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| navigate: home: magazine: spring/summer 2000: article | |
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Service-learning project Ag students gain leadership experience planning a conference By Deborah A. Benedetti | ||||||
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For 37 Penn State agricultural/environmental education majors, the 1999 Fall Conference for Leadership and Professional Development was a living and learning laboratory. Students enrolled in two agriculture and extension education courses planned and presented the conference as part of their course requirements. In addition to organizing the conference, the students presented workshops during the event, which brought together 536 youth and adults from around the state. Participants included Pennsylvania state FFA officers and the vice president of the National FFA Organization; Pennsylvania FFA chapter presidents, vice presidents and freshmen high school student members of the organization; high school juniors and seniors studying agriculture who want to attend Penn State; and Pennsylvania agriculture teachers and guidance counselors. FFA Foundation members, Penn State College of Agricultural Sciences faculty members and invited guests also attended the conference. “Written follow-up assignments from the students who were involved in planning, implementing and teaching workshops for the conference indicated that it was the ‘best experience in their Penn State career’ and ‘really verified that teaching is for me,’ ” Dr. M. Susie Whittington, associate professor of agricultural and extension education at Penn State, said. “The high school students who participated in the conference wrote that they ‘loved the workshops and didn’t realize the time had flown by.’ They indicated that ‘Penn State is really cool.’ “This is one of the most truly integrated activities that we do in our college, because it combines the efforts of the Pennsylvania FFA Foundation as a statewide partner; the Department of Agricultural and Extension Education’s preservice teaching students; our undergraduate organization (the Collegiate FFA); our Center for Professional Development, which conducts the inservice training for the teachers who bring their students; and the College of Agricultural Sciences’ Undergraduate Education office, which uses the Ag Advocates (student ambassadors) and professors from every department in the college to meet with the academic exploration students and their high school guidance counselors who attend the conference. Everyone wins in this integrated outreach effort,” Whittington said. The one-day conference provides an FFA orientation for high school freshmen who are members of this national youth leadership development organization. The conference also offers leadership training for FFA chapter presidents and vice presidents, an academic exploration program for high school juniors and seniors studying agriculture and a teacher inservice program. Penn State agricultural/environmental students have been organizing the annual leadership conference for the last five years, according to Joy Young, a Penn State junior majoring in agricultural education and director of the 1999 conference. Young explained that students enrolled in the agricultural and extension education course AEE 311, Youth Leadership Development, are responsible for planning all aspects of the conference. The students also serve as liaisons, maintaining communications between the groups involved in the conference. Students in AEE 412, Methods of Teaching Agriculture, are preparing for student teaching and, as part of their training, serve as workshop presenters for the FFA freshmen attending the conference. “Although the students who attend the conference enjoy upbeat, informative sessions, the presenters and conference organizers gain an irreplaceable amount of experience working with youth organizations,” said Young, who also is president of the Penn State Collegiate FFA. As director of the conference, Young worked with the Penn State students and Continuing Education’s Conferences and Institutes staff to plan the conference. “I learned a lot about working with people and the many things that need to be done to plan a large event. I learned about keeping myself organized and about teamwork,” Young said. A Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, native, she plans to become an agriculture teacher when she graduates in 2001. The Penn State students preparing for student teaching had an opportunity to test their teaching skills during the conference. “For many of these students, this was their first time in front of a class,” Young said. “The conference workshops were a good warm up and hands-on experience.” The students enrolled in AEE 311 learned valuable teamwork skills, Young added. Dr. Marianne Fivek, assistant professor of agricultural and extension education at Penn State, and the Ag Advocates student group, which she advises, also were involved in the conference. The 1999 conference featured a presentation by Andy Armbruster, the 1998–99 National FFA Central Region vice president, and workshops on the theme “Caution: Leaders under Construction.” Topics included: Constructing Doorways to the World, Building Your FFA Foundation, Using All Your Tools, Teambuilding, Speak Clearly or Get Run Over by the Backhoe, Constructing Your Concrete Image, Building for the Future, Yield: Active Listening Zone Ahead, Paving Your Path, and Wood, Bricks, Concrete—It Takes All to Build. The National FFA Organization is dedicated to preparing members for leadership and careers in the science, business and technology of agriculture. Local, state and national activities and award programs provide opportunities for members to apply knowledge and skills acquired through agriculture education. For more than 70 years, FFA’s main goal has been “developing leadership, cooperation and citizenship for tomorrow’s agriculturalists.” An outreach program of the College of Agricultural Sciences | |||||
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