Even COVID couldn’t keep CAES students down.
Adapting to off-campus learning, virtual internships and different platforms for student organizations, the 170-plus undergraduate and nearly 50 graduate students of the College of Agriculture and Environmental Sciences’ who completed their degrees in fall 2020 and spring 2021 kept up their steady progress toward commencement.
The academic excellence of these graduates was celebrated during a CAES award ceremony, held virtually on April 29. Departmental award winners, university honors program participants, departmental honors society inductees, student organization presidents, award-winners for community service and leadership, scholarship recipients, military servicemen and women, members of the university’s band and athletic teams and participants in the Undergraduate Research Scholars Program were all honored as well.
“George Washington Carver, one of the most prominent Black scientists of the early 20th century and namesake of our Carver Hall, said, ‘There is no shortcut for achievement. Life requires a thorough preparation.’ These students’ achievements are the result of years of hard work,” said Dean Mohamed Ahmedna, Ph.D.
“All that hard work has paid off, and we salute these students. Their ability to maintain their focus and reach their goals, even in the middle of a pandemic, will serve them well wherever they go in the years ahead. When faced with unprecedented challenges, we overcome them together, because that’s what Aggies do.”
Andrea Gentry-Apple, DVM, of the Department of Animal Sciences, and Associate Dean Antoine Alston, Ph.D., presided over the event. One of the highlights of the event is the “Pass the Torch” speeches of selected students from each of the college’s four departments, who shared their stories of time at N.C. A&T to encourage the next class of students to “do bigger and do better and continue on the journey of greatness that they’ve started,” said Gentry-Apple.
Agribusiness and food industry management major Dallas Cooks, who is also the outgoing president of the college’s student chapter of Minorities in Agriculture, Natural Resources and Related Sciences, had a busy and fulfilling high school experience and wanted to keep her momentum going after arriving at N.C. A&T.
“As a freshman, I ran for multiple positions in student organizations, and I didn’t get any of them. I was crushed because I knew I had the right skills,” said Cooks, “I wondered if A&T was right for me. My dad said, ‘Just wait, your time will come.’ “
By her junior year, Cooks had earned a position in MANRRS, scholarships and held a job on campus. She also found a group of friends that felt like family.
“Just as I was getting excited about finishing my junior year, I was evacuated from my dorm and forced to move back home,” she said. “Finishing college during a pandemic was extremely challenging, but still rewarding.”
Cooks, who earned a minor in speech communication, also won the Department of Agribusiness, Applied Economics and Agriscience Education’s leadership award and, with graduating senior Case Kooy, shared the senior class award for top grades. She is a participant in the university honors program.
“Thank you to the CAES for grooming me into the woman I am today, a third-generation college student about to graduate summa cum laude from the greatest college on the entire campus.”
Animal science major Bobby Brooks, whose concentration is in animal industry, will go to work for BASF after graduation.
“Taking the industry route was the best thing I could’ve done for my career,” he said. “Coming from the Music City of Nashville, Tennessee, I didn’t have a lot of exposure to ag. I thought I wanted to be a vet, but after traveling up and down the Midwest with Dr. Alston, visiting Atlanta’s production expo every year with Ms. Keshia James and making my way to Capitol Hill as a 2020 USDA Future Leader in Agriculture, I realized that fulfilling the needs of agriculture was something I needed to do.”
Brooks knew that he was in good shape when former department chair Ralph Noble, Ph.D. told a joke in class, and he was the only one who got it.
“His every word of advice always stuck with me,” Brooks said. “In addition to Dr. Alston and Ms. James, Dr. Chastity English has also helped my light shine a little brighter with every interaction we’ve had.”
Brooks went on to become Mr. MANNRS, the two-year Collegiate Farm Bureau president and having a seat on the Dean’s Student Advisory Board.
“The CAES taught me to take advantage of every opportunity that comes by way,” he said.
His classmate in the Department of Animal Sciences, animal science major Mercer Butts, found a very different experience at N.C. A&T than what he expected.
“I never thought that I could get the degree I wanted at N.C. A&T. I thought I’d have to go to college in a place that was a lot more rural than Greensboro to learn everything that I needed to know about cows. Then, I took a farm tour with Dr. Ralph Noble, and realized that behind every lamb is a lambing season – a process toward a result,” he said.
The Atlanta senior served as MANRRS vice president and became a member of Gamma Sigma Delta agriculture honors society. He studied abroad in Cypress, bringing his knowledge back to mentor local middle and high school students, sometimes working as many as three jobs in the process.
This fall, he’ll start a joint masters and DVM program at Colorado State, studying animal nutrition before continuing to vet school.
“Take this advice from a city boy turned ag enthusiast – take that chance,” he said. “Find out how you’ll use your competitive N.C. A&T degree to save the world.”
Child development and family studies major Kimberly Parson, in the Department of Family and Consumer Sciences, will take her degree to Atlanta to teach kindergarten students in the Gwinnett County School system.
Parson knew that she wanted to be a teacher after participating in the Teacher Cadet Program in high school, and she hit the ground running as a freshman. During her four years at N.C. A&T, she has mentored a Little Sister from elementary to middle school in Big Brothers, Big Sisters; joined AmeriCorps and spending 675 hours tutoring children from low-income areas; and worked with the United Negro College Fund as a Walton K-12 Education Fellow, helping to develop a school model for Detroit Public Schools.
She has helped after-school teachers the Black Child Development Institute in Greensboro; has served on the executive board of the campus organization Queen In You; and has taken that group Dudley High School junior and senior women, forming a new group, Queens In Training, and during her junior year, mentored middle-school girls at Melvin C. Swann Middle School while serving as Miss Junior and participating in the university honors program.
“I want to change the negative stereotypes about Black and brown students,” she said. “I want to thank N.C. A&T for teaching me about Black excellence.”
As a freshman, Sean Workman, an environmental studies major in the Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Design, made an F in English 101.
“I did poorly on my first paper and never overcame it,” he said. “I talked to Dr. Uzochukwu, my advisor, about what to do, and he said to retake the class and do better. I did, and got an A. That made me realize that you can’t let past failures hold me back from realizing your goals.”
Workman has made straight As for the past three semesters and, with Onnr Grogan, has the department’s highest senior GPA.
Now that Workman is applying for jobs, he has cast a broad net, from park ranger to soil conservationist. But if none of them are in his future, he said, he won’t let disappointment hold him back.
“I have a lot of paths open to me, and I feel that I have a bright future. I can’t let past failures weigh me down,” he said.
“It was George Washington Carver who said, ‘When you can do the common things of life in an uncommon way, you command the attention of the world,’” Alston said. “College of Ag graduates, we are second to no one.”
