Franklin County’s Board of Commissioners is partnering with Ohio State’s College of Food, Agriculture, and Environmental Sciences to create a year-long agriculture program for eighth graders. Credit: Casey Cascaldo
Franklin County’s Board of Commissioners, led by County Commissioner Erica C. Crawley, is partnering with Ohio State’s College of Food, Agriculture, and Environmental Sciences to create a year-long agriculture program for eighth graders.
Urban ROOTS (Reshaping Outreach Opportunities Through Self-Discovery) will help teach youth about how agriculture impacts their life, Crawley said. The program, which will be taking applications until Sept. 17, will focus on students from local Franklin County school districts — including Columbus City, Whitehall, Reynoldsburg and Southwest City.
“Agriculture is not just plows, cows and sows,” Yolanda Owens, pathways and partnership strategist of the CFAES, said. “It’s the food that we eat, the clothes that we wear and the fuel in our cars.”
Crawley said the program aims to increase diversity in the world of agriculture by involving more youths of color. The program will host up to 30 kids in the first cohort with hopes to expand in the future, she said.
Owens said CFAES proposed to make the camp year-round and end with a four-night summer camp for 40 youth to experience college life on campus.
“Having an overnight camp might be fun, but it is not going to hugely impact these young people, helping them better understand the career path and connecting them to this work,” Owens said. “So, we came back to her with a proposal for a year-round program where we integrate agriculture as well as community development, leadership development, etc.”
Owens said with only 60 percent of jobs in agriculture being filled in the next 10 years, the program hopes to encourage the eighth graders towards a career in the field.
The program will focus on more than farming, according to its website, and the eighth graders will have “immersive opportunities” in food, agriculture, the environment and technology.
Owens said the program will have access to Ohio State’s mobile bug zoo at the Waterman Agricultural and Natural Resources Laboratory, which will show the eighth graders the research done in the farmland and highlight different career paths.
As an alumna of CFAES, Owens said this program would have helped her find her career path much sooner.
“Having grown up in Franklin County, if I had a program to introduce this career path and see more clearly how agriculture is integrated in the world that I lived in, I think I would have found my way into this college way sooner than I did,” Owens said.
Crawley said the hope is to continue this program with the help of its alumni to come back and teach the new eighth graders. She said the team eventually hopes to introduce high schoolers to the program as well.
“At some point in time, we would like to go eighth to 12th grade and then maybe, depending on what the university thinks is appropriate, go down to seventh graders or sixth graders. I don’t know what the sweet spot is just yet,” Crawley said.
The program was announced at the Ohio State fair Aug. 1, but marketing will increase once the university and middle schools reopen, Owens said.
Crawley said she hopes Ohio State students can get involved as paid student ambassadors or volunteers when the eighth graders come to campus over the summer.
“Especially for the on-campus experience, we would love more of the students to engage with current Ohio State students to talk about their experiences,” Crawley said.
For more information on how Ohio State students can get involved, contact Stacie Burbage — CFAES program coordinator and community catalyst — at [email protected].
