August 7, 2001

Cows. First, you notice the smell. For a kid from West Philly, that takes some getting used to, for while the urban landscape provides a daily variety of assaults on the human sniffer, the aroma of cows is not typically among them.

“I got used to the smell,” 17-year old Kayana Higgs said, with some disdain.“At first, I was scared of them, too, because they were walking around loose, but I got used to that after about two weeks.”

Kayana lives in West Philadelphia and attends Lincoln High School, a sprawling campus in the Mayfair section of the Northeast that is pretty urban in its own right. As part of a school-sponsored program, Kayana spent half of last summer at Penn State University Park, examining cows that had given birth. Among other things, she studied how various foods in cows’ diet can impact the time it takes them to recover and start producing large quantities of milk again.

That unusual opportunity came from her participation in the Junior Minorities in Agriculture, Natural Resources and Related Sciences (MANRRS) program, designed to help minority students in Philadelphia reach out and smell the roses— or the cows, whatever they find most interesting.

The Junior MANRRS program at Lincoln High School — which meets about once a month— has helped approximately 40 students learn about agriculture during its six years in existence, according to program sponsor and environmental technology teacher James Kennedy. Half those students have gone on to pursue college degrees in agriculture-related fields, and many have done so at Penn State. The program is administered by the Penn State Cooperative Extension in West Philadelphia and supported by the Penn State Community Recruitment Center in West Philadelphia and the PEPP Program.

“All of our students are urban, and what surprises most urban youth is the simple fact that no matter where your interests might lie, they all have agricultural implications,” said Kennedy from his office at the school.

Kennedy noted, for example, that most of the current DNA research on animals and plants is being done by agricultural researchers. Often, golf course groundskeepers and restauranteurs also have agricultural backgrounds.

One of the benefits for the dozen or so students currently in Lincoln’s Junior MANRRS program comes from the program’s relationship with Penn State. Students attend a MANRRS conference once a year in the spring at Penn State’s University Park location, and get to meet current Penn State undergraduates who are in the University’s MANRRS program.

“I enjoy the activities they have planned for us at Penn State, and having a mentor,” said Stephanie Lyons, 16, a junior from Mount Airy.  A two-year member of the program, Stephanie said she grows flowers and vegetables at home in her garden, and she plans to go on to veterinary school after college.

Frank Mathis, 16, an 11th grader from Southwest Philadelphia, plans to be a neurobiologist someday and study the cause of genetic disorders.

“I’m interested about the environment, our life system, our biosphere and stuff,” said Mathis, who is considering Penn State and Bloomsburg right now for college.“Everything we do has an effect on our community, whether it’s positive or negative.”

The Junior MANRRS program also has been very successful at Thomas FitzSimons Middle School in North Philadelphia, where Penn State initiated the program back in 1992, according to Elmore Hunter, cooperative extension youth educator for Penn State in Philadelphia.

The MANRRS program at the university level began as a joint venture between Penn State and Michigan State in 1986. Now, many predominantly minority colleges and land grant universities have such a program in place.

Hunter said nearly two-thirds of the initial Junior MANRRS class at FitzSimons has gone on to study agriculture at the college level. In addition to Penn State, others have gone on to Millersville, Drexel, and other universities in Pennsylvania and Delaware.

David Jwanier