Denvers Internship Report

April 29, 2016

Introduction
The company I interned with was the Erath County Extension Agency located in Stephenville at the
Courthouse Annex, 112 West College Street, Room 109. Their mission is to improving the lives of people,
businesses, and communities across Texas and beyond through high-quality, relevant education. They
practice to fulfill their vision which is to provide quality, relevant outreach and continuing education
programs and services to the people of Texas. The office mainly focuses on Erath County, which has
approximately 40,500 residents. The County 4-H program is growing and there is a need to get more
children involved. According to the Stephenville Empire-Tribune, the County youth fair as grown from
143 in 2015 to 223 entries this year. However, there are children with great interest who want to
partake in certain competitions but the county cannot find a group of them that has the same interest.
The idea is to reach out to more of our youths and present to them some possible project options with
small but attractive bursaries for top participants. However, the County has its limitations because there
is not enough support to move 4-H. The program needs more support from companies within and
outside of the County in order to assist the monetary pool. The concept of 4-H is to help the youths
develop skills and garner knowledge but there has been a shift of interest due to money. A majority of
the shows are now offering scholarships and bursaries for students to further their education, and as a
result parents will go to the extent to get their children involved. In order for Erath County to compete
and pull more participants and people into our program we have to change our approach. Tarleton State
University can do much more to assist this program significantly given that they have the facility and
intellect. Nonetheless Tarleton has been supportive to the agency especially with the FFA contest that is
schedule for April 7, 2016 with an expected total of 9000 visitors on campus. The County shows is not
this huge but it can be if we all come together and initiate and execute an action plan.
There are many areas of concentration within this establishment, some are 4-H and Youth Development,
Family and Consumer Science and, Agriculture and Natural Resources. I worked under the 4-H and youth
development sector and I chose this sector of the company because I believe that agriculture should be
centered on the youths. It is our responsibility as agriculturalist to educate the future farmers with the
best practices to ensure food security, and provide them with an opportunity of responsibility that will
mold them into independent and dependable characters. I firmly believe in facilitating agriculture in the
community to build awareness and growth, which in turn strengthens the Agricultural Industry.
In my culture agriculture is viewed negatively by most millennials and they are also strong believers of
instant gratification. They do not see agriculture as being attractive, therefore they have absolutely no
interest. According to the Jamaica statistical institute 28% of our young men and women after leaving
high school will end up unemployed. I have observed over the years that I resonate with the youths,
giving them hope and inspiration. I am hoping to bridge the gap by getting them more involved in
agriculture. There is a need for more young people in agriculture and there is also a need for a young
leader to encourage them to be more involved. I believe that doing my internship with this organization

will better equip me with ideas and concepts for bridging this gap. I also wanted the insights on the
modus operandi of Texas agriculture and the impact it has on the youths. I think if the intelligent, hard
working young people pay more attention to agriculture, we can encourage more young people to be
involved.

Activity
I was working under 4-H but I got the opportunity to work with the natural resource agent a few times.
My main focus was on the Entomology project because the County only has one child who was very
adamant about being a part of a team. I took the initiative to go ahead with this project because it is
very interesting and it will build interest in others once we make it interesting to them. Unfortunately, I
had to cancel the entomology project because I was told that the children think it is boring. I was
disappointed and confused about what I was going to do next. However, I sat with my supervisor two
weeks later as she had been busy and we brainstorm together and I have decided to do a meat science
project. I also had the opportunity to manage the photography contest project, assisted with the
pasture to packer project, prepared parliamentary procedures documents for club managers to use and
developed a cap stone project called the meat science camp. I also did voluntary work with the Food
and Consumer Science agent for her a K3 class project and also assisted with her dinner tonight program
organization.
Photography contest
Working with this program gave me some new knowledge and I was very grateful for this opportunity. I
was exposed to various software programs that I had no idea existed. I also gained more understanding
of photography and I believe that the project is necessary. However, I did not like the scoring aspect of
this contest because the point allotment standard was too wide. I found it difficult to assign scores to
individual pictures because some pictures were indeed good enough to receive top scores, but ended up
placing lower due to that there can be only one winner in each category. This program also refreshed
my mail merging skills and I was very pleased after accomplishing this task. I had offered my knowledge
gained to teach the secretary or my supervisor how to reduce their work load when dealing with this
contest. I realized that it can be overwhelming and time consuming. One of my major responsibilities of
this project was to ensure that the pictures were judged and the score sheets submitted. I had an initial
plan that was executed, but it failed. I did not have a contingency plan because I was very confident that
the judges were going to be of assistance but they opted out on the same day the score were due. I had
to grade the picture and also taught two students at Tarleton how to grade the sheets in order to get
them completed. I was reassured two valuable things from this experience: one is that I should always
have a contingency plan and two is to ensure to follow-up with any project that I have assigned to
someone else.
Pasture to Packer

The Pasture to Packer Program is designed for 4-H children who will rear and market their cattle using
national standards. The program is very unique and provided the participants with the underpinning
knowledge of how the beef production/processing industry works. The participants had the opportunity
to borrow loans, make the purchases, rear their animals for 160 days, and then send the animals to the
packer where they observe live evaluations before slaughter. Then after slaughter observed the carcass
evaluations from the rail and did an interview to determine what they had garnered from the program.
What I gathered from this program is that the children saw how the beef cattle producers run their
operations. It also gave the children an understanding of marketing, profit and loss and the
consequences of not managing their money or their feeding program correctly. There was one
participant who stated that he had fed his steer on corn for the last two weeks and his animal did not
grade good and he was upset. Due to his mistake, I assured that he learned had learned and he will not
do such thing again. Another great concept that came out of this program was that breed genetics plays
a huge role in meat quality. I am optimistic that some of these children will grow up to continue the
legacy of Texas agriculture. I was also given the responsibility to develop and edit the pasture to packer
banquet book. The InDesigned software made it very easy for me to edit and design the banquet
book. It was my first time using this software and I will definitely use it in the future.
Parliamentary Procedures
The idea of this program is to encourage the youths to use the Roberts Rules of order when hosting
meetings. It stimulates an early interest in future parliamentarians and also help them to develop
respect for rules and regulations but above all order. It also made them into organized individuals who
practice and follow the chain of commands. It also provides an ideal opportunity for the participants to
develop new skills, learn cooperation, develop leadership abilities, improve their citizenship and have
fun. I really liked this program and I do believe that it can be implemented in my country. I would love to
see our 4-Hers practice something similar to help them develop an attitude for agricultural politics.
Voluntary work
I was given the task to develop a gaming activity that would be relevant to a group of K3 children. I was
given a box with a bunch of different activities and told to create something. I had come up with an
activity for Mrs. Donna White and presented it to her. She conveyed that she liked it and after using it at
the class she told me that the children enjoyed it very much. I regret the fact that I did not accompanied
Mrs. White and this was due to additional work given to me by my supervisor. I also volunteered to
assist with the organization of the dinner tonight program. I assisted in room structuring and assembly
of gift packets for the audience that were going to be in attendance.
Capstone Project
The concept of this project is to educate beef producer from Hood, Comanche, Hamilton and Earth
Counties on basic principles of meat science and to teach valid science based information to consider
good quality meat for price regime. Since the dollar value received is directly dependent upon the grade,
this program will provide an opportunity for them to appreciate the science involved in beef cattle
production to meet USDA grade quality and perhaps improve their earning potential. They will also learn
about the food side of the beef industry and also develop the genetic information of their herds for
future reference. The program will highlight the concepts behind meat science and allow them to
participate in a constructive discovery based type learning environment. The components that will be
focused on are; live and carcass evaluations, recommendations on rearing and feeding to improve

quality and the techniques use in handling before packaging. They will also learn about the procedures
for making different cuts and the price values that are attached to the cuts base on grade. They will have
a chance to identify cuts and will learn how to use the parameters to determine grade qualities. They
will look at yield grade and should understand how genetics determine good yield quality. The
participants will also focus on food safety throughout this program as it is a very critical aspect of the
beef industry.

Reflection
At the beginning of my internship, I was really excited, and could not wait to get involved to see what
new things I was going to learn. Unfortunately, my first week was rather boring and I was confused
because of uncertainty. I was totally out of my comfort zone and wanted to find a concept or an idea
that would get my thoughts flowing. As an international student, I already knew that it was going to be a
challenge for me to garner adequate field experience. I do regret the fact that I should have been a
volunteer at the office before now because if I had done that, I would have had more knowledge and
ideas of extension. However, I know that the internet provides the wealth of knowledge and I can
research whatever it is that I want to learn, but I did not want my experience to be based on double
clicking a mouse. I know that sometimes we unintentionally assume that everywhere is the same, but I
do know that west Texas is much different from east Texas with regards to production, climate and
weather. This aspect of my internship was very important to me, yet I fall short due to oversight and
program structure. In the future I am hoping that students coming from outside of Texas can be
scheduled to at least two shows a year. This will open our minds to a different culture on agriculture. I
did have the opportunity to meet people from different sectors of agriculture and search my culture
with them as they did with me. I have learned through discussion that agriculture is suffering from rural
urban drift which was very surprising to me. It was also evident that some of the farmers are worried
that the law and regulations that hovers over their heads will cause a collapse in the industry. At this
point I saw that there is a need for more advocates in the political arena. We can start by merging
political science with agriculture (Political Agriculture) and this will allow us to assist and secure the
future of farming. I honestly believe that my internship could have been better if I had more to do or
travelled around with my supervisor to see what a 4-H agent role is really about. Before my internship, I
thought that I was going to be challenged, but after I was halfway through the experience it became
monotonous. However, I used my time wisely to read and research different aspects of Texas agriculture
and how the agency works. If I was to do this all over again, I would chose the natural resource aspect
because the agent goes out to visit farmers/ranchers and partake in training programs more frequently.
It was more of what I wanted, but nonetheless I did learn and gained international exposure.

Conclusion
My internship was very rewarding because I have gained work experience in another country. I have also
learned new ideas that I can take back home and tweak it to fit the culture of Jamaica. I was hoping to

gain more knowledge of Texas extension 4-H in particular, but not having the chance to travel around on
the job limits me. I understand the limitations and I will use the knowledge gained to develop on what I
now know. I cannot complain for what I have received, but cherish the experience to the fullest because
the little I have gained will benefit others. This internship has prepared networks for me to keep and
open multiple opportunities for me to endeavor in the future.