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 a bilingual dairy management specialist for the NWNY regional Extension team. She worked as a large animal veterinarian in both private practice and academia for over 10 years prior to joining Extension. During that time, she taught veterinary students dairy health management at the University of Pennsylvania’s New Bolton Center as well as Colorado State University. She also spent three years working internationally with large dairy herds in New Zealand, Turkey, and Uruguay.  Kaitlyn received 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 and has spent much time in practice focusing on employee education as a means to on-farm improvement.

Libby Eiholzer

Libby Eiholzer is a dairy technical services specialist for Cargill, where she assists dairy farmers and their employees in WNY. Libby brings to the role nine years of experience in working with dairy farms from her time with Cornell Cooperative Extension’s NWNY Dairy, Livestock, and Field Crops team. Libby’s expertise in supporting farm owners and employees gives her a unique perspective to understand the needs of both. 

Growing up on a dairy in Central NY, studying dairy science and Spanish at Cornell University, and volunteering in Guatemala with the Peace Corps informed Libby’s decision to work in the dairy industry. Several years ago, she completed a master’s degree in Human Resource Management from Cornell to serve the growing need for farms to professionalize their approach to management. She loves helping farm teams improve their daily processes and communication to achieve greater success. 

Libby’s husband Garrett is a partner in Ivy Lakes Dairy, LLC in Stanley, NY, and she enjoys helping him on the farm in her spare time. When not on a farm, Libby loves to spend time gardening, hanging out with her dog and training for triathlons. 

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.