Agriculture Workforce Training for Collaborative Leadership (AWT4CL)

By Megan Seibel  --   Recently, I had the pleasure of listening to a webinar sponsored by several national agricultural education organizations entitled, “Empowering Agricultural Education: Engaging and Retaining Leaders for Future Workforce Preparation.” Human resource experts from BASF , Elanco , and Syngenta shared insights related to wants and needs of future workforce, and how agricultural education can support both educators and students to address these needs in preparing for the future.  While the primary target audience of this session was educators of secondary students, the topics discussed proved to be in direct alignment with the programmatic goals of post-secondary education and training programs. When it comes to leadership skills sought by employers, there are ways to develop and enforce them at multiple times throughout a student’s education. Interest in particular careers may be planted early, so that they come to community college, university, and ca...

by Samson Adeoye -- As we approached the end of the year 2023, Dr. Curt Friedel took us on a journey of capturing the year in pictures and keeping memories alive. An insightful blog post that connects reflection with learning and experience. In a seemingly orchestrated order, Dr. Megan Seibel provided an educative blog post on how one may approach a new year with new perspectives, drawing connections to cognitive styles and decision-making. As part of reviewing and reflecting on the previous year, members of the AWT4CL met virtually to discuss their teaching and learning experiences. They shared practical wisdom from engaging with their students based on PDSA (Plan-Do-Study-Act) projects, synchronous and asynchronous learning, and implementation of digital learning badges. The conversation and reflections indicate that the AWT4CL project is creating avenues for cohort members to create engaged learning environments, where instructors create opportunities for students to participate ac...

by Curt Friedel -- One of my favorite things to do at the end of the year is to find the websites offering the year in pictures. As they say, “a picture is worth a thousand words”, and tells a story of significant events of the past year. Sometimes, the pictures are associated with a newsworthy event; sometimes, the picture is a colorful and beautiful moment. It seems like each picture offers a glimpse of our humanity, and sometimes our inhumanity. Pictures offer a great opportunity to reflect on what we can be proud of, and what we could do better or different. Some great websites for seeing the year-in-pictures include: CNN - https://www.cnn.com/interactive/2023/specials/year-in-pictures/ The Associated Press - https://apnews.com/article/photos-2023-yearend-photography-ap-0a62ee84672da7a03685c5f5f64f2c47 Time - https://time.com/6337364/top-100-photos-2023/ Reuters - https://www.reuters.com/pictures/pictures-year-2023-2023-11-28/ What does your year of pictures look like? Maybe you ta...

by Dr. Mallory White -- To weave workforce readiness skills into a traditional agriculture classroom can be a little challenging. My first-year animal science class tackled four of the twelve AWT4CL employability learning/digital badges. This blog discusses how we did it, challenges and possible lessons for the instructor and the student, and overall perception of the digital badges.  How We Did It   First, I set aside one lab period to discuss the project and complete many of the in-class activities. This required me to combine two traditionally separate, short labs into one to free up a week, but I was determined to make room for important employability content . The activities from each digital badge created by the badge authors are short and effective, but I wanted the students to do more in order to earn a badge. As an instructor, it can be difficult to come up with new, creative activities in the limited time we have. As I was rushing to come up with additional activ...

by Adam O'Neal -- Based on input from a cohort of agriculture faculty from around Virginia, an Agriculture and Food Systems Peer Group has been constituted by the Virginia Community College System (VCCS) to serve the needs of agriculture program faculty around the Commonwealth of Virginia. Peer groups have existed for other disciplines for some time, but none for this area of study until now. From the shared experiences of the Agriculture Workforce Training for Collaborative Leadership (AWT4CL) cohort members and other agriculture faculty, we understand that collaboration at professional levels has proven challenging. This peer group promises potential benefits to agriculture faculty in unraveling professional challenges and related classroom and teaching concerns. Agriculture is the largest private industry in Virginia, with over 43,000 farms contributing to $82.3B a year in economic impact (Virginia Farm Bureau, n.d.). Though a number of Virginia Community College System ( V...

by Samson Adeoye and Eric Kaufman --  The summer of 2023 activities comprised three sequential sessions – a project evaluation and two check-ins – where different engaging avenues were employed to further the Agricultural Workforce Training for Collaborative Leadership (AWT4CL) project. Celeste Carmichael facilitated a focus group as part of the project’s formative evaluation to ensure continuous process improvement and enhanced learning. Members of the AWT4CL cohort met virtually to discuss their experiences and perceptions about the project. According to the cohort, the AWT4CL has helped to enhance their communication, networking, relationship-building, and collaboration skills and abilities. A participant recounted: “ I think it’s been very valuable, and one thing I think would serve us better is the networking aspect. I feel like we have developed relationships and been able to do some checks and balances for one another to improve our program’s consistency across the VCCS...