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| The SU College of Agriculture's 2019 BAYOU Program was held on the Southern University campus from June 2 - June 21, 2019. The program is designed to provide high school seniors and incoming college freshman with first-hand knowledge about career opportunities in the field of Agriculture. |
Baton Rouge, La. – The Southern University
College of Agricultural, Family and Consumer Sciences hosted 26 high school
seniors and incoming college freshman for three weeks during the college’s
annual Beginning Agricultural Youth Opportunities Unlimited (BAYOU) Program.
The program provides an opportunity for students to gain first-hand
knowledge about career opportunities in Agriculture, Family and Consumer
Sciences, Business or the natural sciences.
The students also participate in educational field trips during the
program. One of those field trips was to
the De Soto National Forest in Wiggins, MS, where the students were introduced
to conservation efforts, wildfire work, and protection of endangered species.
Calvin Adams, Felton DeRouen and Drs. Harold Mellieon, Jr., Kamran Abdollahi,
and Chris Chappell accompanied the students on the trip.
During the program’s closing ceremony on June 21, every student
presented their summer experience from the respective academic areas of Apparel
Merchandising and Textiles, Agriculture Economics, Animal Science and Pre-Vet
Medicine, Child Development, Human Nutrition and Food, Plant and Soil Sciences
and Urban Forestry.
“I didn’t know what to expect from the program, in the beginning, but
when I moved into the dorm and met my suitemates, it felt like a home away from
home,” said Tayla Williams, a BAYOU participant from New Orleans, LA and an
incoming freshman at Southern University. “I really enjoyed visiting the different
departments in the College of Agricultural, Family and Consumer Sciences and I
was glad that I was able to clarify exactly what I want to do in the Department
of Animal Sciences,” she added.
Tayla was excited to explain the hands-on experience she gained during
the program such as how to palpate a cow and figure out where the baby is inside
the animal, draw blood from a goat out of its neck, and how to stop huff rot in
a goat.
To qualify for the BAYOU program, students had to have a minimum grade
point average of 2.5 and complete 11th grade. The students live in the
dormitories on the Southern University Baton Rouge campus and are permitted to
go home on the weekends.
The 2019 BAYOU coordinators were Allison Johnson, the United States
Department of Agriculture’s 1890 Program Liaison; Harold Mellieon, Jr., Ph.D., Assistant
Professor of Agricultural Science and Program Leader of Animal Science, and
Tiffany Wilkerson-Franklin, Ph.D., Associate Youth Specialist at the SU Ag Center.
Sponsors for this year’s program included the USDA’s Agricultural
Marketing Service (AMS), Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS),
National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS), Forest Service (FS) the
Louisiana Chapter of Professional Black NRCS Employees, LA STEAM, and Southern University’s
TrueBlue.
Photos from the program's closing ceremony are available
here.
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