Land O' Lakes Honored at Football Game

A Strategic and Meaningful Partnership

Friday, September 12, 2014

Partnerships with the business community are key to the ongoing success of the Carlson School, the University, and our state’s economy. That is why it was so wonderful to see our strong relationship with Land O’Lakes honored during last Saturday’s football game.

It is a relationship that is both broad AND deep encompassing engagement with numerous areas of the school around the globe including projects with our Enterprises, education and talent development across all levels of their organization, and employment of our students. Land O’Lakes is even sponsoring an amazing program that will take some of our sophomores to Africa this year to help solve real-world agricultural challenges.

Now, with this generous gift that will strengthen our faculty and school, Land O’Lakes has provided a road map for how relationships with our business community can evolve into strategic partnerships that benefit everyone.

Perhaps most importantly, though, is that Land O’Lakes embraces the concept of doing well by doing good. They do so much to help farmers in distant parts of the world and they are the kind of organization that our students can learn from and one they want to work for.

Chris Policinski, the CEO and a member of our Board of Advisors put it so well when he said, “A key element in Land O’Lakes' vision of ‘being one of the best food and agricultural companies in the world’ is a commitment to corporate social responsibility and world-class corporate citizenship. We do this at home by being actively involved in efforts to enhance the quality of life in the communities in which members of our Land O’Lakes family live, work and do business.”

The corporate citizenship was on display Saturday and it was great to hear Gopher fans give it the rousing applause they did.