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Dr. Michael V. Martin became president of New Mexico State University on July 1, 2004. He is an academic leader whose career has been dedicated to the land-grant mission of teaching, research and extension service. Before coming to NMSU, he served for six years as vice president for agriculture and natural resources at the University of Florida, leading the university’s Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences with more than 3,000 employees statewide. He was elevated to senior vice president of the University of Florida shortly before being selected as NMSU’s president.
Previously, Dr. Martin was vice president for agricultural policy and the dean of the college of agricultural, food and environmental sciences at the University of Minnesota. He began his academic career at Oregon State University as a faculty member in the Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics.
A native of Crosby, Minn., Dr. Martin completed a bachelor’s degree in business and economics and a master’s degree in economics at Mankato State College (Minnesota State University) in Minnesota. He received his Ph.D. in applied economics from the University of Minnesota in 1977. His areas of specialization are marketing, prices, international trade, public policy, transportation and business logistics. He continues to be active as a scholar and has written numerous book chapters and articles for academic journals, trade publications and the popular press.
“It is the tradition of land-grant universities to be non-traditional,” Dr. Martin wrote in an article titled “The Land-Grant University in the 21st Century,” published in the August 2001 issue of the Journal of Agricultural and Applied Economics. He traced the history of the land-grant movement from the mid-1800s and concluded that “the fundamental land-grant principles of accessibility, practical as well as classical education, research and discovery in the public interest, and connectedness to all the people remain powerful and profound.”
He has been active in professional and community service organizations, including the Farm Foundation’s Bennett Agricultural Round Table, the National Agricultural Biotechnology Council and the Florida Agricultural Resource Mobilization Foundation. He is a member of the American Economic Association, the American Agricultural Economics Association, the International Association of Agricultural Economics, the International Agricultural Trade Research Consortium, the Sigma XI Scientific Research Society and the Economic History Association.
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