Florida A&M University’s College of Agriculture and Food Sciences hosted their first research forum Tuesday. The forum took place from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. in the Perry-Paige auditorium displaying the schools research.
The forum was an event dedicated to 125 years of the land grant celebration. There were guest speakers including FAMU’s President, Elmira Mangum and Agriculture Commissioner Adam Putnam.
According to Jasmine Hall, a senior food science student and keynote speaker for the forum, the event was a great opportunity for students and professors to display their research and compete.
“There’s a student competition of undergraduate and graduate students,” Hall said. “This benefits the students because it’s good exposure for presenting research and in front of important people.”
The forum was not a career fair, but job and career opportunities were discussed by Commissioner Putnam and the head of USDA Agriculture Services.
The school also took advantage of the forum to have a recruiting table trying to inform and incorporate students to the program. The table had layout of the different fields the school of Agriculture and Food Sciences has to offer and changing the misconception some might have of the school.
Taquasha Freeman, a recruiter at the forum, said that some people have a false perception of what agriculture is.
“Agriculture is food, clothing, water and shelter,” Freeman said. “Any brand you see in the store is an agricultural product.”
Freeman said there are many avenues a student can take when it comes to career opportunities in agriculture.
“Most people think agriculture is just food but it’s not,” Freeman said. “You can work for a fortune 500 company and focus on agriculture.”
Along with the speakers and the students research there was research done by professors and others.
Zhongbo Ren, the program leader, presented his research on wine and grapes for the forum.
Ren displayed tables of wine spirits that he made. He said that all the wine at FAMU was created by him describing the process as a lot of work.