"What people don't realize is that you can make a career out of feeding cattle," said John Erdman, Assistant Dean of Nutritional Sciences. "And that's just one direction you can take here in the College of ACES."
This past weekend, the College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences (ACES) had activity days where the public could explore the academic and career-path opportunities provided within the college. Such areas of study offered at the College of ACES include bioengineering, community development, economics, human nutrition, plant breeding, resource ecology, and pre-veterinary studies. Each of the undergraduate majors set up their own exhibits at the event. Though the event is primarily aimed toward high school grads or college transfer students, there were many families enjoying the hands-on exhibits.
The Department of Animal Sciences was set up in an indoor pen near the Natural Resource Building. Animals such as cows, horses, chicken, snakes, and ferrets could be held. Visitors could milk a cow, hold a snake, feed horses, and watch chicks hatch. There were also multiple exhibits set up with information about clubs and job opportunities.
In the Rodeo Club, members can go trail riding and participate in rodeos. The club raises money for Generations of Hope, a non-profit organization for foster children. The president of the club said that a person does not need to know a thing about horses or rodeos. You just have to be interested to become a member.
As Erdman expressed earlier, there are a lot of opportunities provided within the College of ACES that people do not necessarily realize. Just cows and chickens alone have endless career paths beyond farming. With chickens, for example, a person can go into environmental research, nutrition research, and cancer research. The National Institutes of Health even declared the chicken its official model for ovarian cancer because chickens have similar menstrual cycles to humans.
Livvie Nealy, a student in the Department of Animal Sciences, said she hopes to find a career in dairy genetics to determine what genes make up the best type of bull or cow. She grew up on a small farm in Cullom and has been around animals all of her life. Her love for animals obviously made the College of ACES a perfect fit here the University of Illinois.
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