A group of four students majoring in different components of agriculture at Miles Community College placed 3rd at the Society for Range Management (SRM) Rangeland Cup Poster Competition held during SRM’s annual meeting in Corpus Christi, Texas the week February 1. The students representing MCC were: Aly Christians (Helena, MT), a sophomore in the Associate of Science-Agribusiness degree; Laura Duchsherer (Balfour, ND), a sophomore in the Associate of Science-Agribusiness degree; Whitney Morrison-Hilliard (Miles City, MT), a sophomore in the Associate of Science-Animal Science (Livestock Management) degree; and Kelsi Schultz (Glasgow, MT), a freshman in the Associate of Science-Wildlife and Fisheries Biology degree. The team’s mentor was MCC Ag Instructor, Kim Gibbs.
The Rangeland Cup is a yearly team problem-solving competition centered on an issue or problem of interest to rangeland management. The competition promotes critical thinking and cooperative, collaborative work on current topics and/or topics of historical importance to rangeland ecology and management. Teams are made up of four students and one professional mentor. Miles Community College’s poster topic was “Rangeland: What do you see (on social media)”. Throughout their process of creating the poster, the team sent a survey to people to assess how people receive information about rangeland management as well as how their perceptions of rangeland are influenced by what they see on social media. The conclusion is that people believe what they see and read on social media so range managers need to portray truthful information through short articles and even memes with simple messaging attached.
There were 15 total posters from 12 different colleges in the contest. MCC was one of only two “two” year colleges at the competition. The first and second place finishers where California State University – Chico and Colorado State University.
“Attending the Society for Range Management Meeting and participating in the Rangeland Cup competition was a great experience for the team,” says MCC Ag Instructor, Kim Gibbs. “They competed against some of the top range management colleges in the nation and performed exceedingly well by placing 3rd. Winning at a national level and competing against four-year colleges validates that MCC has some top notch students that have taken advantage of what a community college has to offer.”
Miles Community College offers one and two year programs in various agriculture emphasis areas which include: Agribusiness, Natural Resource and Range Management, Wildlife and Fisheries Biology, Animal Science (both Livestock Management and Pre-Veterinary), and Agriculture Production. For more information about MCC and its academic programs, visit www.milescc.edu or contact MCC at 406.874.6100.
