The story below is from our September/October 2019 issue. For the full issue Subscribe today, view our FREE interactive digital edition or download our FREE iOS app!
Photo By Dan Smith
The STEM Building will be equipped with the latest machinery and technology, as Amy White demonstrates.
Virginia Western Community College is turning its attention to agriculture this fall with the beginnings of a new curriculum.
It won’t be an auspicious beginning, but Microsoft started in a garage, if you recall. In September Virginia Western Community College students—about 13 of them—will walk into their first agriculture class in the brand spanking new $30 million-plus STEM Building on Colonial Avenue. A new era will have begun.
The kick-off class is Animal Science and the curriculum will grow from there to include pre-veterinarian, agriculture extension, farm financing and a number of the basic skills that go into farming. Classes can, and are likely to, include plant science, agri-business, forestry and dendrology (the study of wooded plants), among others.
VWCC is physically a city school, but practically, its rural base is expansive: five counties, which are quite rural, filled with farms. Even Roanoke County, which surrounds the city, has a significant rural base and Franklin, Craig, Bedford and Botetourt Counties are farm country first. There are, says STEM Dean Amy White, 4,000 working farms in those counties.
The agriculture program is part of a massive collaborative effort that will highlight STEM’s offerings. STEM, of course, is the watchword for the 2000s: science, technology, engineering and math concentrations. White says it’s a matter of getting educational thinking “out of the silos” and spreading the focus practically.
VWCC has known for a while that agriculture could be a draw in this end of Virginia and White was one of the first on board, she of the farm background. A microbiologist, she grew up as the sixth generation on a cattle farm in Buchanan.
“I saw immense opportunities” for students immersed in 4H and Future Farmers of America, she insists.
Many of those students didn’t want to spend four years in college studying agriculture before going to work; others found the expense of college intimidating. VWCC’s costs are low and it is a two-year school, where a graduate can easily transfer credits. (Ferrum College, for example, is an eager participant with its superb agricultural programs.)
VWCC PR director Josh Meyer says, “There is no other program exactly like this in Virginia” and eventually “we hope to add urban agriculture.”
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