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Team Up With Formal Education for Maximum Impact

Ruth Hambleton

Summary

This 30 minute session will share an idea for pairing formal education settings and seminar style programs that complement each other. Some formal education settings can use reinforcement for certain topics and some seminar style programs can use the younger audience a formal education setting often attracts. Ruth Hambleton served as an adjunct professor for a farm management class at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale, Illinois. In the farm management class she found a high percentage of students returning home to the family farm but found it hard to incorporate certain materials that would be beneficial to them in the formal education environment. Of particular interest were the numbers of young women returning home to the family farm and some of the barriers they were facing because of their gender and traditions. Surveying the needs of the students in the class room, Hambleton found considerable interest for a program addressing farm transitioning issues. She designed a two-part six-hour seminar that focused on issues of transferring farm assets and communications skills to help bridge the gap between generations and gender. Families of the students were invited to the seminar, as were farm families from the surrounding area. The seminar was offered as extra credit to the students in the farm management class; local farm families that had never been on campus had a chance to visit an academic environment. There was considerable interaction among students, family members, and local farmers as they interacted with outstanding presenters discussing real life issues and solutions.

Details

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