By RUDI HEMPE
CELS News Editor & Reporter

AVS students win big in annual NESA agricultural competition

Once again, URI students majoring in Animal & Veterinary Science (AVS) won big in the annual North East Student Affiliation (NESA) agricultural competition held recently at the Delaware Valley College.

The 30 students, under the guidance of Fred D. Launer and Dr. Katherine Petersson, faculty in the Fisheries, Animal & Veterinary Science department, came away with a second prize in the competition. The competition involved 37 teams from nine colleges and universities. They came close to unseating the perennial favorite, Penn State which came in first. Other schools competing were UConn, Rutgers, Vermont, Vermont Tech, West Virginia and UMass, most with significantly larger enrollments in the Animal Sciences major.

The competition has three categories—livestock judging, quiz bowl and individual paper presentations. Students compete in teams of four for the livestock judging and quiz bowl components of the competition. One student from each team gives an oral presentation on an agriculturally relevant topic of their choice.

The students spent many hours preparing for the competition with such exercises as mock quizzes and honing up on their knowledge of cattle, hogs, sheep and horses. The students also spent Sunday afternoons taking field trips to Rhode Island farms where breeds were evaluated by top stock owners.

URI had three of the top ten paper presentations with Jennifer Halleran taking the top individual presenter prize by delivering a paper on genomics. Caitlin Johnson and Lauren Antrop came in 6th and 9th respectively. In the livestock judging category URI students Maria Procopio,

Collin Polucha and Daniel Flynn ranked 2nd, 6th and 7th place respectively out of 148 students competing. Additionally, URI also had three of the top ten quiz bowl teams, and two of the top 10 livestock judging teams. When ranking the teams based upon overall performance in all three categories URI had four of their teams in the 10 top. Complete results for the URI students are listed below.

Rachel Gately, president of the AVS Club at URI was named the “Outstanding Senior” for NESA 2008. Each of the schools participating have the opportunity to nominate one senior for this prestigious award. Each nominee is evaluated by three external reviewers from around the country and Gately emerged the top winner.

CELS Dean Jeff Seemann honored all the students in a gathering recently at Peckham Farm, congratulating them for putting on such a fine showing. “We are really proud of you,” said Seemann who noted his job as an administrator isn’t nearly as much fun and they are having.

In two years, URI will be hosting the NESA competition and Seemann said the college plans on putting on one of the best competitions ever. He has asked faculty involved to put together ideas for future growth of the AVS program.

Sending such a large number of students to the competition is expensive and Launer credited CELS and also the RI Farm Bureau for their support.

This is the fifth year that URI has participated in the event. URI’s Department of Fisheries and Animal Science is the second largest major within the College of the Environment and Life Sciences and competitive performances such as this one should continue to draw interest in the URI Animal Science program, said Petersson.

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