COLLEGE STATION — Dr. Jim Mazurkiewicz, director of Texas Agriculture Lifetime Leadership, was awarded the 2012 Medal of Honor by the Marshal of the Kujawsko-Pomorskie Voivodeship, Poland, during a recent visit to that country.
Texas Agriculture Lifetime Leadership is a program of the Texas AgriLife Extension Service.
The honor came as a result of a “strong relationship that has developed with government, corporate, academic and agriculture producer leadership in Poland” as Mazurkiewicz led agricultural leaders on discovery trips to that country in 2002 and 2010.
“Since 2010, I have gone to Poland three times and have hosted in Texas the Polish Ag Business Association in 2011 and a delegation of five governors in April of 2012,” Mazurkiewicz said.
Those visits led to an invitation by the Polish governors to bring a business delegation of seven Texans to Poland in the fall of 2012 on a business/academic visit, he said.
Mazurkiewicz was presented the Medal of Honor following his comments to the legislative body in Torun, Poland.
During the trip, the delegation — representing Texas A&M University, Texas A&M AgriLife Research and Tarleton State University — signed letters of cooperation with universities in Warsaw, Bydgoszcz and Bialystok, Poland, Mazurkiewicz said.
“There is no doubt, that this was an opportunity of a lifetime and the beginning of significant cooperation between Texas and Poland,” Mazurkiewicz said.
He said some of the areas of future cooperation include:
- Establishing a dairy science faculty and research exchange, a young farmer exchange with the Polish Association of Cereal Producers and Agriculture Business Association in Poland with Texas commodity associations.
- Establishing a leadership program in Poland modeled after the AgriLife Extension TALL program.
- Establishing a Junior Master Gardener program in Poland to teach math, science, social studies and English,
- Establishing a study abroad program with Poland through the Texas A&M’s College of Agriculture and Life Sciences.
- Establishing a youth exchange with high school students.
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