September 23, 2007
By GUNNAR OLSON
REGISTER STAFF WRITER
The nation faces a severe shortage of agriculture teachers, but state education leaders see reason for hope in Ankeny.
Ground will begin to move next week for a $13 million Iowa FFA center that will be built on a 17-acre portion of the former Iowa State University research farm in Ankeny. The site is on the southwest side of the Prairie Trail development near the campus of Des Moines Area Community College.
“It’s a great trade-off,” said Steve DeWitt, president of the Iowa FFA Foundation.
DeWitt and other agriculture education leaders hope the 57,000-square-foot enrichment center will generate new excitement for agriculture among 12,000 students and ultimately compel more of them to choose careers in it.
In Iowa and across the nation there are insufficient numbers of agriculture teachers, who are seen as a crucial bridge between classroom and work force, state and national education leaders say.
“Our problem is, we just don’t have enough people coming through the pipeline,” said Alan Spencer, the executive secretary and treasurer of Iowa FFA. “I think what (the enrichment center) will do is, it will allow us some more opportunity to better prepare our teachers.”
Currently, Iowa FFA events and activities are held at various locations around the state, DeWitt said.
In about 14 months, though, students and teachers will have two floors of space designed with their needs in mind, including classrooms, laboratories, a greenhouse, an 8,000-square-foot exhibit hall, FFA staff offices and a conference center designed to hold 450 people. Classrooms for DMACC’s veterinary technology, horticulture and agriculture programs also will be housed in the center. DMACC plans to build a new health sciences facility close by at nearly the same time.
“It’s a fantastic partnership,” DMACC President Rob Denson said. “… It’s a great win-win.”
A joint groundbreaking for the DMACC and FFA buildings will be held at 1 p.m. Oct. 8.
The enrichment center will cost between $10 million and $13 million and will be paid for almost entirely with private donations, DeWitt said. The city of Ankeny is contributing $1 million.
DMACC donated the land and will maintain the building, DeWitt said. An annuity from investments will help pay for additional operating expenses.
FFA, known as Future Farmers of America until a name change in 1988, is a national organization with members in all 50 states that aims to prepare students for the increasingly diverse careers in agriculture.
Membership numbers in Iowa show that interest in the state’s high schools is at its highest point since the farm crisis of the 1980s, Spencer said.
And Iowa’s evolving agriculture industry, notably ethanol, can use all of the highly educated workers it can get, state education leaders say. But they are concerned about a potential gap between the classroom and the workplace.
“I would say this past year, 45 of 50 states had a struggle filling their positions,” said Jeff Papke, a National FFA official who works with states to develop strategies for retaining and recruiting agriculture teachers.
The states that didn’t struggle to hire agriculture teachers, he said, “got lucky.”
The number of teachers receiving certification for agriculture education at ISU – the state’s only institution that offers it – has dwindled from 23 in 2004 to an anticipated six this year, said assistant professor Levon Esters, who coordinates the program.
At the same time, Esters said he knows of 15 to 20 of the roughly 240 agriculture education teachers in Iowa who have been in their position 25 years or longer.
“All it takes is five or 10 people to retire, and then it’s a shortage,” Esters said.
Reporter Gunnar Olson can be reached at (515) 284-8039 or golson@dmreg.com
Other states find centers build pride
Once the Iowa FFA enrichment center is built in Ankeny, there won’t be many others like it in the country.
Ernie Gill of the National FFA Organization said there are about 21 states in which FFA programs have some kind of permanent facility. Most of them are camps.
Only five – Georgia, Arkansas, California, Ohio and Illinois – have something similar to Iowa’s proposed enrichment center, Gill said.
In California, assistant FFA adviser Charles Parker said that since the $3.2 million FFA center in California opened in February it has given members a new sense of ownership in the program.
“The overall feel in California, at least from my perspective, is that it has added a bit of pride,” Parker said.
Ground will be broken Oct. 8 on an Iowa FFA enrichment center in Ankeny that will also house classrooms for Des Moines Area Community College.
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