to advance the agricultural industry.  

He took great interest in working with state commodity organizations; he established close alliances with the VA Agribusiness Council and the VA Farm Bureau Federation; his administrative talents were always turned towards helping people become more effective and productive, and he is known as a very effective communicator and consensus builder.  

At his retirement, many of his colleagues and friends endowed an award in his name…..the Andy Swiger Land Grant Award is a cash award that is presented each year to a faculty member whose creative accomplishments help fulfill the Land Grant mission of addressing state and national needs through teaching, research, and extension.

Bradley Copenhaver
2012, B.S. Applied Economic Management; 2012, B.A. Political Science
Deputy Secretary of Agriculture and Forestry, Office of the Governor of Virginia, Richmond Virginia

Bradley Copenhaver is the 2019 Outstanding Recent Undergraduate Alumnus in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences.  He was also the Department of Agricultural and Applied Economics’ Outstanding Recent Alumnus in Government or Industry.

Brad has a passion for agricultural policy and spent his educational and professional career to date working with policymakers on behalf of the agribusiness industry, doing so as a government affairs professional, political staffer, and appointed government official. 

Upon graduation, Brad accepted a position to work in the Washington, DC office of Congressman Morgan Griffith (VA-9^th), where he managed correspondence and conducted policy reviews for issues including agriculture, international affairs, and the environment. He assisted constituents from across Southwest Virginia with concerns related to the federal government and related federal policies.

Later, as Director of Government Affairs of the Virginia Agribusiness Council in Richmond, he worked closely with the General Assembly and Virginia congressional delegation on a variety of issues including animal welfare, food safety and labeling, the environment and water quality, and international trade.  He advocated for policies and funding that would benefit Virginia’s farmers and agribusinesses, including support for Virginia Tech, our College, and Agency 229 for Virginia Cooperative Extension and the Agricultural Experiment Station.

In 2018, Brad was appointed by Virginia Governor Ralph S. Northam as Deputy Secretary of Agriculture and Forestry, where he helps oversee three state agencies and advises the Governor and his staff on a variety of issues affecting agriculture and forestry.  He is also a leader of the Planning and Development Team for the Governor’s Conference on Agricultural Trade, which is now in its 12th year and of which the college is a founding participant.

Brad served as a member of the CALS Alumni Organization’s Mentoring Program Committee, which helped create

the alumni mentorship program for students in the college. He is currently serving on the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences Dean’s Advisory Council, as a member of the Advancement Committee, which provides guidance to the college during Virginia Tech’s capital campaign.

In addition to working directly with the college, Brad continues to work closely with Virginia Cooperative Extension and Virginia 4-H having delivered keynote remarks to statewide 4-H groups and has participated in 4-H Day at the Capitol in Richmond.

Megan Seibel
2008, MS.Ed. Career and Technical Education; 2012, Ph.D. Agricultural and Extension Education
Extension Specialist, VALOR Program Director, Virginia Tech
Roanoke, Virginia

Dr. Megan Seibel is the 2019 Outstanding Recent Graduate Alumni in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. She was also the Department of Agricultural, Leadership, and Community Education’s Outstanding Recent Alumna in Academia.

Dr. Seibel is the inaugural director of the VALOR Program at Virginia Tech, which is dedicated to fostering leadership and capacity building for Virginia’s largest private industries.

As an Extension Specialist, Megan offers experiential program content around leadership best practice in education, workplace, and grassroots organizational settings. Team dynamics related to the exploration of issues and influence on policy development provide context for stakeholder development and advocacy as outcomes of decision making and problem solving leadership around complex issues.

Dr. Seibel is the Associate Director for the Center for Cooperative Problem Solving (CCPS) at Virginia Tech and an Associate Fellow of the Occupational Research Centre in the U.K.   Utilizing Kirton’s Adaption Innovation Theory and associated inventory, the KAI, she is one of three recognized certification course instructors for academic and practitioner use. The Center for Cooperative Problem Solving is currently the only location in the world to receive practitioner certification for this problem solving theory. 

Megan utilizes the KAI with coaching of state-level educational supervisors, practitioners, community leaders, and student organizations to enhance effectiveness in program and service delivery. In her role as an Extension Specialist, she is the lead faculty over Virginia Cooperative Extension’s structured facilitation and strategic/planning course offerings for its diverse stakeholders and offers additional support to various organizations and groups as they do strategic planning training and work. 

As part of her professional career, she took administrative leave from the university to serve as Deputy Secretary of Agriculture and Forestry in the last 16 months of Governor McAuliffe’s administration, where she oversaw industry studies and development of proposed policy for the secretariat, and shared efforts with a multitude of stakeholders.  

Her background and expertise in healthcare, career and technical education, and outreach educational programming invigorate her passion for community development and considering complex issues that incorporate all three of these paradigms. A co-author on numerous publications related to leadership and community programs, Dr. Seibel uses scholarship as a way to bring ideas to life through practical application. 

Doug Sutton
Vice President, Research and Development, Smithfield Foods, Inc.
Williamsburg, Virginia

Dr. Doug Sutton, vice president of research and development at Smithfield Foods, Inc. is the recipient of the 2019 CALS Honorary Alumni Award.  Each year the Alumni Organization recognizes a friend of the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences who has exhibited leadership, service, and philanthropic contributions demonstrating Ut Prosim (That I May Serve) to a department, the CALS Alumni Organization, or the college with the Honorary Alumni Award.

Even with attaining such distinguished status at the helm of this rather large, comprehensive division within a Fortune 500 company, Doug has never turned his back on educating the next generation of industry and academic leaders. While he supports a large number of programs across country, his unwavering support has resulted in a huge impact on the educational and discovery outputs of the animal and poultry sciences department and other programs across the college.

Dr. Sutton contributes significantly to our graduate education program having served on a number of graduate student committees, either formally or informally. His perspective keeps the student and their program focused on the application of knowledge to solve a problem or issue important to the industry, a huge benefit for those driven by the ideals of the land grant institution.

Every year, Doug makes a special trip to campus to lecture to our undergraduate Meat Science class.  He also sends additional professionals from his group and other divisions within Smithfield to help teach some of our relevant laboratory sections and provide guidance to our students about the international opportunities of working with a company like Smithfield.  Further, he has personally facilitated the hiring of a number of Virginia Tech graduates to his R&D group as well as across the rest of the company.

He has and continues to support the meat science center at Virginia Tech through providing fresh or further processed meat items to our retail outlet. These ‘donations’ produce additional revenues for the center that are targeted to support undergraduate and graduate students, either through supporting travel to national meetings, fund internships, conduct undergraduate research, or other educational endeavors. These additional resources are also used to support on- and off-campus fund-raising ventures for organizations like Block and Bridle and the local FFA chapters, respectively. This type of support greatly broadens the educational footprint of the program and is only possible through his commitment to Virginia Tech and its tripartite mission.

Doug has also been an ardent supporter of the food science and technology department. He hires FST students and helps advance them once employed by Smithfield Foods.

Dr. Doug Sutton has and continues to be a valuable advocate and supporter of Animal and Poultry Sciences and Food Science and Technology as well as the broader college and university. His commitment to preparing the next generation of professionals for a rewarding career in the food animal industry is greatly appreciated.

Scott Greiner
Professor, Extension Animal Scientist, Beef/Sheep and Extension Project Leader
Department of Animal and Poultry Sciences, Virginia Tech
Christiansburg, Virginia

Dr. Scott Greiner, professor and extension animal scientist in the department of animal and poultry sciences. Is the 2019 recipient of the Outstanding Faculty Alumni Engagement Award, which recognizes a College of Agriculture, and Life Sciences faculty member who has exhibited outstanding engagement with alumni.

Dr. Greiner has achieved national acclaim for his accomplishments in Extension programming leading highly respected beef and sheep Extension programs for the college.  His program serves to educate some 30 Extension agents, nearly 500 producers and over 200 youth statewide on an annual basis. The impact of his efforts to livestock revenues alone is worth over $8 million annually to producers in the Commonwealth.

Scott’s leadership in other Virginia Tech-related animal programs has been extensive annually working with nearly 1,000 participants in coordinating the Virginia Master Cattlemen’s Program, Virginia Beef Quality Assurance Producer Certification and the Virginia Beef Cattle Efficiency program.

Dr. Greiner creates applied knowledge to support his Extension program and engage stakeholders working closely with researchers at West Virginia University to understand the fundamental components of the immune response to parasites. His program secured resources to improve the profitability of sheep flocks in southwest Virginia and to implement a National Animal Identification system across the Commonwealth.

Scott is highly effective in developing young people through not only youth programming activities but also by leading undergraduate courses. His approach with students, his intimate understanding of the industry combined with his national presence and stature makes him very effective in a classroom, and other informal advising and mentoring capacities.

He also serves as the department’s representative to the CALS Alumni Organization board of directors and volunteers on the scholarship and recognition committees to help select deserving students to receive funding for tuition and experiential learning activities and to help select our outstanding alumni that we are recognizing this evening.

Animal and poultry sciences department head, Dr. David Gerrard, offered this support of Scott’s nomination: “his career accomplishments simply epitomize the very nature of our mission, explicitly the creation, translation and dissemination of new knowledge, and most importantly service and engagement to our stakeholders in the state, region, nation and world.”

Rachel Kanefsky
Class of 2020, Animal and Poultry Sciences, Dairy Science
Bristow, Virginia

Rachel Kanefsky is the 2019 Outstanding Ambassador for the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences.  Each year the college recognizes an outstanding member for his or her leadership and service to the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences Ambassador program and to the college.

Rachel stood out from her peers because of her academic experiences, her self-motivation, and the sheer diversity of her interests and achievements. Her drive to serve others makes her the embodiment of the Virginia Tech motto, Ut Prosim (That I May Serve), and in turn an impeccable CALS Ambassador.

Rachel was a dual-major studying both Dairy Science and Animal and Poultry Sciences and graduated in May. Rachel served as a leader within both the college and the university communities and she was involved in many on-campus activities in addition to her service as a CALS Ambassador.  Some of those included Hokie Ambassadors, the Dairy Judging Team, the Honors College, tutoring student athletes, and serving as a teaching assistant in Introduction to Animal and Poultry Sciences lab, just to name a few.

Most notably, Rachel was selected as an Odyssey fellow in 2018. Through this fellowship, she worked with Dr. Tom Archibald to build a culturally transferable curricula for 4-H to be adapted to the Senegalese culture. During the multi-year project, she developed a foundation in theory and principles of relationship building through 4-H, and she then put theory to practice in the summer of 2019 where she spent the summer in Senegal, building and implementing curricula focused on small ruminants and integrated pest management. She travelled throughout Senegal to visit 4-H clubs and organizations showing a tremendous degree of maturity and even courage working and living largely on her own.

Rachel is an incredible representative of the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, the Ambassador program, and herself. She is currently at Tufts Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine pursuing her Doctor of Veterinary Medicine and Masters of Public Health.  She plans to work in large animal medicine.