Water Resources Director Eve Brantley and AWW Staffer Sydney Zinner headed to Central Alabama Community College (CACC) in Alex City to participate in the Future Farmers of America (FFA) Careers in Agriculture Expo hosted by CACC and Alabama Extension.
AWW appreciated the invitation to participate and the opportunity to chat with hundreds of students from local high schools and colleges who attended the Expo to learn about all of the career options that agriculture has to offer.
Fourteen area schools were represented, including Benjamin Russell High School, Reeltown High School, and the Alabama Institute for the Deaf and Blind. Most of the students were in an agriculture-related class or members of their local Future Farmers of America (FFA) chapter, but some where simply interested in learning more about careers in ag!
AWW was joined by many other exhibitors, from AU Poultry Science and Biosystems Engineering to the Alabama Cattleman’s Association, Alabama Power, and Publix.
AWW’s table featured representations of AWW’s three main monitoring methods, with a water chemistry monitoring kit, Earnest the E. coli, and preserved benthic macroinvertebrates. Many students were drawn in by the critters, and were surprised to know what “baby” dragonflies look like, and that they start life in the water.
Students who stopped by AWW’s table could play a pH quiz game where they arranged a series of solutions along the pH scale from most acidic to most basic. Several students had recently taken chemistry and were pros!
Would you pass the pH quiz? There were some tricky ones in there… do you think bleach is more acidic or basic? Let us know in the comments!