Agriculture Workforce Training for Collaborative Leadership (AWT4CL)

By Heather Butler  --  Field trips and guest speakers are a wonderful tool for enhancing course content. They expose the students to real-world applications of the course, as well as introducing them to professionals in the field, which in turn creates informal networking opportunities between the students and the presenters ( Ji et al., 2021 ). However, I have learned over the years through many, many field trips and guest speakers that the experience is only as valuable as the preparation invested before the event. As much as I enjoy connecting students with guest speakers and organizing the events, the effectiveness in my earlier years was very hit-or-miss in terms of student responsiveness and the kinds of questions they asked. Some classes were very gregarious and asked the speakers meaningful, in-depth questions, while other classes were quite timid and unresponsive. In the latter situations, I felt badly for the speakers because it appeared my students were not intere...

by Heather Butler --  I teach a 4-credit Dendrology course at Virginia Western Community College , which includes a 3-credit lecture and 1-credit lab. The lecture takes place in a traditional college classroom and covers tree physiology and forest ecology. The lab, however, is field-based and entails weekly field trips to forested areas where students learn to identify the common and Latin names of 100+ trees and shrubs native to the central Appalachia. I based the class on  Virginia Tech’s field Dendrology lab  developed by Dr. John Seiler. He still teaches at VT and was my instructor when I studied forestry. Each week, students learn to identify and properly name 8-10 new species, which are then added to a growing list of potential items on lab quizzes. Weekly quizzes are given at the beginning of each field lab, and the species add up quickly. If students aren’t engaged and practicing from the beginning, they can easily get overwhelmed, making it difficult to catch u...

 By Tom Scales --  The Advisory Group for Southside Virginia Community College’s Agribusiness and Business programs meet every year. It is made up of business and industry leaders throughout SVCC’s 11 county service area. Every year people tell us that the need for the “soft skills” is often greater than their need for job skills when hiring people. A dairy farmer can teach people about cattle fairly easily because cattle are their livelihood. But it’s a different ballgame for that farmer to teach people about time management, politeness, neatness, communication, work ethic, motivation, responsibility, etc. Often, they will tell us, “we hire for attitude and then train for skills.”  Thus, they ask us to prepare our graduates for better attitude, willingness, and communication. For some, they see soft skills as more important than the actual job-related ones. (The milking machine they’d use on the job is probably different from the one I’d teach them on, so the farmer wo...

 By Dr. Ben Casteel --  “Do It Well.  Make It Fun.” were the words etched into our January in-service schedule at Virginia Highlands Community College where I teach Horticulture & Agriculture courses.  Local author Ron Culberson was sharing his philosophy (and book title) on how to achieve excellence in the workplace through entertaining motivational mechanisms.  I couldn’t help but to ponder how I might make some of the more banal moments in my classroom more enjoyable for students.  Later that evening, while having a throwback family dinner in front of the television set, the epiphany occurred.  We would often play along with Jeopardy over dinner—and in that very moment—I realized this could be a way I could make exam review time more fun and engaging for my students. That Spring, I trialed using a Powerpoint template of the Jeopardy game show as our midterm and final exam review.  It was a smashing success for the outgoing extroverted s...

By Dr. Heather Lindberg --  Internships are a great opportunity for students to bridge the gap between classrooms—which emphasize theory with minimal practice and application—and industry, which focuses on applying theory and solving problems in real time with real consequences. Internships can help to address this gap. Research indicates that internships can help to ease this transition for students—from the classroom to the workforce—by providing dedicated mentorship, training, and experience within the industry setting (Veenstra, 2014) . Roanoke Valley, VA and surrounding areas are encouraging innovation related to agriculture, life sciences, and the biotechnology industry. Programs, such as Regional Acceleration and Mentoring Program (RAMP) , a regional business accelerator, help to support STEM-related startup companies.  Some of these startups will turn into companies, increasing employment opportunities in the region.  With these developments, there will be more o...