Scott Swanson
Scott Jacobson stands in what used to be an auto shop vehicle repair bay at Sweet Home High School, now filled with desks and chairs and with a couple of students who are sweeping the floor and cleaning up other remnants of the past.
This room now has a new purpose: agricultural education, and Jacobson will be teaching that subject this fall at the school.
His position represents a further expansion of Sweet Home’s Career Technical Education program, which until recently was largely limited to auto repair, woodshop and metals classes, which still exist.
Blake Manley’s 2018 arrival to teach forestry as an actual high school curriculum, a step up from the Forestry Club founded by then-CTE teacher Dustin Nichol, represented an expansion to the program and now it’s spreading into agriculture with the arrival of Jacobson, who taught the last three years at Sabin-Schellenberg Professional Technical Institute in the North Clackamas School District in Milwaukie.
Will Coltrin, who arrived at Sweet Home last year to take over the auto and woodshop programs after Nichol retired from teaching, said Jacobson’s arrival represents “a real big kind of shift in our CTE Department.”
The agriculture program joins the metals classes, taught by Austin Hart, Coltrin’s offerings and the natural resources classes taught by Manley.
“We’re putting forestry, ag and construction all under one umbrella, which is going to help kids,” Coltrin said, noting that students can take advantage of offerings in all of the CTE programs as they pursue their personal or career interests. “From a student standpoint, it opens many more doors.”
The new program will form A Future Farmers of America chapter, which means students will be able to participate in competitions and leadership activities.
“They get the benefits of ag and FFA,” said Coltrin, who taught agriculture before coming to Sweet Home and has a master’s degree in the subject. He noted that FFA has more than half a million members, “the largest youth leadership organization in the world.”
“From a student standpoint, it opens so many more doors. From a teaching standpoint, that allows us to be flexible and teach what we’re good at and give kids more options.”
Also, he said, the district has the opportunity to procure funding through its agricultural offerings.
Principal Ralph Brown said he’s wanted to see agriculture offered to Sweet Home students since his arrival in Sweet Home eight years ago from McLoughlin High School in Milton Freewater.
His son Zach, a freshman when the family arrived in Sweet Home, had been involved in agricultural programs as an eighth-grader and was so interested in that field that his parents briefly considered sending him to Scio, which has an FFA program.
Fortunately, Brown said, Nichol and then-Forestry Club Coach Nikki Stafford got Zach interested in forestry. Currently, he’s working for the Oregon Department of Forestry.
Brown credited Nichol with the development of the CTE program.
“I have been involved in CTE my whole career,” he said. “When I came here, Dustin Nichol and the community were really interested in adding natural resources/forestry to the high school. The area I came from did not have forestry but had FFA. It seemed strange to me that a rural community like Sweet Home didn’t have agriculture classes.”
He noted that Lebanon, Scio, Central Linn and other local communities have had long-standing FFA programs.
Brown said that not only does agriculture cross over well with other CTE already offered by the high school, but Jacobson was available.
Jacobson did not grow up in a farming community; rather, he spent his youth “near the beach” in the San Diego, Calif. area.
However, his parents owned one of the original homesteads in San Diego County, which included acreage, on which his family ran a pet resort.
“Both my mom and my dad were trainers for Guide Dogs for the Blind,” he said. His mother, a native of Northern California, had been a barrel racer and a rodeo princess.
“So even though I lived in that area, I still participated in all of those things,” Jacobson said. “We just went east. My mom was livestock coordinator for the county fair. From the infant stage I was in the barn and started raising animals of my own.”
He attended the University of Wyoming for a year, then transferred to Oregon State, where he completed a bachelor’s in agricultural sciences and a master’s degree in 2019 in agricultural education, completing his student teaching in Heppner.
Since he and his wife live in Albany, the commute to Sabin was a long one, and when the Sweet Home position opened up, Jacobson said he was all in.
He said he came to a forestry event at Sweet Home last spring and “I saw 100 cars.”
“I went, ‘Huh, there must be a baseball game or a football game. Something else is going on today.”
“Then I realized that many community members had come out for this forestry event, that this was a community I wanted to be part of. They supported CTE and they supported students.”
He said he likes small towns and “I love the slogan, ‘One Town, One School, One Family.'”
“It’s an amazing place. The more I’ve gotten to know it, it’s just the right fit here for me.”
The agricultural program will start with classes in animal science, plant science, agricultural leadership and general agricultural science, he said.
Students will be able to develop leadership skills and participate in CDs and LDS, which are career development events, typically more hands-on than skill-based events.”
Jacobson said FFA students can compete in skills such as veterinary science and floraculture and soils, at district, sectional and state levels.
“It’ll give students more opportunities to compete and to develop leadership skills and to connect with industry partners around our town, our county and our state.”
Millions of dollars are available for FFA students in grants and scholarships, Jacobson noted.
Brown said the community, naming Radiator Supply House, whose owners were involved in FFA in their youth, in particular, has been very supportive.
“I’m nearing the end of a 30-year career. Sweet Home has been incredible in the offerings we try to provide for our students,” he said.
Jacobson said colleagues have gotten him connected in the short time he’s been in Sweet Home.
“Blake and Will both have done an amazing job putting me in connection with tons of community members. And I’m always looking for new opportunities for the students.”
Down the road, he said, he’s hoping the high school can procure property for FFA activities and offer programs such as the vet tech program offered at Lebanon High School. Initially, that may be a stall in someone’s barn, available to a student who’s willing to do some work to rent the space, he said.
Community members interested in providing opportunities can contact Jacobson at (541) 367-7142 or by e-mail at [email protected].
Brown said plans for another CTE option, health occupations education, is still in the offing.
“In our area, in Lebanon, we already have relationships with the teaching college over there,” he said. “We’ve tried to reach out to the kids, see what they were interested in and we’ve looked to see what people are available to hire. The demand from students, the availability of staffing, we’ve been fortunate that we’re able to get into ag science at this point.
“This is one more example of moving forward. I’m glad I get to witness the things that are happening.”