AgCareers.com is excited to announce that the Kansas State University Wheat State Agronomy Club is the winner of the 2011 Students in Agronomy, Soils and Environmental Sciences (SASES) Video Challenge.
The SASES is an undergraduate student organization of the American Society of Agronomy (ASA), Crop Science Society of America (CSSA) and the Soil Science Society of America (SSSA). Their International Annual Meeting was held in San Antonio, Texas October 16-19th, 2011. During the event, AgCareers.com commissioned three student organizations from different universities to create a video about career opportunities within the agronomic industry. Students spent four days interviewing various company and industry representatives about the current state of careers and what young people should think about when considering employment in the agronomic industry.
Each school was provided a flip camera to use during their time at the meetings and given two weeks to edit their material into the finished product. The videos were then judged by AgCareers.com to select a winner. The submissions can be viewed online at the AgCareers.com YouTube channel (www.youtube.com/agcareers). The members of the Wheat State Agronomy Club winning team enjoyed meeting students from other institutions and industry representatives during the process. Allie Marks, senior in Agronomy and member of the Wheat State Agronomy Club, shared that the video challenge was also a professional development exercise: "The Club learned to be proactive before the meetings to formulate questions to ask interviewees." Marks added, "Time management was also important because we had to balance our professional development commitments with the time to interview people for the video."
The winning Kansas State University team received $500 from AgCareers.com. The winnings from the video challenge will go to the Wheat State Agronomy Club's endowed scholarship fund. "Past scholarship recipients have been active Club members who are recognized for their contributions and dedication to the Club," said Dana Minihan, Wheat State Agronomy Club Advisor.
“Our goal is to create enjoyable videos for young people to get them excited about careers in agriculture and provide them with additional knowledge on what to expect in our industry,” said Ashley Collins, Education Coordinator with AgCareers.com. “What better way to do that than to learn from a student perspective. We will continue this project at other specific industry events and broaden our library of educational clips for students on the AgCareers.com YouTube channel,” added Collins.
