Prolific researcher focusing on future agricultural educators

Though he’s not one to boast, Auburn University faculty member James Lindner has a lot to brag about these days. 

Lindner, a proud Auburn student-athlete alumnus, oversees the Agriscience Education program at Auburn, one of the largest programs of its kind in the nation and the only agriculture education program in the state of Alabama. Under his leadership, the program is breaking enrollment records every single semester, and recently a colleague at a peer institution named Lindner as the field’s most prolific researcher. 

Professor James Lindner was recently named the most prolific researcher in the field of agricultural education.

“Dr. Lindner is one of the most respected agricultural education researchers in the United States,” said Grady Roberts, a professor at the University of Florida. “His Google Scholar h-index of 37 is the highest among researchers in our field. More significantly, he has written several articles that outline better methods for conducting research that have influenced the ways in which hundreds of other researchers collect and analyze their data.” 

Students and faculty members in agriscience education study a complex range of topics, from obesity, nutrition and food safety to bioenergy, climate-smart farming and the safety and health of agricultural workers. Auburn faculty member Christopher Clemons says Lindner is a born leader who is driven by a desire to help others through teaching, research and outreach.  

“Jimmy is such a positive influence; he wants to do what is best for people, and it’s just that simple,” Clemons said. “There’s no complexity to it, and it makes it easy to follow someone’s leadership who has that mindset. He’s seen all facets of academia, and that’s really good for those of us who are halfway through a career.” 

What’s an h-index? 

When researchers in academia publish a paper, they can measure the impact of their work by observing how many times that paper gets cited by others. When Roberts pulled the raw data on agricultural education researchers, Lindner had more than 6,600 citations for his research and the highest h-index, a measurement of both the citation rate and the number of publications. Lindner’s h-index score of 37 means he’s published 37 papers that have each been cited at least 37 times.  

“It’s good for me, but it’s also good for Auburn to be able to say it has one of the preeminent scholars in the world in the field,” Lindner said. “That’s pretty awesome.” 

Having dabbled in human resources before entering academia, Lindner’s most-cited papers are about data analytics, research design and the practical applications of employee motivation theories. However, his research spans an incredibly wide range of topics from agricultural leadership, education and communication to distance learning and study abroad programs.  

In fact, he recently published a research design-related paper just for fun. Written with his son, Nicholas, a researcher in genetics at Duke University, their article has the playful subtitle “I neither agree nor disagree, Likert or not.” 

Lindner says survey respondents’ difficulty interpreting Likert scales is a long-standing problem in behavioral and social science research, and once he and his son came up with a model to interpret results, they knew they had to publish it together. 

“I conceptually understood it, but my son was actually able to help me write it in a way anyone can understand,” Lindner said. “That was really fun to work on with him.” 

Building the next generation 

While research is important to Lindner, he also is heavily focused on building up the next generation of agriculture researchers. He says that while the world is producing the right amount of food, wars and global conflict make it difficult to get food to the people who need it. 

“When I was coming up, the grand challenge was figuring out how to produce enough food to feed a world with five billion people,” he said. “Tomorrow’s challenge of feeding a world with 10 billion people is going to be very different. So, what I want to do now is help create this next great generation of people who are smarter than me to be able to address these new growing challenges.”  

Lindner has noticed the field’s important areas of study have shifted to plant-based foods and climate-friendly farming practices, and many students just getting started will be researching these new topics to learn how to better feed the world. With a record number of master’s and doctoral students enrolled and a growing number of undergrads coming in each semester, he is hopeful these future Auburn alumni will help solve food supply problems.  

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A native of Trinidad & Tobago, doctoral student Alpha Sennon is the founder of an NGO called WHY FARM and a minor celebrity in the agricultural education world.

“We’re trying to educate leaders, communicators, teachers and learners about agriculture for this hugely complex food system,” he said. “Some of the students that come to us are current agriculture educators who want to get a doctorate because it’s their goal, but we’re also producing the next generation of agricultural leaders who are getting research and teaching jobs in academia and taking positions all over the world.” 

World traveler 

Lindner himself also has been all over the world because he feels being in the field and on the ground is vital to understanding the challenges facing farmers and supply chains. He’s been to more than 50 counties, including one that had a different name during each of his three visits.  

While agriculture researchers are the people studying food production techniques, the role of the agricultural educator is to determine the best ways to communicate those techniques to farmers. 

“We’re not doing the dense, scientific research; we’re the change agents, the ones that bring people together,” he said. “For example, I was just in Trinidad and Tobago, where they’re dealing with invasive species, and we worked with the advisory service and the extension service on communicating how to eradicate these species. Those are the neat things we can do as ag educators.” 

When he’s not touring farms in the Caribbean, meeting farmers in the mountains of South America or visiting agricultural facilities in Asia, Lindner loves working with grad students on campus at Auburn. He knows it’s vital that he impart as much knowledge as he can to students who want to be problem-solvers and change agents.  

“I am certainly a better faculty member and researcher than I ever was a cross country or track runner at Auburn,” he said. “It’s great to go out and see the world, but I also want to be here to work with Alpha, and I want to work with Rusty and Cody and Evelyn and Kate and Thomas and Embry, and Linda and Julia. 

“Knowing we all have our feet on the same planet, we don’t think of what we do as work because we love doing what we do. We wake up every day trying to figure out how to feed a hungry world. That’s what drives us.”