During the 2009-2010 academic calendar year Vocational Agriculture Education was removed from the Elliott County School system. During the 2015-2016 school year one vocational agriculture course was offered to Elliott County High School student’s grades 9-10, during the 2016-2017 school year four vocational agriculture courses were offered to student’s grades 9-12 and currently during the 2017-2018 school year seven vocational agriculture courses are offered to student’s grades 9-12. During the 2015-2016 academic calendar year the vocational agriculture program consisted of 38 students, during the 2016-2017 academic calendar year the program grew to include 97 students over a one year time span and currently during the 2017-2018 academic calendar year the vocational agriculture program consists of 112 students!

Elliott County is a rural county that has at least a 30 minute drive to a city with a large supermarket. With that being said there are 448 farms in Elliott County raising a commodity according to the 2007 Agriculture Statistics and according to the 2012 Census of Agriculture there is 56,336 acres of farm land in Elliott County involved in some type of agriculture practice. Therefore, the CEC, Ag Council, Farmers Market and Soil Conservation Board’s felt that Agriculture in the school system was extremely important.

The Elliott County Cooperative Extension agent for ANR (Keith Center) partnered with the Elliott County High School Vocational Agriculture teacher (Gary Selby) and specialist from the University of Kentucky (Drs. Ken Culp III and Greg Rentfrow), as well as, the Kentucky Beef Council to develop a curriculum for an eight week session to discuss Animal Science with an emphasis in Meat Science.

Thirty-seven students participated in the eight week session of classes that began on September 5th, 2017 thru October 19th, 2017. Students were evaluated before the first session using a pre-test method that consisted of twelve essay questions. Students pre-test were graded and the overall class average was 25 percent. Following the conclusion of the eight week sessions students were again evaluated using a post-test method that consisted of the same twelve questions in order to evaluate what they had learned over the course of a two month period. Students post-test were also graded and the overall average was 85 percent which indicated that students increased there test scores by an outstanding 60 percent!

Following the conclusion of Ag in the classroom eight week sessions thirty-seven students were in good academic standing and rewarded with a field trip to tour the Meat Science labs and facilities at the University of Kentucky on November 20^th, 2017. Students received the opportunity to meet with Dr. Greg Rentfrow who took time out of his busy schedule to provide students with tours of the University of Kentucky Meat Science facilities.