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Dixie Watts Dalton

Associate Professor
  • Director, Center for Economic Education at Virginia Tech
  • OMALS Agribusiness Concentration Coordinator, CALS

Photo by Normand Adams

Dixie Dalton
319-C Hutcheson Hall
Blacksburg, VA 24061

Dixie Dalton developed and leads the agribusiness concentration in the Online Master of Agricultural and Life Sciences degree in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences and assists with the department's Online Master of Agricultural and Applied Economics. She is the director of the Virginia Tech Center for Economic Education.

Expertise: Agribusiness. agritourism, professional M.S. online program

Education:

  • Ph.D., Economics, Duke University
  • M.S., Agricultural Economics, Virginia Tech
  • B.S., Agricultural Economics, Virginia Tech

Courses taught:

  • AAEC 5034 Agribusiness Marketing Policy and Business Strategies
  • AAEC 5054 Strategic Agribusiness Management
  • AAEC 5074 Agricultural and Food Policy 

Dixie began her career in 1993 as an Assistant Professor and extension specialist in Virginia Tech's Agricultural and Applied Economics Department. She focused on undergraduate teaching and advising, served a term as Undergraduate Coordinator, and conducted extension programming on tobacco economics and agribusiness marketing.  She was promoted to Associate Professor in 1999.  For her contributions to the department, college, and university, she was awarded both the Alumni Award for Excellence in Teaching and the Alumni Award for Excellence in Advising in 2003 and earned the award for outstanding teaching from the American Association of Agricultural Economics.  For her contributions to industry, she received awards from Virginia Farm Bureau, the Virginia Agribusiness Council, and the Association of Cooperative Educators.

In 2010, she returned to her home county of Lunenburg to take a position at Southside Virginia Community College where she developed and led the college's new agribusiness program.  In 2015, she was named SVCC's Dean of Humanities, Social Sciences, and Business.  In the fall of 2021, she returned to VT's Ag Econ Department to develop and lead the agribusiness concentration in the college's online master's degree.