Tifton, GA |
Despite only becoming a four-year school just over fifteen years ago, Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College has now grown to more than thirty-seven hundred students from all over the world, offering fourteen different bachelor’s degrees in everything from fine arts to nursing. And it’s a curriculum they are always looking to expand on.
“We have so many of our students that spend four years here and go right on to vet school, med school, law school. And so, just seeing how competitive we are and we’re also working on getting our elementary education program approved by the board of regents and hope that we can get that program added to our offerings for next year. So, we’re continuing to grow our offerings into Bainbridge. We would like to add some ag related courses, as well as continuing to build our additional four-year programing there,” says Tracy Brundage, President of ABAC.
Of course, the college is best known for their School of Agriculture and Natural Resources, where students can specialize in a number of different fields across the industry. And this past year, they added one more to the list, along with a brand new twenty-seven thousand square foot facility to house it in.
“That is our largest school with over fifteen hundred students enrolled. And we do have a relatively new program, that’s our bachelors of science in agricultural technology management. And the good news is from when we started it last year to this year, it’s growing and we’re really excited about the potential. This program is, broaden scope, prepares students for a wide variety of jobs, including technical careers that includes sales or management in the production, processing or manufacturing of agricultural materials,” says Brundage.
It’s no secret that the average age of farmers is on the rise, which is why ABAC’s goal of preparing their graduating students for the workforce is more important than ever.
“We’ve improved our retention rate. We have new initiatives with our career center. Our placement numbers, we did over two hundred and fifty-four of our students were placed in internships in the School of Ag and Natural Resources over the summer. And we have a long tradition of internships that really are a key reason why ABAC graduates are sought after by our employers,” says Brundage.
It’s not just academics that is seeing a major expansion, as the athletic department is also making some major changes.
“We’re really excited about transitioning from two-year athletics to four-year athletics. We’ve made that transition that’s complete. We’re actually beginning in the NAIA right now. So, we have our fall sports participating. We brought back men and women’s basketball. And as I mentioned last time, that was something we were really excited about to add to our enrollment and retention initiatives,” says Brundage.
That excitement extends to marketing a well, with the college partnering up with Farm Monitor TV. It will provide them a platform to highlight some of the many innovative things they are doing on and away from the farm.
“We’ve been looking for ways to build partnerships to really elevate our brand and brand recognition on a national level. And we’re really looking forward to this partnership and the activities that we jointly have planned to really provide ABAC with that visibility and to be able to just share the good news and the stories of our students and the great work that they’re doing and how successful they are and how we really are helping to meet the workforce needs of the number one industry sector in the state of Georgia, which is agriculture,” says Brundage.
By: Damon Jones