In a leading agricultural state such as North Carolina, where the $95.9 billion industry employs one-fifth of the population, it stands to reason that students would have plenty of opportunities to take courses dealing with food and nutrition, animal science and other aspects of agriculture as early as sixth or seventh grade.

But until recently, those courses didn’t exist, according to Brandon Simmons, Ph.D., data and curriculum coordinator of North Carolina Virtual Public Schools, the statewide online-learning program for secondary students and the second largest virtual school in the country.

“Around the late 1980s and ’90s, N.C. secondary school curriculum shifted away from what we used to call career and technical education, and a lot of courses were cut,” Simmons said. “Individual school systems didn’t have the money to keep that curriculum going, and so they simply went by the wayside.

“But at the same time, we’re an ag state. If a student wanted to take a course that falls within the agriculture umbrella, they should be able to. But, mostly because of lack of money and the shifting educational priorities, many students didn’t have access.”

That gap will close this fall, when two agriculture-related classes will become available to middle and high school students thanks to a collaboration between the N.C. A&T College of Agriculture and Environmental Sciences and N.C. Virtual Public Schools.

For the first time in its history, the virtual school platform will offer Food and Nutrition 1 and Animal Science 1 using the expertise of CAES faculty members Heather Colleran, Ph.D., and Andrea Gentry-Apple, DVM. With virtual public schools personnel, the professors and a leadership team from the CAES have worked for two years to develop online versions of the existing courses, providing middle and high school students access to such subject matter as proper food preparation and dietary guidelines, basic animal anatomy and safety around large animals.

Registration for the classes is currently open.

“This is our first foray into these subject areas. NCVPS will be the first virtual school program in the country to provide agricultural content through the state department of education,” said Eliz Colbert, executive director of the virtual program. “The CAES has provided the expertise – and the desire – to reach students across the state. We’ve provided the platform and the structure.”

Funding for the courses comes from a USDA capacity building grant obtained by CAES Associate Dean Antoine Alston, Ph.D. to provide the courses within the Career and Technical Education pathways of the N.C. Standard Course of Study.

Alston approached NCVPS to offer the courses because of the program’s statewide reach and large enrollment.

“Given the importance of food and agriculture to the state’s economy and to humankind’s survival, it was extremely concerning that there were no agriculture courses within the state’s course of study. The sooner students begin to learn about these fields, the sooner they can participate in some of the state’s broadest employment areas, or simply expand their knowledge and create better lives,” Alston said.

“At the same time, agriculture is our specialty in the CAES. It’s what we do. So it was a natural progression for us to reach out to the virtual school to make these courses available statewide.”

Colleran, a faculty member in the Department of Family and Consumer Sciences, adapted the in-person food and nutrition I course to online delivery for the North Carolina Virtual Public School. The course includes online instruction through a mix of assignments, PowerPoint presentations, cooking demonstrations and videos. One activity unique to the online platform will be for students to record their culinary skills for given recipes as a way to provide feedback and engage students.

Photo credit: James Parker; Heather Colleran, Ph.D., RND teaches Food and Nutrition 1 on the N.C. Virtual Public Schools platform. "We want students to be able to feed themselves in a healthy way. The pandemic really showed us how few students know how to do that," she said.

“The pandemic really showed that there are many practical life skills students today just don’t have,” she said. “The primary goal of this curriculum is to teach students the basics of how to cook and understand the fundamentals of healthy eating – things like how to measure, how to choose food wisely at the grocery store, how to store food, table etiquette, knife skills, etc. It’s not a science class as much as a life skills class surrounding food and nutrition.”

“N.C. A&T has done a good job of making this curriculum come alive,” said Robert Van Dyke, a state consultant for family and consumer sciences. “We have to get more students involved in some way with what are really life skills, not just tell students that these skills are important but actually show them how to do these things.”

Gentry-Apple, a faculty member in the Department of Animal Sciences, developed the animal sciences course.

“Many students come to the course just knowing that they like animals and wanting to know more,” she said. “Others want to be veterinarians. We start at a very basic level – the difference between a cow and a bull – and work through safety, anatomy and introduce them to large animals, and also discuss the jobs available in the very wide animal science field.”

Those jobs can include research, roles in conservation and at zoos, diagnostic roles in animal health, agricultural product sales, and more, Gentry said.

“The class is almost to the level of what I’d offer in an introductory animal science course on campus,” she said. “I grew up in Ohio, and we were not exposed to animal science in high school. So to be a part of the only state program to put agriculture classes on an online platform to reach more students is really incredible.”

NCVPS sees a bright future for the online courses. Alston and his team envision adding not only higher-level nutrition and animal science courses in the future, but horticulture and agricultural education as well, incorporating the talents of CAES Professor Guochen Yang, Ph.D. of the Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Design, and Associate Professor Chastity Warren English, Ph.D., of the Department of Agribusiness, Applied Economics and Agriscience Education.

“There’s a great deal of interest in these courses,” said Rachel McBroom, the virtual program’s chief academic officer, who oversees the delivery of all 150 courses. “We not only see opportunities for students across the state with these two, but there’s even more opportunity to build these classes out, and in the future, add the second and third courses in each.”

“There are 255 unique careers in the field of agriculture,” says Joshua Bledsoe, state agricultural education leader for North Carolina FFA. “We need to help prepare young people with the skills they need to take advantage of those careers and be literate about agriculture’s importance. This team is doing an outstanding job.”