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Michael Gonda, a professor in �ձ�av��Ƶ’s Department of Animal Science, spent the fall 2025 semester at the University of Debrecen in Hungary teaching and conducting research as part of a Fulbright U.S. Scholar Program Award. Gonda was on sabbatical from late August through early January.

“It's an award that allows a faculty member to travel outside of the United States to either teach or to do research or both,” Gonda said. “It's a way for us to kind of broaden our horizons and then bring what we learned back to our home institution.”

�ձ�av��Ƶ and the University of Debrecen already have a strong connection through a joint precision agriculture bachelor’s degree.

“We even have three Hungarian students here right now who are currently going through the program, so it was neat to actually connect with them in Debrecen while I was there and then see them here in the United States and Brookings,” Gonda said.

Gonda was tasked with teaching an animal genetics class, as well as building research collaborations and relationships and analyzing data jointly with faculty and students at the University of Debrecen.

“It does change a little bit of my approach to teaching,” he said. “It broadened my horizons in terms of how agriculture works outside of the United States. You live and you work in South Dakota for 18 years, and you forget that there's such large variety of agriculture that's out there, and so just teaching there opened my eyes to that more.”

Part of Gonda’s work in Debrecen included establishing a research collaboration to assist the Hungarian Charolais Breed Association, which estimates breeding values for its bulls. He says those results are compared to another organization in France to determine whether the bulls are ranked differently.

“We actually have an undergraduate student here at �ձ�av��Ƶ who's working with some of that data right now,” he said.

Gonda says the trip broadened his research because there is so much to learn between the two locations across the world from each other.

“Many of the problems we face in South Dakota in agriculture are challenges they're also facing in Hungary, so there's a lot of overlap,” he said. "Why don't we work more together to try to try to solve those problems?"

The opportunity to spend time on this Fulbright Scholar Award is something Gonda says will have a lasting impact on faculty and students both at �ձ�av��Ƶ and the University of Debrecen.

“I would say opportunities for our faculty and our students to learn more about agriculture and the world around them,” he said. "I think that's what I'm probably going to be bringing back to Brookings the most because I've established relationships that I hope will lead to more students going to Debrecen. I can talk more intelligently about the university now with people. I can bring people together for research and teaching opportunities, and so I think that's going to be the biggest lasting impact is developing these collaborations.”

Those collaborations can most strongly be seen in the precision agriculture program, a joint offering between the Department of Agricultural and Biosystems Engineering and the Department of Agronomy, Horticulture and Plant Science. Through relationships like those developed by Gonda, the College of Agriculture, Food and Environmental Sciences hopes to grow the program, expanding opportunities available to all �ձ�av��Ƶ students.