USDA Minority Research Apprenticeship Program

The School of Agriculture and Life Sciences was struggling to recruit large numbers of African Americans after the mandate of Affirmative Action. This act, and the resulting discovery of the African American community’s negative perception of SALS, forced the faculty to rethink its racial practices. SALS recognized that it had to reach out to high school students to encourage a race balance in the educational field of agriculture.

The School of Agriculture and Life Science’s best-recorded successful outreach to African American high school students occurred from a collaboration with the USDA Research Apprenticeship Program for Minority High School students. SALS recognized the best way to encourage African Americans to apply to the program was through early outreach to high school students. SALS needed to alter the surrounding African American community’s view of SALS as a plantation society program.  

President Jimmy Carter and the United States Department of Agriculture created the Minority Research Apprenticeship Program in 1979 with the goal of linking the educational opportunities of agriculture programs in land-grant colleges with minority high school students. The program’s objective sought to stimulate broader interest amongst minorities in science and engineering careers. Chosen non-white students would work with active researchers to have first-hand experience in the scientific field or in laboratory research.[1] The head of SALS Dr. H.B. Craig encouraged faculty to participate in this summer program in order the break the final educational hierarchy, which originally barred African Americans from agricultural education.

The USDA and the School of Agriculture hoped to increase the number of minorities with advanced degrees in food and agricultural sciences in North Carolina. [2] The SALS faculty reviewed the program after the 1980 installment to measure their interaction with the students. The staff reported an excellent experience that was profitable for both faculty and students. Willing participation in this program was key to the staff breaking down racial barriers in agricultural education.

The Students
The African American Research Apprentices of the NC State School of Agriculture and Life Sciences left behind evaluations of their research experiences. These voices are key historical evidence for measuring empowerment. Memoirs of female and African American students are difficult to find in the archive repository, as evidenced by the general exhibit page on “Affirmative Action” and “Appealing African American Students.” A study of the high school students in the USDA Minority Research Apprenticeship program is historically significant because the documents reveal the student’s personal feelings and perspectives about pursing a career in agriculture and the sciences.

When SALS first began its concerted outreach to African American high school students, the objective was to encourage their participation in math and science courses to prepare their transcripts to enter college. The USDA program facilitated this outreach in a new way by bringing minorities into the university to advance their understanding of various sciences. SALS created research opportunities with various faculty specializing in different agricultural fields.

Each following exhibit page provides transcripts of the digitized collection of the USDA records from 1980-1983.  At the beginning of the Minority Research Apprenticeship program the School of Agriculture and Life Sciences recorded the student’s academic and recreational interests then asked what their career goals were. At the end of the research program the students reported how the program affected their perceptions about agricultural education, their experience with the program, and how it affected their program choice. The following exhibit pages provide a collaboration of the apprentice’s answers to compare how students perceived the program and if they felt empowered by the experience.

Many of the students did not attend NC State after their apprenticeship, but reported positive educational experiences. The students who did not attend reported career choices in other scientific fields, which was reflective of the nationwide trend of African Americans pursuing non-agriculture science degrees.[3] From these sources, we can understand that the student’s felt empowered by the opportunity to experience college-level research, and to experiment with various branches of agricultural science they would not have experienced in high school. The research experience convinced many students to pursue a science or engineering career, which was a goal of the USDA and the SALS faculty. Student’s perceptions about the program and faculty were generally positive, which showed the staff that removing their plantation society image was possible.