The Texas A&M Department of Agricultural Leadership, Education and Communications will host the annual Summer Ag Academy for high school agriculture teachers on June 9-21 at the Agriculture and Workforce Education Center on the Texas A&M-RELLIS campus, 1244 7th St., Bryan.
The event will feature 15 interactive workshops for teachers to learn the latest skills, technology and innovations in agriculture and other industries. The start and end times for each workshop will vary.
Participants can visit https://tx.ag/SummerAgAcademy2024 to view the workshop times and to register for the individual events. Once on the site, click on Texas and June on the calendar to reach the specific workshops.
Registration cost varies per workshop and participants can choose which workshop they would like to attend. The deadline to register for the workshops is June 1.
Academy growth
Rebekah Rodriguez, program coordinator in the Department of Agricultural Leadership, Education and Communications, Bryan-College Station, expects there to be an increase in participants since the department expanded the event from four days to nine days.
“Last year, we had anywhere from 65-155 teachers per day and over the four-day event, we hosted a total of 340 teachers,” she said. “I’m assuming the numbers will be similar this year, but we are expanding the event to nine days, so overall we will most likely have more than last year.”
Randy Lund, Ph.D., instructional assistant professor in the Department of Agricultural Leadership, Education and Communications, Bryan-College Station, said some of the participants are former students while others are visiting the campus for the first time to learn a new skill.
“We are very excited to offer ag teachers from across the country an opportunity to come and see us in Aggieland,” he said.
Academy provides valuable experience for ag teachers
Rodriguez said the goal of the academy is to provide an interactive, hands-on experience for high school agricultural teachers nationwide to help develop new skills to take back to their classrooms.
The hands-on workshops are taught by agricultural experts in the department, as well as high school agriculture teachers and various faculty members in other departments in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences.
Some of the new workshops include Agricultural Mechanics on a Budget, Agricultural Mechanics Project Documentation, ArcLight Dynamics CNC Plasma Cutting, Growing Your Floral Brand and Taking on Events, Market Swine 101, and Script and Speech Writing.
Other workshops include Training a Wildlife Team for Beginners, Floral Design for Homecoming, Proficient Planning, Score Like the ScanMan, American Welding Society Industry-Based Certifications for Beginners and Advanced Students, and Training a Range CDE Team.
For more information about the academy, contact Lund at randy.lund@ag.tamu.edu.
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