Making Connections

Making Connections. I’m Greg Martin with today’s Line On Agriculture.

People always used to tell me that it was who you know and I have found that to be true over the years. Sometimes all it takes is just knowing the right person to get a project off the ground. Jaime Clarke, Director of the Agriculture Center of Excellence is someone people in agriculture want to get to know.

CLARKE: The Agriculture Center of Excellence is an entity of the Washington State Board for Community and Technical Colleges. It’s our pleasure to represent 24 of the 34 community and technical colleges in Washington State.We represent them through student recruitment in high schools, also in recruiting dislocated workers from WorkSource offices. We have a faculty network that provides faculty development and training. We do curriculum audits so we revue programs to make sure they’re up-to-date and meeting industry needs and we also help graduates find jobs and/or transfer on to 4-year colleges and universities.

Sort of your one stop shop for ag education.

CLARKE: The best way to think of us is like a pipeline, we bring students in, help them through the system and then send them out the other side into the industry or colleges and we are definitely the mediator. We facilitate collaboration between the community colleges in Washington State.

The Center is also a great outlet for companies looking for specific training programs.

CLARKE: One of the roles of the Center of Excellence is to link education and industry and how we do that is one: ensuring that the curriculum and training programs meet industry needs but we also have customized training programs for industry. For example  if a chemical company needed to upgrade their skills on chemical application with GPS or GIS maps we can put together a training program that meets their needs that can be delivered at a local community college or online.

If you would like more information on the Agriculture Center of Excellence and how they might be able to help you visit their website at www.agcenterofexcellence.com.

CLARKE:  But probably the best way of getting hold of me is by sending an email and my email address is jaime.clarke@wwcc.edu.

That’s today’s Line On Agriculture. I’m Greg Martin on the Ag Information Network.