By Susan Reese, Techniques Contributing Editor
There are those who lament a situation that they feel needs changing, and there are those who set out to change it. The late Sam Combs Jr. was one who chose the path of action. In 1994, Combs, a retired soil conservationist and former agriculture education instructor, along with four other retired agriculture educators—W.G. Parker, James R. Johnson, A.W. Hampton and W.E. Gamble—founded the Retired Educators for Agricultural Programs (REAP). What these five men had learned was that of the 434 agriculture educators in Oklahoma at that time, not one was African American.
The name of the organization became the Retired Educators for Youth Agricultural Programs (REYAP) in 2003 but is still pronounced REAP. REYAP is a statewide not-for-profit organization with a goal of helping more African-American youth to pursue opportunities in agriculture education—although the organization is open to all minorities and other youth from socially disadvantaged populations.
Among the programs REYAP offers are:
• the Summer Intern Program
• Minority Youth Leaders in Agriculture
• 1890 Junior Program
• Youth/Community Services
• Youth Conventions and Agri-Tours (including the state and National FFA conventions and the Sustainable Agriculture Research Education Tour)
REYAP organizes workshops and seminars promoting careers in agriculture and organizes mentoring projects to make students aware of scholarship opportunities offered to minority students pursuing degrees in the field of agriculture.
During Black History Month, REYAP hosts the Blacks in Agriculture recognition luncheon. The event recognizes minorities who have made significant contributions to the field of agriculture and honors two students as recipients of the Sam Combs Jr. Youth in Agriculture Award.
REYAP has also partnered with the Oklahoma Department of Career and Technology Education and the Oklahoma Department of Agriculture, as well as federal agencies such as the United States Department of Agriculture to promote internships for minorities.
According to Rita Combs, REYAP’s executive director and the daughter-in-law of Sam Combs, through its partnerships with private industry, educational institutions and government agencies, REYAP hopes to increase the opportunities for minority internships.
Although she was born and raised on a small farm, Combs studied business in college, but she feels that being raised on a farm gave her the work ethic that she has and also has given her the appreciation of agriculture that serves her well in her current position. She had been volunteering with the organization when her father-in-law passed away, and the board offered her the executive director’s position because they wanted to ensure that his vision was carried on.
One of the biggest successes the organization has had, according to Combs, has been its mentor program. She often talks about “inclusiveness” and explains that when you can see educators and administrators who look like you, that is inclusiveness of your race. “When you can see board members who look like you, that is inclusiveness, and it means a lot,” says Combs.
She adds, however, “There are good teachers out there who don’t look like me. I know because I had them.”
Having teachers who do look like them can increase learning for minority students, however, as some recent studies have shown (see the story in this month’s Front and Center).
“REYAP was started because of the negligible amount of minorities matriculating into the field of agriculture,” notes Combs, who says she sees the benefits the field has to offer and that’s why they are promoting opportunities for minorities, especially African Americans.
One of their largest programs is the summer internship program, in which youth work with the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) and with institutions of higher learning.
Combs notes that they are seeing success in this area, and some former REYAP students who interned at USDA are now working there.
Among the other indicators of success: One hundred percent of REYAP’s former primary senior interns now attend state universities, and 75 percent of them are majoring in agriculture. REYAP’s programs and activities have contributed to a 72 percent increase in students majoring in agriculture at Langston University. For the past two years, 50 percent of REYAP nonmember students attending the national and state FFA conventions have subsequently joined FFA. REYAP students have received USDA 1890 National Scholarships, and the program’s summer interns are highly recruited for internships across the nation.
“Our efforts are working,” Combs notes with pride. “Youth can experience career building opportunities and learn important life skills when they participate in our program.”
She also explains that, by introducing students to the field at an early age, they will realize the rewarding careers that are available to them.
Combs cites the opportunities available in agribusiness and says that if young people are informed about agriculture and inspired about the opportunities available to them, they will see their chance to live the American dream.
Another woman who is setting a great example for REYAP students is LaDonna McCowan. “REYAP has a component of skills,” McCowan explains, and as part of that component, she teaches REYAP students about oral presentation, PowerPoint presentation development, communication skills and politics in the workplace.
In addition to her work as the assistant extension specialist for urban and minority environmental programs at Oklahoma State University in Stillwater, McCowan is the executive director for the Oklahoma Landowners and Tenants Association.
Growing up on her family’s peanut farm in Bristow, Okla., McCowan saw how hard the work was and wanted to find better ways to do things. New opportunities opened up for her when she was offered an engineering scholarship through the Council of Partners, a group of large industries that hoped to help fill the void of minorities in engineering. When she got to Oklahoma State University and discovered that there was such a thing as an agricultural engineer, McCowan knew she had found her calling. Since that initial discovery, she has received her B.S. in agricultural engineering, M.S. in biosystems and agricultural engineering, and Ph.D. in environmental sciences—all from Oklahoma State.
One of McCowan’s main areas of specialization is groundwater protection, and she has been working with Oklahoma’s rural minority communities to help them learn how to take care of their water wells. The number of those who have bacteria in their wells is around 38 percent, according to McCowan, and they often do not know—or know what to do about it.
As a board member of REYAP, she is involved in a pilot program in which she is teaching REYAP students to use geographical information systems (GPS) to track abandoned wells and then e-mail information back to state offices. After tracing problems such as high nitrates and bacteria, they have helped to correct about 60 percent of these wells.
McCowan works with the state’s Natural Resource Conservation Service, and they are now connecting with 4-H to take the program statewide.
The Oklahoma Landowners and Tenants Association provides resources and educational materials for small landowners, and McCowan notes that she found that the calls they were getting from women were different than the ones from men. While the men may have asked about things like getting loans, the women asked questions about bookkeeping systems, drinking water systems and the safety of their children. These women can now attend all-day workshops to get answers to many of these issues. McCowan works with the Oklahoma State University extension office and the Oklahoma Department of Career and Technology Education to provide these workshops. They were surprised with the turnout of 60 women at the first one. There have been more than 100 attendees at the subsequent workshops, so a large turnout is no longer a surprise.
While noting that she has no trouble working with the many men in her profession, McGowan sees something special in the way that women work together. “Women tend to pull together because they have had to over the years,” she says.
Her work with both REYAP and the Oklahoma Landowners and Tenants Association has given McCowan a unique perspective because she often works with both REYAP students and the parents of REYAP students. To attract students to the field of agriculture, you have to understand the importance of connecting with their parents as well, she explains.
“We learned from 4-H and FFA that you can get students involved, but if you don’t get the parents involved, it gets stagnated,” says McCowan. “If you get them both involved, it tends to go a lot further because they tend to help each other, especially in rural areas.”
McCowan understands the rewards of helping one another and believes that her education in agriculture and engineering has enabled her to give back to her community. For her that community is broad and inclusive because it is made up of women, minorities and agriculture education.
Brenda Oldfield may have recently retired after 27 years as an agriculture educator, but she hasn’t retired her commitment to agriculture education. Oldfield was the first female agriculture teacher in the state of Arizona, and since blazing that trail for women in the field, she has received numerous honors for her work.
When she was named the ACTE Region II Teacher of the Year, she was cited for helping turn the program at Scott County High School in Georgetown, Ky., into one of the best agriculture programs in the United States. ACTE also noted Oldfield’s “pioneering of nontraditional aquaculture education, her integration of computer technology into all classes, her collaboration with teachers of other subjects, her public relations work for agriculture issues in the community, her program award wins, and her diversity work in reaching out to the education of all cultures and for the advocacy of females in agriculture.”
Oldfield was also the recipient of the University of Kentucky’s Sullivan Medallion Award, which is based on “the possession of such characteristics of heart, mind and conduct as evince a spirit of love for and helpfulness to other men and women.”
Described as a born leader, Oldfield has served as president of the Kentucky Agriculture Teachers Association and the Kentucky Association for Career and Technical Education, as well as a national officer in the National Agriculture Teachers Association.
When she received the ACTE Region II award, her principal spoke of her “contributions to the advancement of agricultural understanding” from the county and state level to the international level. He also said, “It is obvious that the students, parents and community of Scott County have found someone whose convictions in the future of agriculture would influence many young men and women to take a second look at the many opportunities in agriculture.”
One of the ways she did that was through FFA. Her nationally acclaimed FFA chapter received the state Gold Emblem award for 16 consecutive years. Oldfield was also the driving force in organizing Scott County’s FFA Alumni Affiliate, which was named one year as the top FFA affiliate in the nation.
She acknowledges many mentors she had along her path to success, beginning with her father, who always offered encouragement and instilled self-confidence in her. The second person who became a mentor to Oldfield was Congressman Carl Perkins, who was such an influential figure that his name is still attached to the legislation that provides the major source of federal funding for career and technical education.
Perkins came to her father’s farm one snowy day to buy some hogs. Her father wasn’t home, but Oldfield, who was 16 at the time, took him to see the hogs. There was so much snow that they had to walk the two miles, during which time Perkins talked to her about her involvement in farming, 4-H and FHA. He learned a lot about her farming knowledge—and probably her work ethic—and as a result, he offered her the opportunity to intern for him the next summer in his Washington office. Oldfield, who had never even been on a city bus, interned for two weeks that summer, and in 1969, when she was 17, she interned for the entire summer.
For those who would like to know more about Perkins, Oldfield says he worked 18 to 20 hours a day, trying to answer every call and every letter and address every concern of his constituents. Yet he was what she describes as “a caring person.”
“I learned a lot from him. He wanted to help people, especially young people, and he wanted to make the world a better place,” she says.
When she got to the University of Kentucky, Oldfield found more mentors, including the dean of the college of agriculture.
He told her, recalls Oldfield, “With your experience with farming and in 4-H you should come over to agriculture.”
She had started in home economics, which at that time was the more traditional path for women, while agriculture was considered more of a man’s field. But the ‘60s and ‘70s were times of change and new opportunities for women.
“The dean told me that when I graduated there would be a lot of job offers because they would have to be hiring women,” Oldfield says.
She realized then that there was a role for a woman—and more specifically for her—in agriculture.
There were other mentors along the way—Dr. Charles Byers, the professor for whom she was a graduate assistant, and Dr. Harold Binkley, who was the chairman of vocational education at the University of Kentucky. It was Binkley who encouraged her to go to Arizona to work.
When she got to Arizona, she found that there were almost 100 agriculture teachers, and they were all men.
“I was scared to death not to succeed,” Oldfield remembers. “I wanted to earn their respect, and I put more pressure on myself than I needed to. Women tend to do that.”
She adds, however, that at that time women really needed to prove themselves as they ventured into what was for them new territory.
But she still sees that today in the girls she was teaching until her recent retirement, and those girls often, as she puts it, “go at it 150 percent.”
Oldfield saw her job as motivating all of her students—boys and girls alike—and that was one of the things she learned from Byers, her former professor.
“He instilled in me the good values of teaching and of motivating students,” she explains. And that was a philosophy she lived out for 27 years—teaching, motivating and blazing the trail for the future women in agriculture education.
If you would like to learn more about the Retired Educators for Youth Agricultural Programs, call 405-848-5944 or e-mail reap@sbcglobal.net. The REYAP Web site has been undergoing construction and upgrading, so if it is not ready when you visit, please check back soon at www.reyap.org.
- Techniques February 2005 Issue - 
