Virginia and the graduation ceremony in Washington, DC.
Session one - Developing the Leader Within , session three - Agricultural Legal Issues and Risk and session six - Creating an Entrepreneurial Mindset were held at the Southern University Ag Center. Session two - Understanding Community and Self was hosted by Alcorn State University. Session four - Diversity and Planning was hosted by Prairie View A & M University. Session five - Communicating for Business was hosted by North Carolina A & T State University. Session Seven - Networking was held as a pre-conference session with the Professional Agricultural Workers Conference at Tuskegee University. Session eight - Charting Our Course was hosted by the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff. This session was very different from the other sessions in that the participants selected and conducted the trainings themselves.

The 22 participants in the institute came from Louisiana, Florida, Oklahoma, Kentucky, Missouri, North Carolina, South Carolina, Arkansas, Mississippi, and Texas. The members of the leadership team were: Gregory Reed, Ph.D. of Alcorn State University; Michelle Eley, Ph.D., and M. Ray McKinnie, Ph.D., North Carolina A & T State University; Nelson Daniels, Ph.D., and Allen Malone, Prairie View A & M University; John Pierre, Esq., Southern University Law Center; Orlando Phelps, USDA - AMS; Tasha Hargrove, Ph.D., Tuskegee University; Henry English, Ph.D., University of Arkansas - Pine Bluff; and L. Washington Lyons, Ph.D., Association of Extension Administrators.

This project was supported by the Outreach and Assistance for Socially Disadvantaged Farmers and Ranchers Competitive Grants Program of the Cooperative State Research, Education and Extension Service, USDA, Grant # 2005-01338.

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