High school students involved in the National FFA Organization from all over the state of Utah were at Utah State University this week. The FFA State Career Development Events are what brought them.
More than 50 high school FFA chapters were in attendance Tuesday and Wednesday. Teams from each of these schools participated in a variety of competitions from agriculture business sales, to dairy science and forestry.
“What these CDEs do for the kids is it helps them learn about a particular area that they are interested in,” said Becki Lawver, a collegiate FFA advisor at USU. “Sometimes it helps give these high school students a career direction.”
“If they win, they become the state representatives that go on to the national convention in October in Indianapolis, Ind. for the National FFA Convention,” said Jake Rudd, the collegiate FFA fundraising and banquet chair. “There are usually teams of four to five and they compete for both personal highs and team highs. Teams that get the highest combined score move on to the national competition.”
Both days were reserved for the different competitions within the agriculture department. Tuesday night, the collegiate FFA held a dance for the high school students in the Nelson Fieldhouse.
“These students pay $5 to get in and we usually get about 300 to 400 of them,” Rudd said. “This is one of our major fundraisers for the year. It brings in money so we can hold these events for them.”
“It was pretty easy and all the kids were pretty good,” said Jimmy Lotspeich, a member of USUs collegiate FFA. “I think the kids really enjoy coming up here for that.”
USUs collegiate FFA helps the high school students with the timing and judging of the events, according to Rudd.
“We are like the backbone to the high school students,” he said. “The Utah FFA Association mainly runs the show. They plan it and we help accomplish it.”
The CDEs are a great resource for high school students to learn hands on what it is like to work as teams.
“The high school kids learn leadership and learn how to be on a team and how to present,” said Ashley Buhler, a collegiate FFA member at USU. “They learn communication, verbal skills, writing and a lot of different things that will apply in their future careers.”
“What they are learning here can be applied to other aspects of whatever they decide to do after school,” Lotspeich said. “The communication skills are huge and the leadership and teamwork aspects are what really are going to help them.”
The USU collegiate FFA members use the CDEs as a way to recruit high school students to come to the university.
“Bringing them to campus is a great thing for us at Utah State,” Lawver said. “They get to see what we do here and we get to promote our campus and the things that we do.”
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