An assessment of attitude and knowledge of secondary students participating in a summer recruitment program.

The Big City Big Country Road Show (BCBCRS) was a student recruitment program for the Baccalaureate degree-level addressing recruitment and retention of students for the agricultural workforce. This innovative program focused on students from non-traditional area and from underrepresented to be placed into future agricultural careers. The program developed a recruitment model for future use of recruiting students into agriculture. Non-traditional and underrepresented groups of students are reluctant to enter agriculture-based careers, and traditional agricultural students are depleting in quantity. There needs to be a program aimed at recruiting a new resource of students to accompany the career openings. This program sought to fill this need of qualified applicants to the agricultural workforce by recruiting students from an underrepresented area of non-traditional students. The purpose of this study was to determine the impact of the recruitment program on knowledge, attitude, and behaviors of the minority students in urban high schools towards agriculture communications. This research found there was a gain in perceived knowledge of the participants of the BCBCRS. The participants slightly agreed a career in agriculture communications would interest them, and the participants also agreed the recruitment program created team working, decision making, and problem solving opportunities.