Twelve high school students from Frontier Schools were recently enrolled into the Online Sports Turf Management Certificate Program offered by the Turfgrass Science team in the Dept. of Horticulture & Crop Science at The Ohio State University.
Frontier School District, 150 miles away from Ohio State’s main campus, is located on the Ohio River, on the edge of Wayne National Forest in SE Ohio. While it would be impossible for them to come to OSU for any instruction, an online course makes it easy for them to interact with the turfgrass science team.
The FFA Advisor at Frontier Schools, Sara Bonnette, contacted the turf team to ask if the students could take the certificate for free, as they are working on improving their athletic fields at the school and the subjects in the certificate course are relevant to their studies. The online certificate course covers basics in soil science, soil physics, botany, agronomy, and math.
This exciting new partnership with Frontier Schools will hopefully be a long term, ongoing effort. The students will learn new subjects and have the skills to improve their campus athletic facilities, and we have an opportunity to show what great careers & opportunities there are in Turfgrass Science.