Terry Stevenson’s Agricultural Weblog

A couple weeks ago I received an e-mail from Marjory Gaouette, who is the manager of Program Development, Office of Open Learning at the University of Guelph. Marjory invited me to sit in on presentations being completed by this year’s cohort enrolled in the Agricultural Communications program, under the direction of my former professor, Owen Roberts.

I gladly accepted Marjory and Owens invitation to attend this important class presentation, which was being held at the Ontario AgriCentre, Media Centre in Guelph. Having completed this same course curriculum just last year myself, I was eager to see and hear how this year’s class was progressing.

The Agricultural Communications program is hosted by the University of Guelph under the direction of Owen Roberts. It is designed to strengthen and enhance each student’s communication skills, allowing them to effectively communicate diverse and complex agricultural issues to wide variety of audiences. Having being part of the first cohort to graduate from this program last year, I can say that it’s an excellent program and prepares the student by developing and applying practical journalism skills.    

In this part of the course, Studio II, each of the students was to select their own communications campaign around an agricultural theme. Once these themes were approved by Owen, the cohort would not only create a communications campaign, but also hold a “mock” media conference in front of actual working journalists. I can tell you from my own personal experience this is a very stressful time for these students.

They have been working very hard on these projects for approximately 12 weeks and put an incredible amount of time and effort in developing their campaigns. Now all those weeks of hard work come to a climax, presenting them not only to their professor, but representatives from the media too!

There were four presentations in all. Kathie McDonald did her campaign around the “Advanced Agricultural Leadership Program,” Marnie Johnson did hers on the “Alliance Against Raw Milk Distribution,” Christine Schoonderwoerd’s was on bringing the “Rural Bounty” program to Canada and Sarah Van Engelen’s presentation was built around the development of “Ag Careers.com.”

Every one of their presentations were absolutely fantastic! Kathie, Marnie, Christine, and Sarah had all done an amazing amount of background work and detail in creating their communication campaigns and it showed. What really struck me was the “passion” that each of them demonstrated when speaking about their campaigns. They handled the really difficult questions from the media in attendance with patience and true professionalism. Some of the questions they faced were very tough, but they were not thrown off balance and stayed focused on their message.

Owen Roberts and Marjory Gaouette can be very proud of this year’s Agricultural Communications cohort. From what I saw of this year’s communications campaigns, these students are excelling in this course and some agricultural organization will be very lucky to add these talented students to their staff when they graduate in December. Owen Roberts is now starting to consider applications for the 2009/2010 class. If you would like more information about this comprehensive Agricultural Communications program, Owen Roberts can be reached at owen@uog.ca