Farish Mulkey became a part of ABAC’s faculty at the beginning of this semester and already feels at home. Mulkey is from Donaldsonville, GA and attended Seminole County High School. In 1984 he came to ABAC where he took up agricultural education.
Mulkey said he has taught at a number of public schools before coming to ABAC. He taught for one year at Macon County High School and taught ag. education at Bainbridge for a few years. After Bainbridge, Mulkey decided to take a break from teaching and went to UGA, where he finished his masters in 1992. He chose to attend Texas A&M for his graduate program and worked as a graduate assistant from 1992 to 1994. It was there he realized his passion for teaching.
“When I did graduate school at Texas A&M in 1994 I really felt like I was going to get into teacher education at a post-secondary level.” He admits that after finishing at Texas A&M he limited himself. There were not many jobs in the area he resided in and he decided to go into teaching at public schools.
The following year he moved back to Georgia and went to teach at Worth County Middle School before returning to Bainbridge to teach. Mulkey said this worked out for the best because he got to the chance to work with his five children during these years.
“That’s one thing I really love about teaching ag: I had the opportunity to work with all of my children that were involved in, ag programs in middle and high school.” He says that this was very important to him and his wife.
Mulkey decided to retire from teaching at public schools in June of 2018. Mulkey would return to ABAC, but this time as a professor. He began teaching here at ABAC in January of 2019.
This semester he is teaching Greenhouse and Nursery Management, Agriscience and an Ag. Seminar Class. Even though he’s only been a part of the faculty for a few weeks, Mulkey said the students and staff are tremendous. He described ABAC as being team-oriented and very helpful.
“Everyone that I have worked with has been willing to go above and beyond to help me to try to be successful and I appreciate that.”
Mulkey advises that students take advantages of opportunities they have here at ABAC and to stay committed. In his downtime, Mulkey enjoys spending time with his family and learning new things in agriculture.
