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Both the ' HOW ' & ' WHY ' Plant Science Transfer Pathway at Hartnell's new Castroville Education Center H artnell College will soon enroll students for the inaugural Fall 2022 class of its new Associate in Science for Transfer (ADT) degree in Plant Science at the Castroville Education Center. Students will complete the degree in two years and smoothly transfer into a bachelor's degree program in plant science at CSUMB, Fresno State, Chico State or Cal Poly. Highlights: In Hartnell's new Castroville center, equipped with state-of-the-art science labs, classrooms and tutoring center. • Students complete a semester-by-semester plan together as a group. • Internship and job-shadowing with local ag employers. • Free tuition regardless of income, from Hartnell's Salinas Valley Promise program. For more information: Celia Anderson, program assistant, (831) 755-6798 or canderson@hartnell.edu Hartnell to Offer Plant Science Pathway at Castroville Center By Scott Faust Hartnell College will soon enroll the first group of students for an Agricultural Plant Science pathway program set to launch this fall at its new Castroville Education Center, on Merritt Street just east of Highway 1. Following what's known in higher education as a "cohort" model, those 15 or 20 students will take classes together and be ready in two years to transfer and complete a bachelor's degree in plant science at a Califor- nia State University. That includes Cal State Monte- rey Bay, which started its plant science program in fall of 2020. Students in Hartnell's Castroville-based pro- gram will have opportu- nities for job shadowing and internships with north Monterey County companies. A class in agricultural and industrial equipment will take them off campus for additional hands-on experiences. Overall, their learning will have a berries-and-arti- chokes emphasis, while still being fully applicable to leafy greens, vegeta- bles and specialty crops throughout the Central Coast. "The program is de- signed around agricul- ture-based in North County, but we're getting a lot of interest from students around the region, including in King City," said Clint Cowden, Hartnell's dean of career technical education and workforce development, who also directs the Cas- troville Education Center. The newly opened Cas- troville center, complete with science labs, a tutor- ing center and state-of- the-art classrooms, allows Hartnell to structure the plant science curriculum as a non-stop pipeline from college to university to career. The center first welcomed students on Jan. 24, in time for the Spring 2022 semester. Input from agricultural leaders during Hartnell's community listening sessions for Castroville revealed strong support for an accelerated pro- gram that dovetails with plant science degrees at CSUMB, Fresno State, Chico State, Cal Poly San Luis Obispo or Cal Poly Pomona. Instead of leaving the area as freshmen to begin at a four-year university – and possibly never returning once they graduate – students in Hartnell's program will begin their studies in the context of Salinas Valley agriculture while build- ing early connections with local employers. Hartnell's cohort pro- gram in plant science, the first of its kind in California, will offer oth- er advantages as well, Cowden said. Much like Hartnell's highly successful CSin3 computer science pro- gram, in which partici- pants earn a computer science bachelor's degree in just three years, the plant science students in Castroville will know exactly what to expect each semester. In addi- tion, because they will be in class with the same students over the two years, they can establish greater camaraderie with one another and their instructors. "For a lot of students, that structure is some- thing that they're really used to from high school," Cowden said. "By con- tinuing that same type of structure, we see their confidence level and their success rates go up. Their courses, such as chemistry, soil science and plant science, will build on each other and give students a more integrated understand- ing of the subject matter, he said. "It also creates almost like an athletic-team kind of bonding, and they tend to get involved in more project-based learning by being able to work in teams," Cowden said. A concentrated focus on plant science, as opposed to the wider scope of a major in agriculture production, will prepare students to understand not only the "how" of crop cultivation, but also the "why," he said. "As our students grow in their careers, they're go- ing to continue to learn about ag production," Cowden said. "But that emphasis on truly under- standing plant science is important, because as the industry changes, if they understand the bot- any and those types of concepts, they'll be able to adapt – be it fertilizers or climate change or other agronomic factors that are going to change over time. Provided photo of Clint Cowden Hartnell plant science graduate Jonathan Blas, now at Cal Poly-SLO, is pictured in a field near Chualar where he worked during a spring 2020 soil science internship. Hartnell biology graduate Jasmine Rodriguez, now at Humboldt State University, conducts research during a summer 2019 internship in entomology at the University of California Cooperative Extension.

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