In America’s Dairyland, 160,000 people are employed in the dairy industry. According to the UW’s department of agriculture, that’s almost half the agriculture jobs in the state. But the number of students studying to enter the field was dwindling – until the Dairy Science Department decided to do something about it.
Now, they’ve implemented a new strategy to attract students and it seems to be working. In the past three years, the number of students in the Dairy Science recruiting classes have more than tripled.
Ted Halbach, an extension Dairy Youth Specialist and Instructor in the Department of Dairy Science at the University of Wisconsin says, “In 2004 we had a recruiting class of 8 students”. With enrollment numbers so low, the dairy science program partnered with an unlikely source, a marketing firm.