Huntington University Expanding Ag Program, Building New Facility
Huntington University is expanding their agriculture program to include crop science and agronomy and animal science majors. They currently have 40 agriculture students majoring in either agribusiness or agricultural education.
Nate Perry with Huntington’s Haupert Institute for Agricultural Studies says industry leaders were encouraging them to expand their offerings to include crop science and agronomy due to growing demand in that space. The animal science major came about after hearing from students.
“Maybe some of them want to go on and be a veterinarian. Some may want to study animal nutrition and health at graduate school. But we quickly realized that the animal component was an area that we should strongly consider as well.”
A new facility is being built that will complement the new animal science major as well.
“We broke ground last week and really excited for this 10,000 square foot facility that’s really going to be a facility that students can observe and really be around the animals for an educational purpose in this outdoor learning lab, if you will,” Perry told HAT. “It has a flexible pen space in the middle, it has a couple enclosed pens, but then also has a classroom and office right there.”
The facility will be named the Don Strauss Animal Science Education Center after the founder of Strauss Veal Feeds and Midwest Poultry Services.
Perry says those corporate partnerships and others, like one with Corteva, continues to help grow Huntington’s ag presence in the state.
“Things just keep taking shape and the momentum continues to kind of pick up as it relates to the ag program. Just something that we’d encourage people, if they’re looking for a place to study agriculture and looking for a Christian college, a place that the faculty and staff take the faith seriously and integrate that into the classroom, we would love for students and families to check us out.”
The new majors will begin with the fall semester.