ORANGEBURG — S.C. State University is refocusing on agricultural education, which was part of the school’s original mission as a land grant college.
Trustees approved two new undergraduate programs in September for animal and veterinary science and natural resource management, along with a master’s degree in agricultural and natural resource management.
They’ll be part of its College of Agriculture and Family and Consumer Sciences, which was created in 2021 after the university had gone 50 years without an academic division for agriculture.
The same year, S.C. State opened a research and demonstration farm in Bamberg County, part of its amped-up research efforts. State legislators also have set aside funding for an upcoming $15 million renovation to Nance Hall on the school’s Orangeburg campus, where modern labs and classrooms will house the new programs.
“This investment ensures our students will have access to the advanced facilities they need to develop the skills that agriculture and related industries demand,” university President Alexander Conyers said in a statement about the renovations.
The new investments comes as South Carolina’s agricultural sector copes with aging farmers and labor shortages, which S.C. State is aiming to help alleviate by preparing more of the state’s students for the modern world of agribusiness.
“It really comes from a workforce development need,” Ralph Noble, dean of S.C. State’s agriculture college, said.
Students at the university today have fewer personal connections to farming than they did when Noble was in college studying agricultural science, he said. More are coming from Columbia and Charleston instead of rural areas, and many are several generations away from ancestors who grew up on farms.
That means schools have to work to bring students into agriculture for the first time, if they want to keep the state’s family farms producing.
S.C. State is a natural place for that work to happen. Along with Clemson University, it’s one of the state’s two land grant universities, schools founded with a focus on agriculture and practical science — indeed, a dairy herd was part of the school’s meager facilities when it opened in 1896.
Its new veterinary science bachelor’s degree is meant to compliment the establishment of South Carolina’s first veterinary school at Clemson, which is set to open in 2026. Some joint recruitment efforts are in the works, hoping to draw students in biology or other subjects into the veterinary field.
S.C. State’s program will have a pre-veterinary track and an animal husbandry track, the latter of which is focused on the agribusiness industry.
Students in the new natural resource management programs will study subjects such as sustainable agriculture and soil and water management.
The new programs will include professors who work with the university’s agricultural research and extension program. The animal and veterinary science program will be well-positioned to take advantage of its work in West Africa on goat breeds and livestock management.
Students also will work with modern agricultural technology such as drones, robots and sensors, the school said.