Rhonda Hoffman

Dr. Rhonda Hoffman is a Professor and Director of Horse Science in the School of Agriculture at Middle Tennessee State University. She is a board-certified Diplomate of the American College of Animal Nutrition and member of the American Registry of Professional Animal Scientists.  She received the MTSU Outstanding Teacher Award in 2013. Nominated by students and selected from over 900 faculty, it is the university’s highest teaching recognition. 

Dr. Hoffman joined the faculty of the School of Agriculture as an Associate Professor of Animal Science/Horse Science in 2003, and she was promoted to Professor in 2011. She has been the Director of Horse Science since February 2017. Dr. Hoffman was an Assistant Professor in the Department of Animal & Poultry Sciences at Virginia Tech from 2000-2003, and an Assistant Professor and Horse Extension Specialist in the Department of Animal Science at the University of Connecticut from 1997-2000.

Classes she teaches at MTSU include undergraduate Equine Nutrition and Feeding, Horse Breeds and Genetics, Horse Production, Elements of Animal Science, and graduate level Advanced Equine Nutrition, Research Methods in Agriculture, and Graduate Seminar in Agriculture. She helped develop the Horse Science undergraduate and M.S. curriculum at MTSU. She mentors undergraduate Horse Science majors, undergraduate honors students, and research of students working towards M.S. and Ph.D degrees.

Dr. Hoffman believes teaching excellence is a skill that must be continually pursued, attained, and nurtured. She was awarded the Equine Science Society’s Outstanding Educator Award in 2021. This national award recognizes the development of programs that are exceptionally effective at disseminating research-based information in a manner that affects the long-term well-being of horses or the horse industry. She created a life-sized model of an equine digestive tract to facilitate teaching and learning of horse nutrition. This instructional model has been used in collegiate teaching for over 20 years and was reviewed and published by the Equine Science Society in 2003. Most recently, she collaborated with Drs. Warren Evans, Jessica Petersen, and Dale Van Vleck to author The Horse, 3rd Ed (2021), a comprehensive horse science textbook.