I would like to congratulate Ohio State’s Wooster Campus on its recent grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). On Nov. 29, the USDA announced its list of grants to support public secondary schools, non-profits and colleges to engage schoolchildren in the food, agriculture, natural resources and human sciences. The university’s Agricultural Technical Institute and Ohio Agricultural Research and Development Center was awarded over $30,000 in support of a new educational program for high school students.

The grant will be supporting a new summer program for 20 tenth-12th-grade students from Wooster High School and Northwestern High School. During the course of this two-month program, 10 students from each school will be able to interact with college students in the Associate of Science Degree program in renewable energy at the Agricultural Technical Institute and with researchers involved in bioenergy research at the Ohio Agricultural Research and Development Center.

Through these interactions, the students will be introduced to career opportunities in biofuel-related research and production, biogas production, wastewater treatment and other fields in the renewable energy sector. By providing students with training in analytical and operational procedures in an experiential learning environment, the program hopes to spark an interest in renewable energy that will lead program participants to consider a career in the energy sector.

The importance of training and equipping a workforce that can compete in the 21st century cannot be understated. Ohio is home to over 100,000 clean energy jobs, and that number continues to grow. It is imperative that we provide our students with the opportunities to learn about the new and exciting careers available to them in Ohio, and this USDA grant will provide 20 fortunate students in Wayne County with the chance to experience what a promising career in the renewable energy sector looks like.

I wish the program and its participants success and hope that it serves as a starting point for additional, like-minded program that expose our district’s students to the exciting career opportunities that await them in the working world.