Virginia Tech and 4-H:
A partnership for the future

by Mary Ann Johnson

4-H, which celebrates its 100th anniversary this year, is a vital part of the Virginia Cooperative Extension and Tech's land-grant university mission. This partnership combines Tech's reputation for excellence with the 4-H commitment to creating contributing citizens. The result? Students who are prepared to meet life's challenges head on.

As an alumna of both Tech and 4-H, Jessica Potts (dairy science '00) is living proof of the sentiment that a background from both Tech and 4-H will spur one on to a greater future. Potts, a language team assistant to the executive director of the German activities for the World Bank, believes her success can be traced to her involvement in 4-H, which began in 7th grade. 4-H, she says, gave her the original impetus, ambition, and leadership skills to come to Tech. In addition, Potts, who grew up on her family's dairy cattle farm in Purcellville, was an award-winning member of the 4-H dairy-judging project. She and the other members trained and traveled with the Tech Dairy Judging team, and Potts says it was the Tech team that convinced her to apply to the university.

After graduation, Potts became a Governor's Fellow with the Virginia Department of Technology and then spent a year traveling through Germany. In her current position, she says, she still uses the education, experiences, and language skills she garnered at Tech, adding that "[the classes] gave me a chance to explore my interests and gave me an idea of what kind of job would suit me. And by visiting the various career fairs, I was able to interview for internships and get job experience that helped me get to where I am today."

Currently, 4-H offers those opportunities and experiences to more than 181,000 young Virginians, and Potts is only one example of the program's success. One in six Virginians today was in 4-H, which counts among its alumni many members of the General Assembly, members of county boards of supervisors across the commonwealth, mayors, town council members, and other leaders. There have been several Virginia governors and attorney generals in addition to two justices of the Virginia Supreme Court who express pride at having been 4-H'ers.

The story of 4-H

Because 4-H is connected to Cooperative Extension and the land-grant university mission, it is poised to respond to the educational needs of Virginia's youths. Virginia 4-H offers research-based curriculums in such areas as animal science, careers and economic education, communications and expressive arts, nutrition and health, leadership, natural resources and environmental education, entomology, and science and technology. Currently, it also offers a major program to help Virginia schools teach good character development.

Though 4-H is the youth program of Cooperative Extension, it was active before the official start of Extension in 1914 with the passage of the Smith-Lever Act. 4-H in Virginia started in 1909, with the first 4-H clubs (known then as Corn Clubs) in Chesterfield and Dinwiddie counties. A group of 100 boys were given seeds and shown how to plant them based on research at land-grant universities. This first program was successful, and a year later, Ella Agnew, the first home demonstration agent in the United States, started teaching girls in Nottoway County about safe canning methods. The first community 4-H club in Virginia was organized in Dinwiddie County in 1913, and by the 1920s, 4-H agents were organizing youngsters into clubs where they learned skills by working on projects.

Changing times, changing lessons

When 4-H is mentioned, the first picture in many people's minds is often a Norman Rockwell-esque scene of youngster and animal. 4-H'ers raising animals, learning about their nutrition and health, breeding and genetics, and showing animals at the state fair continue as an important part of 4-H. Fittingly, the 2002 Virginia State Fair helped celebrate 4-H's 100th anniversary with a 4-H Day on Sept. 27. In addition to the animal science competitions and exhibits, a science and technology exhibit will feature 4-H'ers extracting DNA from plants.

The DNA work shows that just as Tech's curriculum has had to keep up with the world transforming around it, so have 4-H's offerings. The fact that the 4-H science and technology curriculum is helping 4-H members understand DNA well enough to conduct a state fair exhibit shows how 4-H has worked to fulfill the needs of youth as those needs have changed. When 4-H was starting in the1920s, youths learned about such things as new developments in agriculture and safety in food preservation, small motors, and clothing construction. Annually, from 1951 to 1992, Virginia 4-H held a weeklong event at which 4-H'ers who excelled in the Electric Energy project had the opportunity to learn about energy from some of the top scientists involved in new research.

As society changed in the 1980s, many youngsters had to begin caring for themselves after school because adult family members were at work. 4-H became a pioneer organization in helping youth learn to care for themselves, including programs on learning food preparation, first aid, safety skills, how to get started on homework, and the important skill of self-confidence.

As computers have become a part of daily life, Virginia 4-H has continued in the forefront of providing relevant educational programs, including the Tech Team having designed the national 4-H website. Many Virginia 4-H'ers have been members of the Tech Corps, a statewide group that challenges youngsters to use their computer skills in activities that range from offering workshops to helping senior citizens locate information on the Internet to writing a mystery story for the Web.

4-H was also far-thinking in terms of globalization, sending 4-H'ers to Europe in 1947 as part of an exchange program. Today, 4-H sponsors exchanges with both Japan and Costa Rica. Potts, whose job requires her to work in an international role, believes the exchange program is invaluable. "It is only through understanding other cultures and peoples that we can change the fate of our world," she explains.

An agenda for excellence

4-H is beginning its next century with plans to continue providing what youths need to achieve their full potential. As one way of celebrating the 100 years already passed, the national 4-H Council created an agenda of youths' needs and presented it to national leaders, including the President of the United States.

In the university strategic plan, Tech's own agenda for the future, President Steger says, "Our obligation is to educate the whole student, to instill a set of ethics and values that establishes a context for the application of discipline-based and professional knowledge for productive citizens of our democratic society." Working together, 4-H and Virginia Tech will continue to do just that.