After seizing every opportunity at Western Illinois University, Adam Bensman, Class of 2025, is now planting seeds for the future as WIU’s newest campus farm manager. Having grown up in Ohio, Bensman moved to Illinois, where he was on the Lake Land and WIU Livestock Judging teams. Upon graduating in May, Bensman is giving back by helping current and future students.
“I have a deep passion to help people. I thought this would be an awesome experience to help kids find their dreams,” shares Bensman. “I’ve made a lot of connections throughout my travels. I’d like to share those with people to help them achieve their dreams, mainly focused on helping students experience at college and past college be very beneficial, and how they want to make of it.”
Stepping into the farm manager role, Bensman hopes to grow the program and its reputation nationwide.
“I want to raise some of the best sheep here at WIU across America. I think it’s very doable with our resources that we currently have with Tyson Rule coming in with semen and AI sheep, we’re going to AI sheep, actually, September 17,” shares Benson. “We’re starting to hopefully become really, really competitive on the show pig side here, with our online sale, just kind of dispersing those pigs across the nation, getting them into some good homes.”
On the agronomy side, Bensman hopes to expand test plots to incorporate different research projects to help expand student knowledge.
