Geyer receives Virginia Tech's Alumni Award for Outreach Excellence
L. Leon Geyer, of Blacksburg, professor of environmental and agricultural law and economics in the Department of Agricultural and Applied Economics in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at Virginia Tech, received the 2005 Alumni Award for Outreach Excellence.
The Alumni Association established this award to recognize members of the university faculty who have made outstanding contributions extending the university's outreach mission throughout the commonwealth and nation, as well as internationally. Faculty members are nominated by their peers.
Geyer's research involves environmental law and policy, farm and small-business organization, commercial law, taxation, estate-tax policy, and governmental policy and regulation. He is a member of the bars of the Indiana Supreme Court, the Federal District Court, the Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C., and the Supreme Court of the United States. Geyer has been a visiting professor at the University of Melbourne, the University of New Brunswick, and the University of Arkansas. He was staff attorney for the U.S. Department of Agriculture's (USDA) Office of the General Counsel, a staff consultant to the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Agriculture, staff attorney for Miles Laboratories Inc., and an economist for the USDA's Economic Research Service and equal-opportunity specialist for USDA's Office of Equal Opportunity.
Geyer provides yearly updates on taxes for CPAs, enrolled agents, and tax practitioners in the state's largest tax practitioner workshops. He also delivers many educational programs to farmers and others on timely topics of estate and business organizational issues, fence law, and other legal and economic issues of interest to citizens of the commonwealth. Geyer has received numerous awards, including the Award of Excellence for Professional Scholarship from the American Agricultural Law Association and several Virginia Tech awards for advising and teaching excellence. He is a member of Gamma Sigma Delta, Alpha Zeta, Phi Eta Sigma, Omicron Delta Kappa, Sigma XI, and Phi Beta Delta, all honorary societies in fields ranging from science to international affairs to agriculture. He is a member of the American Agricultural Economics Association, the American Agricultural Law Association, the National Association of Colleges and Teachers of Agriculture, and the Southern Agricultural Economics. Geyer received a B.S. in agricultural economics with distinction from Purdue University, the J.D. at the University of Notre Dame, and the Ph.D. in agricultural and applied economics from the University of Minnesota.
Consistently ranked by the National Science Foundation among the top 10 institutions in agricultural research, Virginia Tech's College of Agriculture and Life Sciences offers students the opportunity to learn from some of the world's leading agricultural scientists. The college's comprehensive curriculum provides students with a balanced education that ranges from food and fiber production to economics to human health. The college is a national leader in incorporating technology, biotechnology, computer applications, and other recent scientific advances into its teaching program.
Founded in 1872 as a land-grant college, Virginia Tech has grown to become among the largest universities in the Commonwealth of Virginia. Today, Virginia Tech's eight colleges are dedicated to putting knowledge to work through teaching, research, and outreach activities and to fulfilling its vision to be among the top research universities in the nation. At its 2,600-acre main campus located in Blacksburg, and other campus centers in Northern Virginia, Southwest Virginia, Hampton Roads, Richmond, and Roanoke, Virginia Tech enrolls more than 28,000 full- and part-time undergraduate and graduate students from all 50 states and more than 100 countries in 180 academic degree programs.
