AGNITOR will bring agricultural professionals into classrooms

CHICAGO — Students in Illinois will be learning about the wide variety of careers available in food, agriculture and conservation through the AGNITOR virtual platform.

“About 90% of the jobs in the food and agriculture industry are off the farm so there’s a breadth of opportunities for students, but they’re not hearing about it in the classroom,” said Tyler Strom, managing director of the Illinois Agri-Food Alliance that launched AGNITOR.

“We want to connect students directly to industry professionals so they can hear diverse experiences and hopefully spark an interest that this is a viable industry for them to pursue,” Strom said.

“AGNITOR is built on the Pathful national platform that has been in operation for 10 years and has a digital database to help bring industry professionals virtually into classrooms,” he said.

“Schools will have the opportunity to get a license to utilize AGNITOR and work with the alliance’s career coordinator, Shanell Rainey, to bring agricultural professionals to schools to interact with students.”

It is important for students to hear directly from those working in the agricultural industry.

“Students want a transparent view of what the job is like and salary expectations,” Strom said. “We want to introduce more students to agricultural career opportunities because if they can’t see it, they can’t be it.”

AGNITOR was started at schools in March, including Epic Academy and the Chicago High School for Agricultural Sciences in Chicago and the Dwayne O. Andreas Ag Academy at Eisenhower and MacArthur high schools in Decatur.

Epic Academy is a college and career prep high school that has a current enrollment of 339 students.

“I’m pretty sure we’re the only school in the city that has a college and career skills teacher at every grade level,” said Roshaun Bowens, assistant principal at Epic Academy.

“We’re in the process of making our own college and career curriculum and identifying the four or five major career pathways our students choose,” Bowens said. “Our CCS teachers have a dual role — they’re half teachers and half counselors because they help students with various skills such as goal setting.”

Rainey has worked in workforce development, helping people find jobs for 13 years before joining Illinois Agri-Food Alliance.

“But I never worked with an agricultural company,” she said.

During a career chat at Epic Academy, Rainey showed a video of how Pringles are produced.

“I want to reach students at a level they can understand,” she said. “I talk about the supply chain to get them to understand the different jobs because so many students have a narrow view of the jobs that are available.”

Rainey encourages agricultural companies to get more involved with talking to students about various career opportunities.

“My call to action for industry is to get some skin in the game and present your jobs to the students,” she said. “And talk about scholarships that they offer to students.”

Compeer Financial has taken that step to get involved by awarding $50,000 to the Illinois Agri-Food Alliance to support the AGNITOR platform through Compeer’s MORE for Agriculture Grant.

“Compeer is one of the partners that believes in this initiative,” Rainey said. “It is so important to us because without this support my role wouldn’t exist and I wouldn’t be able to present this program to the students.”

“Oftentimes, people who aren’t involved in agriculture think that the only job in this industry is being a farmer,” said Karen Schieler, senior corporate giving specialist at Compeer Financial.

“We want to draw attention to all the different opportunities and build awareness that there are thousands of companies looking for the next brilliant mind and good people to work for them.”

It is important for agricultural companies to reach students that don’t have a traditional ag background, Schieler said.

“We need people to look at agriculture differently because that’s what we’re going to need to continue to grow in the future,” she said.

Working with students from all kinds of backgrounds is personal for Schieler.

“I didn’t grow up in agriculture and I never had an ag career on my list when I was in high school, so I see myself in these students,” she said. “My goal was to come back to Chicago and work at the Sun-Times or the Tribune.”

Now Schieler has been involved in the agricultural industry for the past 16-plus years and lives in a rural community.

“I stumbled into the industry,” she said. “I never knew this was an option for me and I want to share that with other people.”

During the launch phase of AGNITOR, Strom said, the goal is for the alliance to partner with 10 schools.

“We’ve focused on the Chicagoland area because there are 100,000 students with less than 1% of them having exposure to ag-related content in the classroom,” he said. “But we’re hoping this scales across the state and potentially regionally and nationally.”

Companies like Growmark, Strom said, are exploring ways they can engage students through internship programs and scholarships.

“They want to show kids there are a lot of available pathways to help guide them into this industry,” he said.