Extension program facilities include the new Center for Sustainability of Farms and Families, a $5 million, 12,000 square foot, 600-seat building at the KSU Harold R. Benson Research and Demonstration Farm. The Rosenwald Center for Families and Children is a $3.5 million, 15,180 square foot building that serves pre-school and adolescent children and their families and also supports teaching, Extension, and research projects with children and parents. The Cooperative Extension Building, which also houses a television/video production studio supported by an uplink/downlink satellite truck and state-of-the-art communications equipment, to support media and social media to communicate research findings to stakeholders. The geographic information systems (GIS) laboratory is also located in the Cooperative Extension Building and is utilized by students, faculty and by agricultural research and Extension staff to support their activities.
The Land Grant Program also offers five summer programs for middle, junior high, and high school students. AgDiscovery (AgD) is a two-week residential program hosted by the Land Grant Program at KSU in collaboration with the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS), which is an agency under the USDA. AgDiscovery focuses on veterinary sciences and veterinary medicine by exposing middle and junior high school students to a series of hands-on labs, workshops, and fieldtrips that provide real-time experiences in the lives of veterinarians, and animal researchers, and businesses associated with animal processing across the Commonwealth of Kentucky.
The Summer Transportation Institute (STI) is a partnership between the Land Grant Program at KSU, the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet (KTC) and the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA). This three-week residential program for high school students provides experiences that enhance awareness of career opportunities that exist in the transportation industry. Students are exposed to such concentrations as highway designs, transportation of people and cargo, intermodalism, laws, regulations, safety, and environmental concerns.
The KSU Summer Apprenticeship Program (SAP) has a new program that prepares future college students for study in the STEM areas—science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. The 2015 SAP hosted 30 minority rising juniors interested in STEM careers. The three-week residential program introduced high school students to undergraduate-level STEM programs and helped them gain experience in college-level research. The program was designed to help transition students from high school to college, provide opportunities for STEM-related research experiences, increase interaction with undergraduate students and faculty, and provide exposure to career opportunities in STEM fields.
The Summer Bridge Program Reaching Out—Connecting With High Schools — Career Preparation in Environmental GIS (R.O.C. WiHi). The R.O.C. WiHi—Career Preparation in Environmental Science is a three-week residential Summer Bridge Program in collaboration with 4-H Youth Development in the College of Agriculture, Food Science, and Sustainable Systems at KSU. Summer Bridge seeks to prepare students who may want to pursue careers in science and extension occupations by sowing seeds of curiosity, confronting them with
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