Annual Meeting 2004
The 40th Annual Meeting of
The Association for International Agriculture 
and Rural Development

"Progress in International Agriculture and Rural Development"
Speakers and Panelists

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John W. Santas
Associate Director, ACES Global Connect
College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences (ACES)
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Dr. Santas is a native of Wisconsin and a University of Wisconsin graduate. His disciplinary background is in Agricultural Education and Vocational Agriculture. Long term overseas assignments, earlier in his career, were on Wisconsin projects in Nigeria and Brazil. Having completed 25 years at the University of Illinois, he is now semi-retired. During the Illinois years, he managed the training and education components of a variety of international projects and programs. During the 70's and 80's he served as Training Officer for the International Soybean Program (INTSOY) and the International Program for Agricultural Knowledge Systems (INTERPAKS). Much of the 80's and 90's was devoted to managing the participant training components of USAID-funded institution-building projects such as the Zambia Agricultural Research and Extension (ZAMARE) Project, the Institutional Development for Agricultural Training (IDAT) Project at Egerton University in Kenya and the Transformation and Integration of the Provincial Agricultural Network (TIPAN) Project at the NWFP Agricultural University in Peshawar, Pakistan. Other training projects were in Cote d'Ivoire, Sri Lanka and Zaire. During his last six full-time years at Illinois (1996-2002), Dr. Santas established and implemented a student exchange / study abroad program in the College of ACES, while serving as Assistant Dean for Academic Programs. Large numbers of students continue to use these study abroad opportunities to add an international dimension to their undergraduate education.