PAGE A10, KEIZERTIMES, NOVEMBER 12, 2021
With new ag complex, Chemeketa sets sights
recruiting high school agriculture students
LIFE
The new agriculture complex at Chemeketa additional classroom and lab space. Photo by Chememketa Community College
BY RACHEL ALEXANDER
Of the Salem Reporter
Every summer, Jared Hibbard-Swanson,
the farm and garden program manager at
Marion-Polk Food Share, helps a few dozen
middle and high schoolers farm a six-acre
plot in northeast Salem.
The Marion-Polk Food Share’s youth
farm provides free boxes of local organic
produce to about 120 Salem-area house-
holds and aims to educate local students
about food systems.
Chemeketa
Community
College
interns give the program a big boost,
Hibbard-Swanson said, off ering students
expertise and role models.
“It’s inspiring for the younger students,
the teenagers … to see a pathway forward in
agriculture. There’s a negative stereotype
about what type of work is available in ag,”
Hibbard-Swanson said. “They can become
technicians, they can become farm manag-
ers, they can become farm owners even.”
But the program often doesn’t have
funding to pay interns.
That will change next summer thanks to
a new Chemeketa grant aimed at encour-
aging more Hispanic students to pursue
careers in agriculture.
The college recently received a
$274,590 grant from the U.S. Department
of Agriculture to be spent over four years.
Tim Ray, Chemeketa’s dean for agri-
cultural sciences and technology, said the
college plans to partner with the Gervais
and Woodburn school districts to create an
ambassador program “where we empower
our current students at the community
college to go to the high schools and talk
about their experiences.”
The grant is intended to get high school
students to enroll at Chemeketa in agricul-
ture-related programs, and support college
students already studying. Chemeketa stu-
dents who are mentors will receive tuition
waivers as an incentive, Ray said.
As part of the grant, three college stu-
dents will serve as interns per year. Ray
said they may work with the Food Share's
youth farm, as well as a smaller 1.5-acre
oopsy
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happens
farm on the Chemeketa campus which is
being set up near the newly constructed
agriculture complex, which opened this
fall.
“Chemeketa’s had a fantastic horticul-
ture program for decades, but now with the
new building we’re really wanting to high-
light and create those partnerships with
our area high schools,” Ray said.
The complex, which opened this fall,
sits on the east end of campus. Ray said the
on-site farm will have a mix of woody orna-
mentals grown by horticulture students, as
well as a fruit and vegetable farm.
Students will be able to learn about
crop management, irrigation technology
and more.
“We really have the opportunity to have
a working farm,” he said.
Chemeketa received the grant because
it’s a Hispanic Serving Institution, a federal
designation for colleges and universities
with a student body that’s at least 25%
Hispanic.
Ray said the grant is focused on the
Gervais and Woodburn districts because
both have a high share of Hispanic stu-
dents, though they hope to eventually
expand to other area districts.
Though Chemeketa is about 28%
Hispanic, just 11 to 14% of horticulture
and wine studies students are Hispanic,
according to the grant narrative. As the
college now seeks to add more agricultural
degree options, Ray said they also want to
show local students that there are a variety
of possible careers in agriculture.
“Part of it is the connotation of agri-
culture and just being a fi eldworker, we’re
really trying hard to break that,” he said.
“We’re training you to be a manager, a
supervisor, an entrepreneur in the agricul-
tural world.”