just like an island should be, almost untouched on the
coast. Nothing but sand and water, it was beautiful. We
also got to take a hike and go whale watching.”
Still, her favorite outing was snorkeling in the Great
Barrier Reef where she saw sea turtles, coral, starfish
and even sharks.
A December 2013 graduate of MU with a degree
in animal science, Rebecca also enjoyed a journey to
China during her undergraduate studies.
A short, but sweet journey, Rebecca says the 2013
spring break adventure took place during Holy Week.
“It was very different for me not to be spending Easter
at home with my family,” she explains. “I will never
forget the experience I had with that culture, though.
We mostly were in Beijing, staying at the agriculture
university there.”
Rebecca Nelson
The group also visited two different hog farms, and
she says she was most impacted by how much agriculture
must take place on a small amount of ground.
“The first one we went to mostly raised pigs to be
placed at a boar stud,” Rebecca explains. Bio-security
was enforced on that farm, and she says sewage
treatment area stored manure on site. “Whereas at
home, we would store it in a pit and then inject it in the
field. That was a big difference.”
The other hog farm was small in size, Rebecca says,
with the land used as much as possible. “Any available
space had a row or two of corn planted,” she says. Visits
to a dairy farm and duck operation were unsuccessful,
as animals are not vaccinated in China like they are
in the U.S. “That was a huge difference compared to
home.”
Now a customer service representative for ADM
Alliance Nutrition, Rebecca lives in Vandalia and will
marry Jed Edwards in June 2016.
McKenzie Reagan
The experience sent Rebecca to places like the
Great Wall of China, Forbidden City, Summer Palace,
Tiananmen Square and the Beijing Zoo.
Still, she says she took away the most from visiting
farms and a feed mill. “We went to a top 10 feed mill
in all of China,” Rebecca says. “Here, we talked a lot
about the United States and South American corn and
soybean production and how heavily China depends on
that. To me, this was a big deal since my family raises
those crops every year.”
From small-town, middle America, Rebecca says
you don’t always realize who all depends on you and
the job your family does every day.
McKenzie graduated from William Jewel College
in Liberty, earning a degree in secondary education and
Spanish in May 2014. A Summa Cum Laude graduate,
she was on the academic Dean’s list all four years of
college, was named Secondary Education Junior of the
Year in 2013, and was in Phi Epsilon Honor Society.
Additionally, she was a WJC Scholar Athlete from 20102014 and member of the college’s