April 27, 2022
An innovative community service-learning course, "Community Engaged Learning with Pennsylvania Farmworkers," offered by Penn State’s College of Agricultural Sciences, brings students of all disciplines together to teach and engage with immigrant farmworkers living in Centre County. Kathleen Sexsmith, assistant professor of rural sociology, and Adrian Barragan, assistant clinical professor of veterinary and biomedical sciences, are co-teaching the course. The three-credit course exposes students to immigration and local agricultural and labor issues through a language partnership with Spanish-speaking immigrants on local dairy farms.
February 24, 2024
October 29, 2021
Much of Dr. Kathleen Sexsmith’s research analyzes employment relations and working conditions facing Latino/a immigrant farmworkers in the U.S. She has found that when farmworkers are deeply involved in the design, implementation, and analysis of a project, the quality of the research is dramatically improved – in other words, the participatory action approach to research.
October 29, 2021
Students in Penn State’s College of Agricultural Sciences can fulfill their language requirements with a series of introductory and intermediate-level Spanish for Agriculture language and culture courses designed to benefit both students and industry. Tailoring the courses to agriculture is more than just vocabulary words. García Prudencio, who is trained as a forester and agroecologist, teaches with the goal of giving students the ability to convey clear and simple ideas and commands at the farm or job site.
