The MS Plant Breeding Program, offers plant breeding courses to distance M.S. students and on campus students to fulfil M.S. or Ph.D course requirements. Dr. Mahama teaches STB/Agron 536 and Agron 537, and has taught Agron 523 and Agron 528 as substitute. He has collaborated with other faculty to develop and will teach a new course, Agron 542 – Breeding for Organic Crops. Every other summer, he teaches a session on tree breeding and whenever possible, offers handson experience on handling and processing breeding materials for students in Agron 522.
Dr. Mahama is passionate about pedagogy and has lead a project on identifying and establishing plant breeding core concepts to facilitate appropriate sequencing of courses, identifying gaps in concepts to ensure smooth transitioning from course to course, and to better serve the talent needs of stakeholders employing graduates from the program.
As major professor, Dr. Mahama advises MS graduate students to write defend and submit their creative components required to fulfil graduation requirements.
Dr. Mahama has worked on projects, collaboratoring with faculty at ISU and Universities in Africa, to develop and deliver educational materials for use in teaching graduate courses in plant breeding at ISU and universities in Africa.
He is also interested in collaborative research in soybean genetics and breeding.