From classroom to career: Tina Sullivan

Tina Sullivan began expanding the limits of her comfort zone early, at just six years old, as she and her father stood at the side of a southeast Tennessee road selling pumpkins. 

“We picked them, and Dad and I went and sat on the corner of the road and all I was told was ‘We’re going to sell pumpkins.’”

Creech was speaking with a Kansas State University graduate student who asked Sullivan how she felt about the Sunflower State. He knew of a few jobs she might be interested in applying for.

 Six months later, Sullivan joined Kansas State University as assistant professor and extension agronomist, focusing 80% of her time on extension and 20% on research.

“Everything I had done worked up to that moment,” she says; her relentless volunteering with Society committees, her Annual Meeting explorations, her graduate work—and probably the goats.

Two tough kids

When she was a girl, Sullivan’s family operated a farm for meat goats. She enjoyed caring for them and wanted to be a veterinarian. But only for goats. 

“And if it wasn’t goats, I wasn’t going to do it,” she says. She eventually did decide on an alternative career path, but she still loved her goats. When she was in high school, a goat named Caramel had triplets. One of the three was small and ignored by the mother—not good. 

But the goat was still alert that evening, so Tina tucked the baby into her Carhartt jacket and took it to buy some colostrum, crucial for newborn kids. Dava Boo became a house goat and would go on to thrive—and make an appearance in her high school yearbook. 

Dava Boo was one of Sullivan’s many lessons in solving new problems by making quick decisions. This kind of resourcefulness would give her new opportunities, both for herself and those around her. 

Tina would go on to graduate valedictorian and attend the University of Tennessee at Martin thanks to undergraduate scholarships from the Tennessee FFA. Advisers told her engineering would be her best path, and she majored in agricultural engineering. 

 Then life threw another curve ball. Her mother had thyroid cancer. 

Path to grad school

Sullivan’s priorities shifted, and she took a job close to home with an agricultural co-op after she earned her degree.

Training to be a manager behind the front desk, Sullivan fielded questions about feed prices and seed varieties as well as those of a more personal nature. 

“I’d constantly be asked where I was from because I didn’t sound like them. I grew up in Bledsoe County, but they’d ask who I’m married to and ‘Who is your dad?’” she recalls. 

Though the job didn’t stick, it provided Sullivan’s introduction to the Societies as the co-op paid for her to become a Certified Crop Adviser, a program of the American Society of Agronomy.

Her mother recovered from her cancer surgery, and Sullivan began cold-emailing graduate programs. She focused on those that worked with the tomatoes, bell peppers, and other vegetables she grew up alongside.

Often, the research wasn’t a good fit—”I didn’t want to study pigweed for the rest of my life”—but she soon found a match in Utah State University. 

It was thanks to her adviser, Dr. Matt Yost, that Sullivan became a member of the American Society of Agronomy (ASA), Crop Science Society of America (CSSA), and Soil Science Society of America (SSSA). But getting the full benefits out of membership means putting yourself in, and this was just how Sullivan was built.

Making the most of membership

Membership was far more than a box to check. It was a vehicle to serve, to be helpful, and to meet people. Soon, she was applying to join committees, such as the Graduate Student Committee, where she served three years. She spent much of her time there helping to craft meaningful experiences for fellow grad students at the Annual Meeting. 

In an era of digital communication, Sullivan doesn’t overlook the value of face-to-face conversation.

Sometimes, we rely too much on the device in our pocket,” she says.

Perhaps most of all, what membership provides her is practice at a set of often-ignored but invaluable skills.

Sullivan gets asked about how she’s become such a good communicator. Timid by nature, she had to practice and refine these skills, just like any other. 

“I would not be a good communicator if I didn't practice,” she says.

From a young age, Sullivan was again and again put into situations where there was no background to fade into. Her church choir had three people where she and a schoolmate were two of the three.

And then there were the goats and the roadside pumpkins. That memory stands out more because it was quality time with her father, who would pass away less than a year later. It was one more reason she had to grow up fast.   

Her ability to step beyond the familiar has also unlocked the value of membership in the Societies. By staying curious and making the most of every connection, she found not only a career, but chances to give back, just like she learned back home.