Coming marine lab to boost high school education

WADESBORO — Anson High School will soon have a Marine STEAM Lab — the only one of its size in any North Carolina public secondary school system.

Phase I of the Anson Freshwater & Marine Biology STEAM Lab is being installed and should have water in it by the end of next week, and livestock (breeding pairs of seahorses, anemone, coral, freshwater tropical fish, and clownfish) should be in by the end of February. Indian Trail’s Nemo’s Reef partnered with Anson High School to make this lab possible.

Agriscience teacher Dana Wood has secured $18,600 in grant funding to support Phase I development and a Phase II development of a large Marine Sensory System that will allow students to interact with marine species, including letting them hand feed clownfish and starfish.

Wood also received a grant for a new Hydroponic STEAM Lab in addition to the high school’s current growing facility.

With the goal of delivering CTE (Career and Technical Education) at the highest level of instruction, he secured funding for a $26,800 Indoor Vertical Hydroponic STEAM Lab complete with LED lighting in November of 2020.

This grant was awarded in 2021; students in Wood’s Sustainable Agriculture Production I course have started to build two Vertical Hydroponic Units purchased from FarmTek.

This new lab will provide AgriScience students with the opportunity to grow 6,000 heads of premium butter lettuce annually. Combine that with their current production capabilities of 3,000 heads of lettuce grown on a CropKing horizontal hydroponic system in the AGIC (Anson Greenhouse Innovation Center), and you have a total of 9,000 heads of highly nutritious, locally and sustainably grown, pesticide-free lettuce benefitting the citizens of Anson County.

Students currently sell the bulk of the lettuce produced to local restaurants in Anson County. The added production capability will enable students to serve their community with more regular donations of healthy produce to local food banks such as Feed My Lambs. CTE AgriScience and Marketing educators also explored an additional opportunity for students to potentially develop and operate a “Farm Fresh Produce” stand at AHS which would allow parents to purchase lettuce and other produce after school.

The Sustainable Production systems students are learning to manage and operate are on the cutting edge of the fast-growing Sustainable Agriculture Production Industry, an industry that is projected to grow from $3 billion in 2021 to $8 billion in 2026. Students are learning to use the latest technology being employed around the world to produce the lettuce, including Autogrow and Hanna environmental controls. Autogrow is a New Zealand-based company that provides state-of-the-art technology solutions to producers worldwide, and Hanna environmental controls are portable environmental testing instruments making labs like Anson’s possible.

The program is a leading model in the state and nation at all levels of education. Wingate University has visited the program three times in the past eight months to better understand the growing Sustainable Production market sector. The University of Mount Olive has also visited and is now developing new educational offerings for their students based in part on the program; they have purchased and now operate the same Stuppy’s Aqueduct system AHS students have been operating for three years to grow tilapia and lettuce. Anson has also communicated with schools in Florida, California, and Hawaii.

“CTE practiced at its highest level mirrors industry,” Wood said.

The operation of the AgriScience Program’s production centers (Aquaponic, Aquaculture, Earthbox, Hydroponic, and Microgreens) provides upper-level students the opportunity to learn and serve in Assistant Manager and Manager roles through CTE Advanced Studies enrollment. In these roles they manage and oversee the day-to-day production operations – from production decisions and initial seeding to harvesting and customer communications, including proper invoicing and account receivables with receipts and deposits from the AHS Bookkeeper. They are also responsible for obtaining quotes from vendors and populating Purchase Order Requisition request forms for the necessary inputs to produce the lettuce.

Income from the student management and operations helps provide students in need with financial assistance to participate in FFA leadership activities at the regional, state, and national level; along with purchasing the necessary inputs to support the ongoing production operations.

The FFA motto is learning to do, doing to learn, earning to live, living to serve. Through the developing labs and various production operations, students are living the entire motto. These opportunities teach the students on a daily basis how to apply that learning to the various program operations.

Stay tuned to follow students’ adventures in this educationally transformative new STEAM Labs.