Ozzie Abaye honored as Alumni Distinguished Professor

To her students, she's "Dr. Ozzie."

In farming communities across Senegal, she's known as "Madam Mung Bean."

Now Azenegashe “Ozzie” Abaye Ph.D. '92 has another title, conferred April 14 by Virginia Tech’s Board of Visitors: Alumni Distinguished Professor. 

The honor, endorsed by the Virginia Tech Alumni Association, is a 10-year renewable appointment that recognizes faculty members who demonstrate extraordinary accomplishments and academic work across teaching, research or creative activity, and engagement.

"Dr. Abaye exemplifies the very best of Virginia Tech and the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences," said Dean Mario Ferruzzi. "She is an innovator across all our missions and a role model for students, faculty, and colleagues worldwide."

For Abaye, the recognition is an affirmation of her life's work, defined by student impact, global engagement, and lasting alumni connections.

"Being recognized with what I consider my highest academic achievement fills me with profound gratitude," she said. "It marks the pinnacle of my academic career at Virginia Tech, a community that has been my professional home for more than three decades."

A life-changing teacher

Abaye, the Thomas B. Hutcheson Jr. Professor of Agronomy, teaches several crop production and food security related courses in the School of Plant and Environmental Sciences. Her classes are built around hands-on learning — field trips, service-learning, and exercises such as crops judging and cooking that connect classroom concepts to real-world application, supported by more than $383,000 in field-learning grants she has secured over three decades.

Her signature course, World Crops: Food and Culture, draws students from more than 25 majors across the university. Each week, students prepare dishes from the crops they are studying. When the COVID-19 pandemic halted in-person instruction, Abaye moved the course online, broadcasting the cooking lab from her home. "Cooking with Oz" reached more than 32,000 viewers worldwide as students and alumni families tuned in.

Since 1993, she has coached the Virginia Tech Crops Judging Team, where students develop practical skills through regional and national competitions in crop, weed, and disease identification, grain grading, and seed analysis. A member of Virginia Tech's Academy of Teaching Excellence, she has received numerous teaching honors at the college, university, and national levels, including the 2023 USDA Teaching Excellence Award.

Outside the classroom, she is a beloved mentor to generations of students, frequently hosting current and former students at her home for meals and conversations around the dinner table.

"Without a doubt, Dr. Ozzie has been the instructor who shaped my college career," said senior Reagan Riggs. "We have traveled together for competitions, taken walks across campus to identify weeds, and shared dinners that turned into conversations about school, life, and the future. Dr. Ozzie encouraged me to step outside my comfort zone and believed in me even when I doubted myself."

Growing agriculture at home and abroad

Abaye's research and Extension work have had lasting impact in Virginia. Her early work on alternative crops played a pivotal role in establishing and expanding cotton production in Virginia and introduced forage crops that help fill summer gaps in livestock systems. 

Internationally, she is known for improving the livelihoods of farmers, women, and children in West Africa through sustainable agriculture. In Senegal, she has spent more than a decade introducing mung bean as a nutritious, fast-growing, drought-tolerant crop in communities facing food insecurity.

Working with Counterpart International through U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) McGovern-Dole Food for Education grants, Abaye has helped train nearly 6,000 farmers, local facilitators, and teachers. Over the past eight years, the program has incorporated mung bean into school meals for more than 10,000 children, with farmer groups donating at least 25 percent of their harvest to local canteens. One of three new mung bean varieties released in Senegal is named the “Ozzie” in her honor. 

"Whether working with local or global communities, it all boils down to the right to food," Abaye said. "My training in agriculture, rooted in Virginia, has given me the tools to work side by side with resource-limited but highly engaged communities. That is a privilege."

Andre Diatta Ph.D. ’20 came to Virginia Tech from Senegal in 2016 as a graduate student and has continued to work with Abaye on the mung bean project as an assistant professor of agronomy at Université Gaston Berger in Senegal.

"Dr. Ozzie influenced me so much," Diatta said. "She has dedicated her time and energy to delivering sustainable solutions for smallholder farmers in Senegal. Working with her developed in me a deep interest in pursuing a career in research and teaching agronomy and international agriculture."

An unlikely path to the classroom

Originally from Ethiopia, Abaye lost both her parents at a young age. She came to the United States in 1978 as a high school exchange student and was welcomed into the home of a Pennsylvania farm family, the Morrises, who embraced her as a daughter and introduced her to life on a dairy farm. It was there that she “felt the love of a mother I had never experienced,” Abaye said, and discovered a passion for agriculture.

Abaye went on to study biological sciences at Wilson College, then earned a master's degree in animal and dairy science at Penn State. After watching how Penn State Professor Paul Shellenberger commanded the room, she knew the classroom was her calling.

"I wanted to create a space where students felt comfortable and excited to learn," she said. "That's what I saw in my professor, and I knew I wanted to teach."

She completed her Ph.D. in agronomy at Virginia Tech in 1992 and has been on the faculty ever since.

A legacy of lasting connections

Mark Reiter ’01 arrived at Virginia Tech in 1997 as a first-generation farm student and met Abaye early in his time on campus.

"She has such a personality that you gravitate toward — she basically collects people," Reiter said. "She understands the agricultural community and knows how to show students the world through agriculture."

When Reiter returned to Virginia Tech in 2008 as a new faculty member, Abaye again served as an unofficial mentor. Today, Reiter is a professor and director of the Eastern Shore Agricultural Research and Extension Center who co-leads service-based study abroad trips to South Africa with Abaye.

"Hands down, she's one of the most important people in my life," Reiter said. "She's more than a professor. She's like a life coach who impacts every part of your life."

That kind of lasting devotion runs throughout the community Abaye has built over three decades. Alumni stay in touch, visit when they are in Blacksburg, and invite her to their weddings. 

Shannon Tignor Ellis ’95, M.S. ’01, a former student and who is the Virginia United Soybean Board director, wrote in support of Abaye's nomination that her influence extends throughout Virginia’s agricultural community.

"Not a week goes by that I do not professionally interact with another of 'Ozzie's kids,'" Ellis wrote. "Serving others defines Ozzie's life — it is what Ut Prosim (That I May Serve) means to her. The ripples of her educational impact will go on for decades."

Abaye said she feels the weight of that legacy every day in the calls, emails, and continued friendships she maintains with former students.

“I feel like I’m swimming in an ocean of love,” she said.