Jonathan Alder High School’s new agriculture club run by English teacher Nicole Lorenz is the first step for students interested in agriculture to access the information they want.

“It is a student led initiative to give students the opportunity to explore careers and interests related to the broad field of agriculture.”

The club had their first meeting on August 27th and had 18 participants in the first meeting. While similar, agriculture club and nature club are separate clubs, with agriculture club being much more career focused and opportunity driven.

“The goal is to give students a space to share their own knowledge,” says Lorenz. “Everyone comes with their own areas of expertise and interests.” 

Year after year this has been something students have wanted, being a common occurrence in the freshman solution fair. Over the summer students presented the idea to the school board with the ultimate goal of eventually offering agricultural classes on-site at Alder. 

This is a pretty big deal for students that are interested in the agriculture career path, as there was not previously a way for them to express their knowledge with peers – so if you wanted a career in agriculture, you were on your own. “I love agriculture. I want to pursue a career in agriculture and it’s just in my everyday life and it’s nice to finally have a club,” says junior Hailey Westrick. 

It is crucial to note that the agriculture career field is vast and full of options for everyone.. “Everyone thinks of agriculture and they think of farming and animals. And there’s so much more to that and this club is the first step in the district to offering agricultural education to our students,” Lorenz says.

The club is still very new and green, with only one meeting so far, but the group is attending the farm science review on the September 16 as their next meeting.