By Lara Ivanitch
Many of Tanner Collier’s childhood memories center around his family’s gardens. There’s the time he worked for a garden center and brought home nearly 50 tomato plants and the way his grandfather made him laugh when they were gardening together.
“Whenever we were planting potatoes, he’d say, ‘You don’t want to put the eyes down because then he can’t see, so he’ll stop growing underground,’” recalls Collier, now a senior agricultural science major in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at NC State University.
After a high school agriculture class sparked his interest, Collier found he enjoyed working with plants, being in the greenhouse and getting his hands dirty. He made the most of FFA (originally known as Future Farmers of America), joining several of the club’s competitive teams. “And then I learned you can go to school for it,” he says. “I was like, ‘Well shoot, let’s go do that.’”
The agricultural science degree at NC State appealed to Collier because of its broad scope. It has given him the opportunity to learn and experience all aspects of agriculture, including animal science, crop and soil science, horticulture, agribusiness and Extension.
Thanks to scholarship support from the W.L. “Bill” Carpenter Endowed Scholarship, the John Ivey Eagles Endowed Scholarship,the Zack and Mary Ladd Scholarship Endowment, the Robert Emerson Black Memorial Scholarship, and the W.R. Winslow Foundation Scholarship, Collier has been able to focus on his education and make the most of the experience.
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“There’s a strong chance I wouldn’t have finished my four years if it wasn’t for scholarships,” he says. “Also, instead of having to find a job that makes the most money to pay off student loans, I’ve been able to take internships and concentrate on my studies.”
As a landscape intern at Biltmore Estate in Asheville, Collier worked primarily with ornamental plants, but once a week, he was able to experience a different crew.
“One Wednesday, I got to work with the arborist, and we cut down some trees,” he says. “Another Wednesday, I worked with the ag crews, baling hay and loading it on trailers.”
The next summer, at an internship with the Caldwell County Extension Center, he frequently shadowed the horticulture agent on house visits. Additionally, he worked in a community garden with Extension Master Gardener Volunteers and helped the 4-H agent teach kids to program a robot and build rockets. Alongside the county field crops agent, he planted 10 varieties of corn for a plant trial.
From the latter, Collier developed his career goals. “I’m going to be an Extension agent for North Carolina Cooperative Extension in the western part of the state. I want to be back home,” says the Lenoir County native. “And if that doesn’t work out, I’m looking into becoming an ag teacher at a high school.”
Community members gain reliable, research-based knowledge when Extension agents pass along information from their land grant universities. For Collier, seeing the impact of sharing helpful information to uplift a community was inspiring. He believes these experiences will help him make a difference in the future.
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