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$280K USDA Grant to Promote High-Paying, In-Demand Agriculture Careers

2 min read

The agriculture departments at Southern Arkansas University and the University of Arkansas are teaming up to take on the problem of declining numbers of agriculture students and more mouths to feed on Earth.

Jeffry Miller, chair of the Department of Agriculture at SAU, and Robbye Taylor, director of grants at SAU, secured a three-year, $280,000 grant from the USDA to educate and inspire secondary education students to the possibilities of choosing agriculture as a post-secondary and career option.

“The number of farm-reared students has declined greatly while high-paying agriculture careers in Arkansas and beyond have steadily increased,” Miller said in a news release.

Miller will be the project director, and is overseeing the production of videos that will coincide with self-contained science kits.

“We believe these videos and science projects, over a three year period, will affect positive perceptual change toward agriculture not only for the students we are targeting, but for their administrators, counselors, and teachers as well,” Miller said.

He is partnering with Dr. Jill Rucker of the UA, and they will be working with Arkansas’ secondary teachers in the areas of physical science, biology, and chemistry.

In the first year, the project will consist of ninth grade science classes. The following year, the project will add 10th grade classes, and in its third year, 11th grade classes will be included. Each year, six video focused on agriculture will be produced and each will be accompanied with a hands-on laboratory exercise.

“The intention of this project is to introduce agriculture to agriculturally-naïve students by relating the science of agriculture,” Miller said. “We also hope to change any negative perceptions of agriculture held by the students and educators, administrators and counselors within the secondary schools. Agriculture is much more scientific and high-tech from what many people might imagine it to be.” 

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