Department of Agricultural, Food, and Resource Economics Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Food Security Policy

Highlights 37, Abubakar Sule Balaraba , The Brown Bag Seminar, March 2019.

The brown bag seminar at the department of Agriculture and Food Resource Economics is a weekly activity organized by graduate students of the department. The activity is carried out every Tuesday of the week except when there are no candidates available to make presentations. As the name implies, it is a seminar where participants are allowed to come in with their lunches which are usually packed in brown paper bags. Students with presentations to make are requested to register online indicating their topics and the dates they wish to make presentations.The seminar is open to all faculty members both staff and students. Professors are most especially welcomed for it affords the students the opportunity to get expert advice on their research areas.

As visiting scholars to the department, we are also expected to make presentations on the research we are conducting in our home institutions. On the 26th of March 2019, Mrs. Obekpa and I had our first brown bag experience. Thanks to the NAPP team headed by Prof. Liverpool-Tasie, it was a great experience. In addition to the normal food brought in by the Graduate Students Organization (GSO), the project provided pizza to the delight of the participants.

The brown bag seminar is something I would like to see introduced in our institutions back home. Being a seminar series organized by the graduate students, it would serve as an avenue for the students to practice and perfect their skills in presentations. They would be able to interact freely with professors with no fear of being penalized. Though they may not get to eat pizza, it would certainly be a step forward in the right direction.