Meet Our Instructors

Richard Stup

Richard Stup addresses challenges facing the agricultural industry through educational programs and applied research. He also provides leadership as a liaison between the agricultural industry and employment-focused regulatory authorities. His focus is on human resource management, enhancing employee engagement, regulatory compliance, and leadership development at the farm level.

Prior to joining Cornell University, Dr. Stup founded Ag Workforce Development, a firm focused on improving individual and team performance through organization development and technology solutions. He also served agriculture in the Farm Credit system as a branch manager and senior leader, gaining extensive experience leading teams in sales, credit, accounting and records, business consulting, risk management, and crop insurance. Earlier in his career, Richard was an Extension specialist with Penn State University, where he led the Dairy Alliance team and developed award-winning educational programming in human resource management. He earned his doctorate from Penn State in the field of Workforce Education and Development, including innovative research into the effects of human resource management on farm employee organizational commitment.

Elizabeth Higgins

Elizabeth Higgins is the Ag Business Management/Production Economics Extension Specialist with the Eastern New York Commercial Horticulture Team, serving commercial fruit and vegetable producers in 17 counties in Eastern New York and an instructor in the Agricultural Supervisory Leadership certificate program. Her focus areas are risk management, farm business management, and ag regulations and programs, with an emphasis on land use and labor. Liz has over 20 years of experience in agriculture, rural development, and natural resource policy and research, with an emphasis on helping farmers and private landowners navigate complex local, federal, and state land use regulations and policies. Her main focus has been on how policies and programs influence farmer or landowner decision-making. She has served as the agriculture program leader in both Sullivan and Ulster Counties. Liz received her BA in economics from Fairfield University and her MS in resource economics from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

Robert Milligan

Bob is semi-retired and works as Senior Consultant with Dairy Strategies, LLC – a business, leadership and human resource consulting business focused on the dairy industry. Bob is also Professor Emeritus in the Charles H. Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management at Cornell University. At Cornell, he was an award-winning instructor in the 6^th ranked undergraduate business program (2021 US News & World Report ranking). Bob is best known in extension for developing and leading the PRO-DAIRY Program – a program that develops and teaches leadership and management principles and concepts. Bob’s vision is to provide insight to managers by presenting complex human resource and business concepts in formats that are understandable and useable.

Bob lives in Lauderdale, Minnesota (Twin Cities) with his wife, Dr. Sharon Danes, who is retired from the Family Social Science Department at the University of Minnesota. She continues to work with graduate students and mentor young faculty. Bob has two adult sons who live in New York City and Chicago.

Kaitlyn Lutz

Kaitlyn is the organizational development specialist for Cornell Ag Workforce Development, where she focuses on strengthening organizational culture and helping farms streamline workflow for greater efficiency and satisfaction. With more than a decade of experience as a dairy veterinarian in the U.S. and abroad, she saw firsthand that successful farms depend on successful teams. After leaving clinical practice, she worked as a bilingual dairy specialist with Cornell Cooperative Extension, providing hands-on education for farm employees. She also teaches Spanish-language courses in the Agricultural Supervisory Leadership program. Her work emphasizes applying research-based methods to help farms establish robust organizational systems and invest in their employees.

Kaitlyn earned her BS in Animal Science from the University of Delaware and her VMD from the University of Pennsylvania. She is a diplomate of the American Board of Veterinary Practitioners.

Libby Eiholzer

Libby Eiholzer is a dairy technical services specialist for Cargill, where she assists dairy farmers and their employees in western New York. She brings nine years of experience working with farms through Cornell Cooperative Extension’s NWNY Dairy, Livestock, and Field Crops team. Her expertise in supporting both farm owners and employees gives her a unique perspective on the needs of farm businesses and the people who make them successful. 

Growing up on a dairy farm in central New York, studying dairy science and Spanish at Cornell University, and serving in Guatemala with the Peace Corps all shaped her decision to dedicate her career to the dairy industry. She later earned a master’s degree in Human Resource Management from Cornell to help farms professionalize their approach to management. Libby enjoys helping farm teams improve communication and daily processes to achieve greater success and is also an instructor for our Spanish ASL courses.

She and her husband, Garrett, live in Stanley, NY, where he is a partner in Ivy Lakes Dairy, LLC. Together, they are raising two young daughters. 

Rachel McCarthy

Rachel McCarthy manages Agricultural Workforce Development’s supervisory leadership certificate program. Rachel has over a decade of experience working in higher education and extension developing online and in-person training programs. Before joining the Ag. Workforce team, she directed the training and outreach initiatives for two national invasive species early detection programs—Sentinel Plant Network and First Detector. Rachel developed train-the-trainer curricula, including educator presentations, supporting print resources, eLearning modules, and videos to support asynchronous learning.

Earlier in her career, Rachel led the landscape development program at Alfred State College, including instruction, program assessment, and curriculum development. Rachel earned her BS and MPS from Cornell University in Landscape Architecture and Ornamental Horticulture.