News

UDIM offers educators immersive STEM experience

The United Dairy Industry of Michigan is working to provide middle and high school teachers with resources to develop dairy-focused learning materials.

Aimee Vondrasek, Health and Wellness Senior Manager, tells Brownfield the three-day event brought teachers to dairy farms around Lansing and provided tours to highlight different aspects of the supply chain.

“The On the Farm STEM pilot was created to make sure that dairy is included in the lessons,” she says.  “We want to make sure teachers learned firsthand what it’s like, all about dairy farming, but also to expose teachers to different careers that they can share with their students.

The event offered educators from Michigan and Indiana professional development credits and resources to build accurate agricultural lesson plans.

“And so they’ll be able to take that back, and incorporate what they learned into their lessons about dairy, whether it’s dairy, nutrition or maybe making cheese in their chemistry class or even analyzing the data of milk production in a math class,” she explains.

The program was created in partnership with the American Farm Bureau Foundation for Agriculture.  Similar tours also took place across Florida, Oregon, and Washington this year.