A product of a diversified family farm upbringing, immersed in FFA and 4-H experiences, Dr. Mulvaney pursued his passion for animal agriculture at the University of Illinois where he competed on livestock, meats judging and evaluation teams. After a stint of teaching high school ag education, he accepted a role to teach meat science and coach meats & meat animal evaluation teams at MSU where his passion for research in growth and muscle biology was ignited. Dr. Mulvaney’s research interests have historically related to regulatory biology of muscle and meat through fetal programming but also focused on factors to enhance student development, teaching, leadership process and analytics around communication strategies which can help graduates address ag industry issues. In addition to research areas of biology, he developed several courses in leadership and communication leading to his development of the minor in leadership studies within the College of Agriculture, a revised Ag Communications degree curriculum and launch of a campus-wide leadership minor (LEAD). His scholarly works include $7+ million in grants and approximately 250 refereed journal articles, non-refereed articles, abstracts at national/international meetings, and invited presentations combined. He has served as a former Associate Director for the Biggio Center for the Enhancement of Teaching and Learning where he facilitated New Faculty Scholars, Future Faculty mentoring, classroom assessments and other professional faculty development programming.