Autumn Hood, a 2002 December graduate of the biosystems and agricultural engineering department at OSU, works to change the world, one rural community at a time.
As business coordinator of the New Products Development Center, Hood helps rural communities create jobs and spark economic growth, giving her good experience as she completes a master’s degree in business administration.
Hood takes care of the publications, markets the center to manufacturers, locates and secures funds, and develops materials to improve the center in the future, such as applications and business plans.
“It is terrible to see small towns in Oklahoma withering away because they have nothing to keep people there,” said Hood.
Growing up in Westcliffe, Colo., a town of about 300 in a county of only 3,000, she understands the importance of rural communities. The NPDC has given her the opportunity to impact the life of small towns.
“I want to see people stay in their hometowns because they have a job that is rewarding,” said Hood, with a sense of determination.
Her home is just four miles from the base of the Rocky Mountains on a 2,000-acre ranch. Growing up, life revolved around the family’s commercial cattle herd and native grass hay. Her love for agriculture and rural areas took root as a child.
“I spent my life on a ranch with my grandpa and my father,” said Hood.
While wandering back in her mind to those days, her eyes glossed with the memories of her late grandfather and love for a time when being from the country was not so hard.
“A summer day on the ranch began with hot cereal or eggs and toast while watching cartoons with my father,” she said as her smile began to show. “I would find a job where I could ride the horses, which usually meant checking cows and then off to the hay field in the afternoon.”
“Our life virtually came to a halt when the yearly county fair rolled around,” said Hood. “We persevered through everything, including my grandmother’s kitchen remodel. “We moved the entire baking operation to the dining room and worked around the contractors to make our blue-ribbon muffins that year.”
Her devotion to agriculture and the rural way of life grew as she got older. Hood graduated with 26 students as one of three valedictorians from the only high school in Custer County, Colo. While looking at colleges, OSU’s BAE department offered the challenge she was looking for.
“I am very analytical. For as long as I can remember, I have always looked for a challenge,” said Hood.
“When I was 8 years old I chose my first dog,” said Hood. “I sorted through a book of dog breeds that I carefully selected from the library. Though my dream dog was a Great Dane, I decided the smart choice was a Terrier.”
It was the desire to solve problems and the challenge in science and math that brought her to OSU.
“Autumn is a bright young woman, and we recognized that while she was in high school,” said Bill Barfield, who was head of the BAE department while Hood was considering OSU.
“When Autumn came in, we knew she had an interest in business,” said Barfield. “We set up a program where she could take business and industrial engineering courses as part of her major to get more manufacturing components.”
With the courses she took and her experiences in rural America, Hood easily became the perfect fit for the position at the NPDC.
“If we could get her to work with us, we knew she would be a great asset,” said Barfield. “She is doing a great job for us. We will be leaning on her like an associate director of this center to make things happen for us. It was very clear that she could do it.”
Hood’s passion drives the effort to see rural communities like her own hometown grow stronger so others can have the same great memories as she.
“Agriculture has a lot of tools that we are not using,” said Hood. “We are losing land and other resources but we have a lot of technology.
“The questions are how do you integrate new technology into the farm? How do you use farm records to make your business more productive? And, how do you get farmers comfortable with the new technology,” said Hood.
She seeks to make a difference by working to develop the communities of rural Oklahoma through her efforts in the NPDC. Unbelievable as it sounds, she has not stopped there. Her passion has taken her into her own research to improve agriculture.
During an internship with John Deere, Hood developed a program agriculturalists can use to keep track of data and use the information to enhance performance in their operations.
“There are a lot of programs to help farmers manage their financial records, but there aren’t many that help them keep production records,” said Hood.
She is developing a production database for hand-held computers. This database will enable farmers to keep production records and management decision information in the palms of their hands, through the user-friendly hand-held database program.
“Let’s say you are in a tractor and you want to keep track of the fertilizer you put on a field, but you don’t want to drag out your laptop, or you don’t want to pull out your notebook, write it down and lose it,” said Hood.
“Instead you can use your hand-held to enter the number of acres and amount of fertilizer applied, she said. Then, take it home to download in your computer. At the end of the year, you will have all of your records in a database that gives information to help increase yields and save money.”
In the next five years, Hood will continue to work with the NPDC to gain real-world experience while finishing her master’s degree. In the future she wants to stay in management and marketing and continue consulting and developing agriculture.
What is it that makes people like Hood so driven to see the world become a better place? Barfield has worked with Hood since she came to OSU and he seems to know.
“If you have the grit in your soul, it doesn’t matter if you come from a town of 10 or 10 million. If you have that, it is the key to succeeding,” said Barfield.
“In my 30-plus years [as a professor], I have seen students with money, ones without money, ones with high ACT scores and some with low ACT scores, but the one ingredient that is chief to them succeeding in college is the grit in the soul, just the determination to do it. If they have that, they will make it. Autumn has that,” said Barfield.
Today, hidden somewhere in a hallway of offices on the campus of OSU is a young woman named Autumn Hood.
Though many will never notice, hidden deep in her heart is the passion that drives the world to change