When I started graduate school, I knew I wanted to do research internationally. I’m particularly drawn to agriculture, because the intersection of food and culture is consequential to our human experience. Throughout history, agriculture has defined societies and it is immensely gratifying for me to witness the cultural traces of its impact in communities across the world. My story is a tribute to the challenging realities of cross-cultural research, but also to how international exposure is a place for growth and richness.

My name is Jamie Fisher and I am a transfer student in the Food Science and Human Nutrition program. I first got interested in the food science world when I joined an internship class in high school. I did not know what kind of career I wanted to go into until the day I got the opportunity to shadow a scientist at a flavor company called FONA International. I have been hired back as an intern every summer I’ve been in college and I haven’t looked back. I first learned about the different departments a flavor company had to offer, from analytical chemistry to research and innovation.

During the fall 2019 semester, I joined the CCI program, which is a special program created by faculty at the career center and designed specifically for international students. I got to know various resources about job searching and learned job-related policies for international students. The CCI program connected me with alumni who already work in the industry and they came back to share with us their experiences in job searching. It was an unforgettable experience you can’t find elsewhere.

The knowledge I gained during my undergraduate time in Crop Sciences allowed me to pursue a career in data science. As a data scientist at the John Deere Technology Innovation Center at the University of Illinois Research Park, my team encounters a variety of data in the company. This could include machine data, social media data, and crop data. Because we are in the agriculture industry, domain knowledge is an important factor for the company’s success.

I transferred into the University of Illinois from community college and I’m a proud first-generation graduate. My HDFS degree has greatly prepared me for a career in Pediatric related medicine and research. The coursework, at least from my experience, laid a strong, flexible foundation for broad knowledge regarding all the different aspects of human development of children and adolescents through a global perspective.

My time as an undergraduate student in the Crop Sciences has helped guide me to seek opportunities in which I never considered before. I come from a suburban background with absolutely zero knowledge about agriculture and now I am about to pursue a Master’s degree in Agronomy and study weed science. The knowledge I gained in my coursework was incredibly helpful in preparing me for my future and lead me to work as a Research Assistant for a weed ecology lab throughout my undergraduate career.

I remembered touring the FSHN pilot plant my freshman year during a class and thought it was the coolest place ever. I applied for an internship during my freshman year and soon became employed. I had a lot of experience in cooking, cleaning, and using tools. At the pilot plant, I learned how we process foods from the student sustainable farm into ingredients that the dining halls on-campus use. For example, we processed tomatoes from the farm into pizza sauce for the dining halls. There is a lot of teamwork since we are always working with our peers and this develops great friendships.

As a kid growing up in Illinois, I was heavily involved in 4-H for 11 years, taking projects like swine, horticulture, photography, and cooking. I think my favorite part of 4-H was not showing projects at the fair, or monthly club meetings, or the skills it taught me, or even working with livestock, although I really enjoyed all those things. My favorite part of 4-H was the community. That may sound cheesy, but it’s so true. One of my favorite days of the whole year was fair clean-up day when everyone came together after the fair to scoop out the barns and clean up the buildings.

Hello! My name is Kaity Spangler and I am a 2018 Agricultural Leadership and Science Education graduate. While I did graduate with a teaching degree, I decided to take a different route and work for the Illinois Farm Bureau in Bloomington, Illinois. In my current role as the MSPR Program Specialist, I have the opportunity to work with 4-H, the FFA, and Collegiate Farm Bureau programs across the state. The ALEC program at U of I prepared me for this job in so many ways.

In most of my professional career, I have been focused on improving crop production by understanding the impacts of spatial and temporal variability at the field level. Taking these variations into consideration, instead of using just the averages, is the basis of precision agriculture. Most of the tools developed to implement the recommendations resulting from this strategy of crop management are focused on larger producers. There is still low adoption by smallholder farmers.