United States Under Secretary of Agriculture inspires students in Kannapolis

“Whoa! Look how big this one is!” 

It’s an exclamation commonly heard in the school garden when digging sweetpotatoes. What is uncommon is for that comment to be directed at the Under Secretary of Agriculture, Dr. Chavonda Jacobs-Young, who was digging alongside the students on a late summer morning. Dr. Jacobs-Young visited Shady Brook Elementary School in Kannapolis, NC, Tuesday morning, digging sweetpotatoes and answering questions from the inquiring minds of fourth graders, before traveling a couple miles to the NC Research Campus to visit the NC State University Plants for Human Health Institute (PHHI).

Doug Vernon, STEM Extension assistant, coordinated the visit to Shady Brook to highlight the value of school gardens, a key component of his outreach work at the Plants for Human Health Institute as a means of delivering the research to the community. Vernon says, “Not only do students learn where their food comes from, they are more likely to taste fruits and vegetables that they grew and harvested. Fostering a love of fruits and vegetables at a young age just may lead to healthier kids and healthier adults.” 

Kannapolis City Schools (KCS) Superintendent, Kevin Garay, shared with Dr. Jacobs-Young that Shady Brook Elementary has a Career and Technical Education focus on the culinary arts. The students learn basic food preparation in a teaching kitchen, and have the opportunity to continue that learning focus through middle and high school. Meredith Katz, the STEM teacher, explained that sweetpotato dishes would be prepared from their harvest for a cooking competition and one class would win the “Culinary Crown.”

In a Q&A with two classes, Dr. Jacobs-Young told the students about the scope of the USDA from researching disease and insects that threaten our food and fiber crops to delivering healthy, nutritious school meals. She discussed her own career path as an aspiring engineer from Augusta, Georgia, an NC State University graduate in Pulp and Paper Science, a professor at University of Washington, Chief Scientist of the Agricultural Research Service, to her current appointed role as part of the President’s sub cabinet. 

Exploring career possibilities is one of the goals of PHHI’s Scientist for a Day program. More than 500 KCS students have been selected to participate in the program that gives them a peek inside the labs and offers a hands-on experience to support their interest in science. Only a generation ago, Kannapolis was a mill town and most of the city’s residents were mill workers. Today the NC Research Campus sits at the town center and programs like Scientist for a Day aim to show students that they can still have a career in their hometown. 

Dr. Jacobs-Young visited the STEM Training Lab and met with 10 past participants of the Scientist for a Day program. She encouraged them to continue pursuing their interest in science, taking advantage of opportunities and experiences like Scientist for a Day or the USDA’s AgDiscovery Program.

She also met with NC State leadership, and toured the labs of several PHHI faculty. The USDA is a funding partner for numerous research projects.