Category: Undergraduate Students
A jacket that feels like home
June 11, 2025 Written by Nya Wynn
At the 2025 Delaware FFA State Convention this year, rows of students in their signature blue corduroy jackets gathered at University of Delaware’s Bob Carpenter Center not just to compete, but to connect.
Formerly known as Future Farmers of America, FFA provides opportunities for students in elementary school through college to engage in supervised agricultural experiences, develop public speaking and leadership skills and service their local community.
While its roots are in farming, today’s FFA Association exposes students to topics from environmental science, biotechnology, agribusiness and education. But for many, FFA isn’t just an extracurricular, it is something that current FFA members, teachers and alumni say has shaped their lives.
“FFA is like a second family to me with how much time I spend in and out of school with them,” said Rowan Fernsler, junior and FFA member at William Penn High School. “It’s a huge part of who I am.”
At this year’s convention, Fernsler competed in an extemporaneous speech competition giving a talk on his research about how American Sign Language (ASL) is used in agriculture.
“I have competed in quite a few competitions,” Fernsler said. “With FFA there is such a huge focus on leadership development, public speaking, research and hands-on job skills. It’s really given me a lot more confidence in myself.”
Throughout his time in FFA, which began when he was in eighth grade, Fernsler took his project on ASL in agriculture to the state and regional levels, winning first place in the region last year and placing second in the state at this year’s competition.
Fernsler’s story is not unique, as students and teachers across the state echo his sentiments that FFA became a place where they can connect and grow together with their community.
UD Class of 2010 agricultural education major alumna Katie Hawkins is now an agriscience teacher at William Penn High School and leads its FFA program.
“In high school, you’re always trying to find out where you belong and where you fit in,” Hawkins said. “When I started in FFA, I just felt like I belonged. I loved FFA because we got to travel, we got to socialize and we got to do things with different people.”
Hawkins explained that through her time in FFA, she was pushed out of her comfort zone, learning how to problem solve and effectively communicate with others in a professional setting while also enhancing her scientific knowledge.
“Students are not going to go pick up and read a huge plant science book, but we do go to the greenhouse and plant different plants, learning how to grow and take care of each one and then we take that knowledge out into the community,” Hawkins said. “We have plant sales and markets to sell our chicken eggs where they learn a little bit of marketing, selling and delivery of these agricultural products.”
To Hawkins, these skills are simply life skills because they are necessary for these students to have in order to thrive.
“There’s a lot of skills that they learn, but I lump them all together, because to me, they need those,” Hawkins said. “For me, it was the places that we went and experiences that we got that really made FFA such an amazing experience for me, and I wanted the kids to have that when I became a teacher.”
FFA ranges from elementary school to college, preparing students for careers not just in agriculture but a variety of disciplines.
“I typically ask people ‘When you think of agriculture, what kind of jobs come to mind’ and I love hearing ‘farmer’ or 'rancher,’ because I get to build upon that to expand their view,” Fernsler said. “There are a lot of different things that aren’t hands-on traditional farm roles, there is science and teaching and really so much.”
FFA has led current UD freshman and agriculture and natural resources major, Allison Weldon, to pursue a career as an agriscience teacher.
“I was a very shy kid in middle school, but for some reason I signed up for the public speaking competition and it turned out to be one of my favorite experiences,” Weldon said. “My junior year of high school, I ended up writing a speech about farmers’ mental health and worked as a state representative for FFA. That helped me understand I wanted to be an advocate for the agricultural community and that I wanted to be an ag teacher.”
At this year’s state convention at UD’s main campus in Newark, Weldon gave tours of the College of Agriculture and Natural Resources to the Delaware middle and high school students in attendance.
“If the state convention was here when I was in highschool and I had gotten a tour, I would have understood much quicker that this was where I wanted to be,” said Weldon, who serves as CANR ag ambassador. “I had a lot of high school students that knew me on the tour and they all told me they were planning on coming to UD to study agriculture.”
For most, putting on the blue jacket with FFA signifies finding a place to thrive.
“They say once you’ve been in that jacket, you are part of a community, you are part of a home,” Hawkins said. “To see it on a state level at UD is really cool. It doesn’t matter where you come from, who you are, what economic status you have, you're all in that same blue corduroy jacket, you’re all an FFA member, you are unified.”
