Posts

Showing posts with the label workforce preparedness

Engaging and Retaining Leaders in Future Workforce Preparation: Insights from Agricultural HR Experts

Image
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...

Workplace Scenarios: What Would You Do?

Image
 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...

Ideas for Enhancing Agriculture Workforce Training

Image
By Jama S. Coartney and Eric K. Kaufman --  The Agriculture Workforce Training for Collaborative Leadership  cohort met January 13, 2023, to check in and discuss topics of mutual interest, including PDSA projects, opportunities to share key insights with a broader audience, and the potential of incorporating digital badges into the learning management system. During the summer of 2022, each member of the cohort drafted a PDSA proposal to focus on an aspect of their teaching they would like to improve and test.  The January 2023 meeting focused on updates on this work.   The cohort faculty used  IdeaBoardz  to share news on pilot projects, gain feedback and insight from others, and explore ideas for future improvements.This video summarizes a discussion around the challenges faculty face with balancing the amount of class time to both engage with students and cover content.  The project blog  contains some updates from va...

Horticultural Jeopardy: Motivation through Gamification

Image
 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...

VCCS Agriculture Workforce Preparedness - Big Picture Observations

In preparation for the Agriculture Workforce Training for Collaborative Leadership Project, Virginia Community College Faculty were interviewed to gain a better understanding of what is needed to prepare agriculture students for the workforce. In the following video, Amy White—Virginia Western Community College's Dean of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics—summarizes observations from these interviews. 

VCCS Agriculture Workforce Preparedness – Setting the Stage with National Reports

Image
In this video, Dr. Eric Kaufman provides an overview of the current state of workforce preparedness, which is being explored from multiple perspectives, including students, parents, and industry. He also introduces a couple of national reports that offer insight on employability skill development within community college programs.     Featured reports from the video include the 2021 Cengage Graduate Employability Report and the  Strada Public Viewpoint Findings