Illinois College Seeks to Grow Agro-Business Program

By Gary Scott on December 22, 2020 at 4:02pm

The new Agri-business Coordinator at Illinois College says he hopes to take the young program to the next level.

As Illinois College announced on Friday, Professor Jeff Galle is returning to teaching as the Agri-business Coordinator. He is a Cambridge Illinois native who grew up raising grain and livestock with a focus on pigs. 

Galle has a background in both the agriculture and teaching fields. He has both a bachelor’s and master’s degree in agriculture education and served as the founding president of the  livestock consulting firm Global Pork Production Enterprises. He has mostly been focused in the pig production industry during his career. He also served as the director of the agriculture programs at John Wood Community College for 30 years while also teaching in the soy management program until his retirement. After retiring, he continued teaching part time at various colleges. 

Galle began teaching at Illinois College in the Fall 2020 semester as a part-time instructor, but says as he got to know the students and college, he decided to stay: “Just recently that came about after I started teaching on a part-time basis this fall. I was asked to come in and teach an ag marketing class and got to know the students at the college a little bit. The more I got to know about it the more interested I was in a full-time position. They gave me the opportunity to apply, and from that point then, I was selected to serve as coordinator for the Ag Business Management Program.” 

The IC ag program was created in 2017. Galle says he hopes to help develop the relatively new program: “The opportunity to come into a fairly young program and not only be teaching, being a part of it, and helping young people in the classroom, but also be able to be serving in an administrative role. Because it’s reasonably new, hopefully I’ll have an opportunity to help and getting it organized as far as curriculum is concerned. It’s kind of a bonus that makes it complete and whole agriculture program.” 

IC offers the agriculture focused major both online and in person with an internship in the ag field being required. The program is in the final stages of being approved by the State Educator Preparation and Licensure Board.