Auburn University's land grant mission propels us to do research that matters.

To provide access to an exceptional education and to improve the lives of people in our state and beyond.

And this is exactly what Auburn's agriscience education program does.

Housed in our College of Education, our agriscience education faculty and students partner with those in the College of Agriculture, the Alabama Cooperative Extension System and many others, both on and off of our campus.

These partnerships fuel our community outreach, creating real impact in a variety of areas ranging from small farms and industry partners to disaster preparedness teams.

We're also training future leaders to have an impact in a variety of agriculture related fields and industries throughout the state, nation and world.

During this episode, you will hear about how our agriscience education program embodies our land grant mission and works to address some of the world's toughest challenges through real world research, exceptional academics, and hands on outreach programs.

Agriscience education is a little bit different than a lot of the other programs that you see at Auburn or in the College of Education in general, because what we really focus on is is trying to help people solve the problems in their community and their community typically being in and around the context of agriculture.

We lead the state in the sense that we are the only higher education, agriscience education program that serves the entire state of Alabama.

And that's important for a couple of reasons.

One is because it allows us to have a strong presence in working on things like poverty, food distribution, and disaster preparedness and response and workforce development.

And so when you think about the levels at which we work in terms of, let's say, for example, workforce development, on the one hand, we prepare our students, some of our students to enter into educational leadership roles, principals, superintendents or K-through-12 classroom teaching.

That is a big part of workforce development for the state, because those are the teachers that kids are encountering when they're going to K-through-12 education.

On the other hand, we also help our graduates who are entering the workforce themselves.

Enter a range of different disciplines, whether it's in education or maybe they're going to go into agricultural extension.

They may go into sales and marketing related to agriculture, or they may even go into law and public policy.

Our program in ag education is unique in that most of our work doesn't occur in a classroom or on campus.

It's out there working with the different people that are building the systems that are necessary to grow and distribute food.

And so we have to have a bigger connection with the people in the communities, not just schools, but communities and rural areas and places where they can grow food, and to figure out who we can work with and make sure that we're getting food where people are.

The most compelling aspect of what we get to do here at Auburn as ag science education as agriscience education or ag education.

You'll hear those terms kind of used interchangeably throughout quite a bit of our conversations that we get to have about this, because everybody sees this a little bit differently, which honestly is the best part about it because everybody gets to get, if you will, what they need out of what we do.

We're not chameleons, but we do serve so many different roles, and we get to be the human specialists in agriculture.

We get to be the ones that that take those innovations to those to the people that need them.

And we get to everyday try to find those solutions and try to find how it is that people need to hear to be able to best implement those things that that we find here on campus.

From a personal side or a professional side and how it blends with our work I look at the compelling nature of it through the research that we do.

Right?

So within my every day, part of my job teaching students, performing my research.

But then taking that research into training the next generation of educators, of agriculturalists, of professors, of academicians, that's the compelling nature that I think drives me to get up every morning is what can I do for me individually to help improve the field?

Programmatically, I like to think that our work, whether it's individual or collective, really propels us to to provide the best product that we can for our students and for faculty, our peers in and across colleges and across the university.

One of the things that we do is we try to translate the language of agriculture to the people and communities that it serves.

And so we have outstanding faculty and students who work every day to generate new information, to transmit new knowledge and share their skills with the state.

And we're actively going out across the state, working with different communities to provide professional development opportunities, education opportunities, so that the leaders in Alabama who touch on agriculture in a variety of different ways are better prepared to lead us into a brighter future.

The impact of our work in our program, and my work in particular, is where I am in my career, is developing the next generation of leaders.

That it's our responsibility to help educate not only the students that are here on campus, but the people in the state of Alabama and abroad on the technologies that are going to be necessary to feed this growing hungry world, to help educate people on nutrition, to help educate people on how do we disperse food to where people are.

And I think that it's critical that we address these grand challenges facing this if we're not able to help solve these grand challenges, then then we're in for a lot more trouble than anybody could ever imagine.

If you look historically, it's really a fundamental dimension of Auburn's identity, right?

So when Auburn was granted its land grant status, it was an agricultural mechanical college, and the name has since changed.

But that's our roots.

And in the College of Education, we have a similar history.

The college was founded in 1915.

And if you look back at the original documents, we were originally a program of agricultural education.

Alright, so we've always kind of been at the center of agriculture and the people that it serves.

I'm really proud of the fact that our program in the College Education is the first program that started the entire College of Education.

But we've always had a long history of working with agriculture.

It's the context in which we work, just like somebody in math education would say that the context of what they do is mathematics.

Well, our work in agriculture requires us to work with the bench scientist, the soil physicists, the horticulturists the animal science, the poultry science people.

And so it's critical that we're working with them and helping them to diffuse the innovations that they're coming up with and that the research that they're doing to a broader population so we can address the needs that we're trying to do.

And also part of our program is we're trying to educate, again, as I've said, the next generation of leaders in agriculture.

And so it's critical for us that when we're working with our students here on campus, that they have exposure to those different fields of agriculture, which are a critical part of of of feeding a hungry world.

The College of Agriculture offers a Bachelor of Science and Agricultural Science, which is the companion degree to the B.S.

in agriscience education offered by the College of Education.

In many of the secondary education programs there is a companion subject matter area, and this program in College of Agriculture plays that role for agriscience education.

So in my role in the College of Agriculture, the majority of my interaction with the agriscience education team is comes in sort of two different forms.

So one is on the student side and that by student side, I mean current Auburn University students.

So undergraduate students majoring in agriscience education also complete a double major in agricultural science.

So we see students that are in that program also being a part of the College of Agriculture.

They can serve as our ag ambassadors.

They participate in our undergraduate student clubs.

It's a unique relationship that we have with another college where you see students that are heavily involved in two colleges.

A lot of times students just have access or participation in one college so that's what's unique about this major.

And then also in terms of graduate students, so the graduate students in agriscience education, we collaborate with them on different activities, different efforts.

And so that's a really good opportunity to work with graduate students that are pursuing a degree that is beyond just simple disciplinary expertise like for example, most of the graduate students in the College of Agriculture are really focused on their particular discipline, whether it's entomology or horticulture or animal sciences.

Graduate students in agriscience education have a little bit broader reach, and so it's a really great opportunity for us to work with them.

So that's kind of on the student side of things working with agriscience education also gives us one additional opportunity, and that's in the form of outreach.

So we get to reach students that are in high school sometimes even in middle school, because so much of what agriscience education does is has a lot to do with a lot of the sort of public facing aspects of what we do.

You know, a lot of our research and teaching in the College of Agriculture is really focused on the faculty, staff and students that are in the college.

But working with agriscience education, we really get that broader outreach.

And I think where we see that outreach happening sort of the most often for us has to do with the interaction with FFA.

So that's a really important opportunity where we get to provide professional development opportunities for high school students and they come to campus and they interact with our faculty and staff.

So we couldn't really do that without partnering with agriscience education.

So working with them is just really kind of really broadens a lot of the opportunities that we have in the College of Agriculture.

So Auburn Ag Ed is closely affiliated with Alabama FFA Association.

When I was around 14, 15 years old, I just started getting very, very involved in my local chapter, which is Real Town FFA, about 30 minutes outside of the city of Auburn and the campus.

And we have a lot of competitions and events here on campus with the ideas of, yes, bringing these students in to learn these soft skills that the competitions were just based off of, but also to introduce them into their next steps into this new world.

So that's really how I got interested and learned about this incredible program.

And then going off of that too, as a state officer, something that was really cool was I remember the AG Ed Ambassadors kind of just hosted a dinner for my state officer team and they just sat down and talked to us about just the opportunities that were here in this program.

And then they took us to a Pacers game in Indiana at the National FFA Convention, and it was just super cool to just sit and talk with these real world students who are a few years older than me, but and places and positions that like I could actually see myself in.

So definitely the people just being real and sharing their experienxes is how I found out.

So the impact of working collaboratively between the College of Agriculture and also agriscience education, I think really where we see it a lot is where we are connecting our current students with the next generation of students.

So they're getting to interact with students that are coming through high school.

They're, you know, perhaps potentially involved in agriculture already, but maybe not.

And they can really share their experiences with what it's like to pursue a major in agricultural or agriscience education at Auburn University.

And just really the the impact that a degree like that can have and how well it prepares a student to pursue a career that they're passionate about and to find a way to really make a difference so that's kind of the exciting piece of a degree.

And agriculture and agriculture and agricultural education is that there is always that impact factor and that application that that comes along with that degree where you've not only learned the fundamentals, the principles, but then how to apply them.

We need people in agriculture who are passionate.

We need citizens to understand what agriculture is, that agriculture is so much more than than a 30 second commercial.

That it's more than going to the grocery store.

It's understanding the people and the product and the placement and value in the land of where that came from.

And simply buying something because it's on sale isn't good enough anymore.

We have to educate that next generation to be able to understand, start to finish this is where it came from and this is how it ended up here.

If we really want to understand security of what we do and bringing people in, then we have to be transparent and educated.

We have to be open about who we are and only agriculture can do that.

My name is Whitney Dyess and I have the honor of being the agriscience teacher at Beauregard High School.

Where I'm also the FFA advisor.

Here we have a general agriscience program where we teach fundamentals of agriscience, intermediate agriscience, advanced agriscience and horticulture so the students get an overview of pretty much everything agriculture.

This is my 12 year teaching and my third year here at Beauregard high school.

Every one of us eat every day.

We live in buildings, we are in buildings every day and we wear clothes.

So agriculture is essential to each one of our lives.

And as removed from the farm as we are today, it's crucial that students in high school understand agriculture, understand where that food comes from, understand where their clothing comes from, and understand those aspects of agriculture.

So being informed consumer is is very important in our society today because that is that's our existence.

Also, high school students, they're looking for what they're going to do in their future, what do they want to be when they grow up.

So this allows us to give them a view into the agriculture industry as to what we have to offer and the job opportunities and careers that are available within the agriculture industry.

So agriculture education is very important because not only are we teaching those basics of the agriculture industry, the technical aspects of it, plants, animals, food and fiber.

But we're also teaching leadership skills, we're also teaching communication skills.

We are teaching those skills that are so important in every career that employers are telling us every day that they need employees to have.

So we're not only teaching them about the technical aspects, but we are teaching them the soft skills that they can use if they choose not to go into an agriculture career, to still be an educated consumer with those soft skills that are going to make them successful in their life.

So the reason the collaboration between the College of Agriculture and Agriscience Education is important is because it really allows us to have a lot more of public facing emphasis to what we do.

And it helps connect the researchers in the College of Agriculture with external constituents.

And also it's a connection with Extension as well.

Our role in working with Extension is, is that part of what we're trying to do is we're working with them to conduct research, applied research, and to helping them disseminate information throughout the state and to try to come up with fact based information.

So we're working with people.

For example, after the impacts of the hurricanes that came up through South Alabama, we had teams that were down there looking at how not just the agricultural system were impacted, but we were also looking at the impacts on the humans and the people and the kids that were in the schools, and what do they do.

You know, one of the schools that we were working with, for example, first we get hit by a hurricane, then we get hit by two years of COVID.

And it's very complex and so that we sit right there at that genesis of agriculture people and teaching and learning.

And so we have to work very carefully with Extension, with the experiment station, with the universities, with school systems to try to address these critical problems.

So I am an Extension specialist focusing in the areas of community development, leadership development, economic development and workforce development.

I work with each of our 67 County Extension Coordinators to deliver programing and related services to Alabama communities, and there's leaders there and the citizens there to help improve quality of place and quality of life for those that live there.

So with agriscience education, we hold three grants together currently, and within those grants they're all focused on disaster preparedness and response and so we are working closely to put together the curricula and then to deliver those curricula to the audiences that we have identified.

And our hope is to make lasting impact, to help communities become more prepared and to have plans in place so that when the unthinkable does happen, those volunteer groups, those citizens those agricultural producers know what to do and where to go when they need help.

When you start to look at the impact that these projects and programs are going to have not just in the near terms, but the long terms, it's there.

These communities without this work might not have the opportunity to have someone lead them through a strategic planning process.

To identify those assets and where those volunteers need to come from to address these challenges that they need to think about.

You're looking at other issues related to just communicating the basics related to disaster preparedness and response for those that are vulnerable in Alabama, whether they're living in substandard housing or maybe they don't have English as their primary language making sure that they have the tools and resources through weather radios and other types of grassroots programing that'll teach them where their local food banks and storm shelters are.

That's the work we're doing.

And without agriscience education backing us up, we may not be able to have the expertise and the hands on deck from an educational standpoint and community development standpoint to make that possible.

When we work with our peers, a lot of that has been relationship building.

Whether we are a mile apart or 50 feet apart it is all about building relationships with those peers that surround us, whether they're in soil science, whether they're in Extension, whether an animal science poultry the context of the disipline does not matter.

It's working with like minded individuals who have a desire and a need to improve life and society in Alabama.

So when we look at our work with Extension, Extension is people driven, it's program driven.

It's how can they help Alabamians?

I think when we look at that, we identify the needs.

So it might be disaster relief, it could be professional development training for our teachers.

Extension really is the outreach arm of that.

It gives us an opportunity to kind of maybe sometimes work outside of of groups that we typically work with.

But we can only do that with strong partnerships in the College of Agriculture and in Cooperative Extension in Alabama.

Collaboration, honestly, collaboration is the key to all answering all the problems that we have.

Right.

So none of us can answer any one problem alone.

None of us can answer the complex issues that are our global global food crisis or our climate change crisis, any of those things.

We can't answer those things in independence.

Me sitting in an office, in a building on campus can't do that alone.

Our colleagues over in other buildings, sitting in their isolation, can't do that alone.

It's only through cross-campus, cross-cultural cross- honestly, global collaborations that we can actually answer some of those questions.

We have students currently from all over the world.

It's really interesting.

We've got students in our program from from California to to Western Africa to Europe, and Asia and all over and clearly here, many, many and most here from Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee, all of our surrounding areas and we get to come together and they get to see how problems, solutions and agriculture works across all that dynamic.

So we get to hear about the cocoa production in Ghana or cotton production in central Alabama or water rights issues in California, because we sit in our rooms and we talk about these things and we try to figure out how can we bring together our community to help answer some of those questions.

So my role in agriscience education as this team is I'm first a student, I'm undergrad student here at the University then after that, we work collaboratively together.

We we support each other.

We ask questions in class.

We have an open discussion.

We answer those real world questions.

The hard questions they don't want us to talk about.

And that has really opened my eyes of alright not only is this one part of the world, but there's so much more in this state, so much different going on and just different scenarios and just being able to discuss that and the openness about that has really impacted me and just being open myself about the things that are going on and how we can better this community.

I'm really like a sponge right now.

I'm really wanting to learn a lot about agriculture, about the industry, about relationships.

And I started out with a lot of agriculture classes, horticulture, animal science, poultry, aquaculture.

There's I took a lot of those classes in the beginning when I started at Auburn in 2020 and then I, I linked into some of my education classes and I'm fixin to finish up with my education classes.

And this next spring I will be in my clinical residency, my internship at a high school here in Alabama.

And I like that.

I think it kind of prepares us for that so we don't go into it blind sided.

We know a little bit about the industry, we know a little bit about every aspect of agriculture.

My experience here at Auburn, I've grown much not not in height, but just in personality and just learn more about myself.

I came a little later.

I didn't come right after high school to Auburn I took some time off, went to community college and then worked in Huntsville for a job.

So I was here coming in a little later than most students come in my program of interest, the studies that I've done here has been horticulture based, then having a desire for forestry.

I was on the forestry team in high school and come down here and taken a fiorestry class.

It kind of shocked me, to be honest with you.

I walked in there because forestry I loved it and everything.

I walked in and I was the only one that was a non major in the forestry section because here at Auburn we've we have different electives and we take anything in the ag field.

And I walked in there and they're like, Who are you?

I'm like, Oh, I'm Ag Ed!

We have Ag Ed?

Yes, we have Ag Ed.

It was just like, well, here we go, it's recruitment, you know, talking to people and everything and met a good buddy in there and I mean the class was hard to be honest with you.

It is a lot of science is heavy, heavy in science, but I enjoyed it.

I got to learn so much about the soil department, how they grow and just so much about it on the cellular level of foresty.

I was like, yeah, you look at a tree, you don't think of all the cells and everything, how it works.

The xylem and the phloem and the ATP and all the enzymes that are involved, I mean, just crazy.

So I got to learn some of that and some in horticulture fisheries we talked about fisheries, we went out to some private ponds and private ponds back at home, half, not even half an acre.

You come up down around this area, you see some 15, 20, 30 acres.

You think you're out on your own lake.

I grew up around Lake Guntersville and you're thinking, man, this is huge.

Like I can take a boat out, I can go fishing and like just talking to people and I was like, wow, this is crazy you know such a different aspect of the world, you see, and those experiences it all opened my eyes up to what's going on and who I want to be and you know, coming in, I was , well yes younger, but it opened my eyes more to the possibilities out there.

It's not just one thing, but what's really honed on is being an agriscience educator.

You know, I want to make an impact on our students.

I want them to know thay they're loved, that they have someone that's going to be there and that's going to be that open ear.

I mean, you just teach them a little bit.

And I mean, you're not going in all this depth.

Your just, you're just presenting it to them.

And when they ask questions, you try to answer it you're not going to every answer.

And you just lay it forward to them like, hey, I'll learn, I'll do better.

You know, whatever you need, I'll research it.

I'll find those answers.

But the reason I felt so passionate about coming to Auburn University, specifically being in the College of AG, is because of just the support that the instructors have provided a student.

So this college is around like 900 to 11, 1100 students every year.

The numbers kind of fluctuate, but regardless, you are going to have those one on one experiences with the Dean of instruction, which is super cool, or your professor or your advisor, whoever you need to get in contact with to make the best of your college experience.

So that's something that I've really, really valued here on campus and why I was just so like I'm only applying to one school type situation with that as well.

So my time at Auburn, I feel like the biggest thing for me is the relationships that I've built.

I mean, there's so many people in the program that have guided me, have helped me, have encouraged me to, to be a better teacher or a better student.

And I think the biggest thing for me about this program is relationships.

I think the coolest thing at Auburn in the Ag Ed department is learning that we have service hours we do each semester, depending on the classes we take.

And through those service hours, we get to see the community hands on for being there firsthand and seeing the need.

And one thing I really enjoy was learning the different ways in construction and building and repairing homes I took it for for granted that one of the lady's homes we walked into, I thought every house had four walls.

She was missing a corner of her house and ended up just putting a dresser in the corner to hide it.

But that really didn't do anything.

The rains came down and it actually flooded in her house and part of her room was actually had to be re gutted and we had to put new plywood down, new studs and everything and rebuild the corner of our house.

You know, we take that for granted.

And seeing that there is that need, I think that's the coolest thing is going out and helping people that are in need that you're there for them.

And, you know, you see their face light up.

I mean, people hate to admit that they're struggling and when they're struggling with things and they don't want to come forward to say, hey, this is what I'm dealing with.

But when they come forth and then knowing when they come forth, but when you come out after that and help, you know, by the end of the day, you say, hey, you got four walls now.

You got heat in there now, your kids will be safe.

You know, they don't have to worry about getting wet when they're in bed from the rain and storms and whatever happens, I mean, just knowing that they're safe and healthy and I mean, it's a blessing because when you leave, you see that smile on her face and, you know, you never knew them before.

You didn't know these people.

But seeing that and then believing and knowing that you've done something to help.

I think that's the coolest thing is we have that opportunity.

The coolest part of working within this program is just seeing how we interact here as a whole on campus.

I know that my experiences right now, everything I'm getting to do was only because of the people who have walked before me and the students who have left different legacies and just advocated for different things.

And now to be within this role, using my experiences, bringing in different ideas, thoughts, opinions, it's just super cool because again, like I am a junior, I have maybe a year, 18 months left here on campus.

But there are students who aren't even accepted into the Auburn family yet who will reap the benefits of what this team is doing right now.

So that by far just knowing the legacy that is happening right now, the Auburn family, the tradition, that has been the coolest thing in my college experience.

The biggest advice I could give to somebody is get your name out there and go to the events go be a part of something, build relationships is my biggest advice because I really didn't do that when I first started here.

And in the past semester, I've really noticed that the relationships that I'm building in just a few weeks are going to last a lifetime because I just dove into something and I'm really excited about that.

My degree in agriscience education has helped me learn many different aspects of the ag field, and one, for example, would be plant science.

Learn how crops grow how they need different types of soil, the PH, the water, the nutrients available.

By learning all that as better help me to learn how to grow crops.

And through these crops I can flourish and I'm able to produce and give out to the public.

One thing I'm going to do is the summer I've got a garden that I'm allowed to, on a plot of land, allowed to give out vegetables from it, and we go out to Opelika and Auburn and give out food, vegetables to the ones that are needing.

And, you know, it's we take advantage, or I do, take advantage of thinking that everyone has this food secure and has the needs to have food.

And reality is, it's not it's not that simple.

There's people in this area that are struggling to have food and have a meal.

And one way I can impact them is be able to provide that meal for them.

For me., while, yes, my goal is to eventually work with humans, I do have a long term end goal of starting a nonprofit, just kind of focusing on lower income communities and just addressing the nutritional needs of those communities and bringing in ag education as well.

Kind of along the lines of like establishing community gardens, teaching people about the foods that are good for their bodies, while also meeting those basic health care needs.

Something I think is really important and that I skipped over.

And honestly, it's kind of being addressed a little bit in the farm bill.

The upcoming one next year.

But just the way nutrition affects every single aspect of our lives, especially in these communities where you are fortunate enough to go to a food bank, but in those places like you're going to get the highly processed shelf stable foods, which I'm so thankful we have.

But if you don't have access to fresh fruits and vegetables or know why those things are important to you, or know how to grow and cook these things like it does lead to, for instance, like high type two diabetes rates, asthma, obesity, and just all of these things.

And then when you take that to a classroom level, a kid that isn't fed properly, not be able to think or focus in the classroom, teachers not meeting those needs because they're not maybe awake or attentive or whatever, wherever the issue is.

And that can in a sense too lead to like drop out rates, crime rates.

So all that's interconnected and I just kind of want to attack the root of that, which is nutrition.

So what's really meaningful and rewarding about the education that you receive either in agriscience education or in the College of Agriculture, is that it directly ties in with the land grant mission of Auburn University, that the land grant mission in part aims to educate the people of your state.

But of course, you know, we educate students from outside the state with a specific emphasis on what we're doing is meant to solve problems and help improve the quality of life for others.

So it's an added value to the education that you get here at a land grant institution like Auburn University, that there is not only sort of the disciplinary aspects, but then also how do you use those to improve lives of others, solve problems, make the next most interesting advancements and discoveries innovations.

So it's a very fulfilling disciplinary area to be a part of because it does have the potential for so much impact in the lives of others.

It's every agriculturists job to be an educator at all times.

It is our jobs as stewards of agriculture, as stewards of the land and of stewards of, of, of the food stuffs and the system that surrounds it to to be educating constantly and making sure that the population, the public understands where it comes from, how it's good for you, and what they need to be doing along those ways to ensure that we can do what it is that we need to do, which is basic survival.

I think it's important for us to realize, and we take it to heart in our program, is that we all have our feet on the same planet.

And no matter where you are, we have a responsibility to not just our own communities, not just to the state of Alabama, not to the United States, but to the world, because there's so few places that you can actually grow food in the abundance that we can grow here and we have amazing scientists at Auburn University and throughout the Southeast that are helping to meet the needs of a very hungry world.

So the most compelling work in ag education that we're working on today is being a part of the human dimension of feeding the world with 8 billion people.

And it's a very complex system to try to figure out how how do we deal with 8 billion people, where do we grow the food?

How do we distribute the food?

How do we help people learn about the food that they're consuming?

And how do we make sure that we have the right people working on the right problems to solve the grand challenges and where we're going with our population and in the whole world.

So if you think about the growing population and the need to feed that growing population, I think the importance of students in these degrees is probably somewhat obvious.

And, you know, what's exciting about that is that these, our our graduates and those and these industries are not going to be trying to meet the needs of that growing population with the tools of ten years ago, 20 years ago or even yesterday frankly, they're going to be doing that with the most cutting edge technologies and developments that's going to be done in partnership with industry with academia, with governments and the research and development that's happening in all three of those sectors.

And so it's a very exciting and dynamic sort of discipline for a student to be a part of, you know, once they graduate.

And I think the there's no there will be no shortage of challenges certainly, but that means that's that many more opportunities to solve those problems with innovation, with discovery, with creative thinking, problem solving, so it's a very exciting time, I think, because we can see those graduates and those in the industry actually step forward and solve those problems and meet those needs.

We take advantage, or I do, take advantage of thinking that everyone has is food secure and has the needs to have food and reality is it's not it's not that simple.

There's people in this area that are struggling to have food and have a meal.

And one way I can impact them is be able to provide that meal for them.

What we try to do is take innovations and education that we're developing here on campus and moving that out to where people are.

So there's a lot of people that are place bound and so part of our job is working with the Cooperative Extension Service, working with the experiment station to make sure that people have the best up to date information so that they can grow the necessary food to feed people here in the state of Alabama and the United States and to contribute to fighting global hunger.

You know, as I think about the work that I do in Extension and I think about the partners that I have, the top of my list to reach out to to partner with is always Ag Ed.

These guys understand the work that I do, and we have a mutual understanding of what needs to be done in this state.

And so I am just very grateful and delighted to have such great partners and willing partners that are ready to get their sleeves rolled up and get the work done to do what's needed most in Alabama and I can't and do what I do well without them.

I like to think that our differences are also our strengths, that working with our peers and working with individuals across campus, we're able to bring a different angle to solving problems or addressing needs, and especially as behavioral scientists and really understanding the needs, desires and wants of those around us that we can find a way to improve not only the university, but the community in which we live and the state in which we grow.

So when you start to think about the land grant mission of any land grant institution, not just Auburn, you start to look at serving others and bringing the knowledge and expertise that we have here among the faculty and the researchers here and bringing them to the public in a way that's not only something that they can take and use, but that's something that is meaningful to them and relevant.

And so when you start to think about Extension and agriscience education, we think about research and evidence based programing.

We think about the relationships that we want to develop to make sure that that programing reaches who it needs to reach and is meaningful.

And then lastly, we want it to be relevant.

We want it to make sense to those that are needing it today.

And I think that's something that Extension works really hard to do.

And I know agriscience education helps us stay grounded in what we're looking to do in keeping things relevant and keeping things where they need to be so that the folks that we're aiming to serve get exactly what they, what they need.

And we teach our students here, and I pride ourselves in that, that we can really could go into any type of community, any type of situation and be the human aspect of agriculture.

A lot of our colleagues in the College of Agriculture focus very heavily on the science of agriculture, how to develop poultry that survives disease more more readily, that perhaps pork that provides a little bit better protein content or cotton that has longer fibers or any of that type of stuff.

So our job and our role in all this and why I think it's so interesting is we get to go in and help the people who are going to have to be the ones who implement that change.

The change doesn't do it implement itself just because we know things are better.

We all know that just because it is better doesn't mean anybody's going to do anything with it.

So how do we help people understand that those better processes and those better ways need to be implemented today.

So what we're seeing more and more in the agricultural science disciplines is the really the important role that technology plays you know, this is while there are some sort of traditional fundamental principles that still hold in the agricultural science disciplines, technology changes every day, and in fact it allows us to be a lot more efficient.

It allows us to be a lot more effective, more productive.

And so the thought of, you know, what that would look like without the continued advancements in technology, those are really what make agriculture cutting edge, really innovative and I think really potentially very exciting for students coming through to see how some of these really interesting technologies, you know, automation sensors, wireless networks, how all that can be tied to met all of the disciplines of agriculture.

So and not just even for, you know, improving necessarily production, but for monitoring environmental conditions you know, and just for the really all of the facets, facets of of agriculture technologies plays a huge part of that yeah.

So I think technology for us has a lot to do with the dissemination of information.

And we are a program that focuses on agriscience education and so a lot of that technology is, is technology that people would be familiar with things like how do we computerize different processes and how do we how do we communicate and disseminate ideas digitally.

Of course, agriculture as an industry has been dramatically changed through technology in terms of the equipment that they use and also the way that they disseminate information and manage logistics and and things like that.

And that's kind of where we intersect a little bit is the management of of information and communication.

Our faculty, of course, our and our graduate students are generating a lot of research.

Part of our land grant mission is to disseminate that research, want to inform the public, but also to help people in the agricultural industry adopt best practices so that they can improve their efforts to provide food to the state and the country and the world.

In the future of the work that we do in agriscience education is consistently and constantly evolving.

I believe that we have to grow with the times just as much as we have to, to educate those, to move with the times.

Well, what worked 20 years ago necessarily won't work today.

And those things are OK, right?

I mean, those are things that we have to address not only as individuals, as professors, but probably more importantly, we have to address them as citizens of the state with our peers that we share the state with.

Through our work, we are able to reach out to people and take complex situations and break those down into pieces that are able to be easily transferred to the greater population.

It's the example of I can throw a lot at a wall and a lot will stick but I think we're very propulsive in the fact of let's find what works, let's see what works with the people that we serve to improve their lives.

That's the integration of what we do the integration of what we do with bench science and behavioral science and Extension and leadership and human growth and potential and looking even not only a domestic but a global audience the opportunity to have those effects is second to none.

And Auburn University does an excellent job providing us the tools to do that.

So Auburn has always had a special place in my heart because obviously I've grown up in a rural area with farming in Alabama.

So Auburn has always been kind of the default answer, but I never really truly understood what Auburn was until I was at Auburn and I was in the College of Agriculture and learning about agriculture and learning about Auburn.

And through my experiences at Auburn, I was equipped to do what I'm doing today.

And it's kind of it's kind of cool to look back on it and see that my experiences while being a college kid were preparing me for this.

Those classes that, you know, you sit through and you're just like, Oh, boy, can this get over quick enough?

We got to take that midterm.

But looking back, I'm like, I wish I could have soaked up more the classes that I took at Auburn were really preparing me to be able to share that knowledge with my with my students on on their level and really connect and be able to be engaged with them.

And then during my time as a graduate student and again, I really learned how to take that knowledge and make it available to those students.

Being in the College of Education really allowed me to be able to gain the skills of how to take the knowledge that I had learned as a as an undergraduate in a survey of agriculture into the classroom by providing those lessons that are going to allow students to have hands on learning and be engaged in in the learning as well.

So Auburn really helped me gain those skills and know how to do that and translate it into my own classroom where I could be successful.

And in addition, Auburn creates a family.

And during my time at Auburn, I was able to network with the most amazing people that today in my career I still have contact with that.

I can still go and say, hey, you were in soil science I'm having a problem in the greenhouse.

What do I do?

Or if I have a have an issue in animal science, I could go to those people.

And today some of those people that were my classmates when I was in Auburn are actually sitting on my advisory committee to my program at my school now.

So they are very beneficial.

So the networking aspect of it was really crucial as well.

So I'm asked a lot about the type of student, right, that makes an agricultural education teacher.

And my response is always all of them I think there's good fits for every job.

I think there's something in agricultural education that is hard to find in a lot of other fields.

And all fields have a purpose and they're important I've taught for 25 years.

I was that kid sitting in a classroom thinking, what am I going to do?

I grew up in this really small town and there wasn't a lot of opportunity and I looked at teachers as, These are the professionals, these are educated people in my community.

I want to be that.

And what I found was it wasn't so much about the degree right?

It was really about I can change the lives of kids and give them things that I wasn't able to have.

What can I impart on them that I've learned from myself or from others or my own experience in this love of agriculture?

So when we talk about the kid that we want to get, we want them all, right, let us make them agriculture, teachers let us show what it means to change the life of a child.

I mean, that's really what is important to me is if we can train generations of people to be teachers and be quality teachers, then I think that's a life well served.

Our field of study, agriculture education is actually quite broad.

It includes aspects of leadership, education, agriculture, communication and journalism.

And education broadly defined to include preparing the next generation of teachers that are going to teach agriculture in high school.

And so we're always looking out for the smartest and the brightest people that that have something they want to give back.

If somebody has a connection to the Earth if they have a connection to food and we're always looking to work with and recruit great graduate students from all over the United States, we're really fortunate here at our program at Auburn University to have one of the largest graduate programs in the world in ag science education.

And we're always looking for that next person that wants to come in and make a difference and we've always been very fortunate in attracting great students from not only the Alabama, but the United States and the world and people coming together because we're never going to be able to solve these complex problems with simple solutions.

Complex problems are going to require complex solutions to address the the grand challenges that are facing us within the field of agriculture.

Oh, the future of ag ed, not only for Alabama, but and or the US, but for the whole world.

It's bright.

It's wonderful.

Never before has has it been so important to do what we do.

Never before has it been so important to ensure that that the right story for the lack of a better term, was told about agriculture.

I, I will digress into, into a story that I was told as a child as as I was pursuing, not a child, but in school I studied history and I was off to study history and I was off to study about the historical backgrounds in and around several different communities and all that kind of stuff because I thought it was interesting.

And my grandfather once told me, he said, Jason, we we're still here.

And what he meant by that was agriculture and agriculturists I was treating my own community as history as something in the past.

And he told me it's it's your job now to try to move us forward and so I've I've thought about that every day is how can we help agriculture in our own community of agriculture, in our community of the world, move forward?

And it's a wonderful thing to get to do that every day.

It's an even better thing to get to help students do that every day and to see and to look at our graduate students and our undergraduate students and even our professional students that we interact with in Extension and all these types of things to be able to look at them and know that when I'm long dead, which when I'm not around to do any of that stuff, that work is still going to be continued and someone else is going to pick up that mantle and still move it forward.

To be advocating for agriculture, to be advocating for progressive agriculture, and be advocating for science based decision making because that's what we do.

I think the opportunities are everywhere.

We look at workforce development opportunities all the time to look at how can we prepare the next generation of workers to step into these agricultural roles that are so critical.

There's tremendous opportunities around disaster preparedness.

There's tremendous opportunities to introduce our youth across the state to careers in agriculture, not just working on a farm, but looking at food science and food science related research and many other opportunities.

There's just too many to even name today, but the opportunities are there.

So our our primary intent is to help develop future teachers in agriscience education programs in our public schools.

But very often these students find a wide variety of career opportunities and everything from sales to banking to even government work.

And we've even seen some people go on to become university presidents.

The advice I would give to students and their parents today is when you were thinking about agriculture education, we know most of you are not going to be farmers we get that.

We understand that.

But just because you're not a farmer does not mean you can not be in the agriculture industry.

And there is a place for you and learning about that industry and learning about those skills that are vital to to our existence and putting you in one of those careers could be your career path that's best chosen for you.

And in addition, you're learning not only the technical side of agriculture, but you are also learning the the soft skills, and you are learning those career skills that are so important that employers are telling us today that that that is what they need.

We're known in the community.

We buy supplies that are in the community.

We teach our students valuable skills.

And through those skills, we're able to I mean, we just build those relationships.

And in those relationships, we can help folks.

I mean, so I'd offer agriscience education to anyone that wants to make a difference, that wants to make an impact in the lives of their community or different communities, that has a heart, that has that desire.

If you're interested in the outdoors, If you're interested in agriculture, if you're interested in anything to do with every aspect of our life, and if you love people, I feel like you would be a great fit for this agriscience education program.

We're at a wonderful place right now where the world is recognizing how important it is to be strong leaders and educators and communicators in and around agriculture.

Never before have we seen such a desire, such a need, such a want, for agriscience and ag ed majors come out of universities at the graduate level, at the undergraduate level, at the professional level, our students are are catching job offers on a daily basis.

Quite honestly, it's kind of a it's kind of a difficult thing to keep them to finish school at some points because they're getting hired up before we can ever even graduate them because there's such a strong demand for what we do.

So if you're someone who who likes people, who likes interacting, who loves community and wants to give back to agriculture, who wants to help people make those decisions about the best practices to use, help people understand where agriculture is and what agriculture can do for the world to answer the wonderful and great problems that we've gotten, that we get to wake up every day and deal with.

Then you are ag ed you are agriscience education, and we invite you to come to Auburn University to be an agriscience education major.