Congratulations to our Crops and Soils Club, for recently hosting the Spring Students of Agronomy, Soils and Environmental Sciences (SASES) meeting! The spring SASES meeting took place April 4th-6th, 2024 here on the Columbus campus and brought in over 110 students from 15 different agronomy clubs.
The Crops and Soils club is advised by HCS professor, Dr. David Barker, and they've had a jam-packed year filled with club events, fundraising, winning a CFAES Student Organization Excellence Award and traveling to off-campus events such as Weed Judging Competitions.
We had the chance to chat with the Crops and Soils Club President, Ashley Bergman, to get the inside scoop into the meeting...
how did Crops & Soils Club get involved with SASES?
Crops and Soils Club has been involved with SASES longer than I've been involved with the club. We got the idea to host Spring SASES in 2024 when we were at Kansas State for the event in April of 2023. We thought "hey, we could do this next year" and after doing some quick planning, we found out that we had won the bid to host the 2024 Spring SASES at OSU.
How was the event overall?
It was absolutely fantastic! We had great guest speakers, the food we had catered was phenomenal, and we were able to provide the attending students with lots of networking opportunities and fun. From a management perspective, the event went very smoothly, and the students had a lot of great things to say about Spring SASES afterwards.
Any favorite moments?
Two of my favorite highlights from the event include playing SINGO (song bingo) with everybody on Thursday evening and getting to meet with and hear from Than Hartsock, Vice President for Precision Upgrades at John Deere, on Saturday evening. It was also fun just to see and hang out with everybody again! Most of the students who attended are also regular attendees for the other Fall and Spring SASES meetings, so it is always enjoyable to catch up with everyone.
Any other fun events on the horizon for Crops & Soils Club?
The next big event on the horizon for the Crops and Soils Club is the plant sale in May! Every year we participate in the Spring Plant Sale in conjunction with Chadwick Arboretum. The sale is May 9-11 this year, and as always, the Crops and Soils Club will be selling lots of tomato and pepper varieties that we have been growing in the greenhouse!
Looking forward to this coming school year, the club is excited to be sending a group of students to the Annual SASES Meeting in San Antonio in November!
Closing thoughts?
The Spring SASES planning committee would like to thank our club advisor, Dr. David Barker, and HCS Department Chair, Dr. Doug Karcher, for their support with planning Spring SASES! Thank you also to Bruce Ackley, Meredith Luikart, Brianna Schneider, Mike Anderson, Jamie Gothard, Dr. Eugene Law, and Dr. Alex Lindsey for all of their help with the contest, tours, and registration.
Congratulations again to all the Crops and Soils Club members! You can keep up with the club on Instagram @osucropsandsoilsclub