This major yields bumper crop of scholarships and jobs

As suburban high school seniors wade through their college options for next fall, their parents are busy searching for scholarship money. Both groups hope their investments blossom into fulfilling careers someday.

Well, there's scholarships and the promise of socially rewarding jobs with good pay for students who choose one particular major being promoted at the University of Illinois and Southern Illinois University.

"It's a science-based program," explains Jason Emmert, an assistant dean at the U of I at Urbana-Champaign. "The foundation is biological, sciences, chemistry. There's mathematics in there. It's really a program supported by the basic sciences."

And it's called "crop sciences."

In the suburbs, where farm land has been swallowed up by strip malls and housing developments, the word "crop" often brings to mind an image of "Green Acres," overalls and a less academic environment.

"Definitely," concedes Emmert. "But once students find out about it, they are most interested. It's plant biotechnology and molecular biology, and that's where we really bring in the science. Most of those students are preparing to go to graduate school."

To publicize the potential of $50,000 in scholarship money available for a crop sciences major, the Illinois Soybean Association will post details today about the scholarships on its Web site at www.ilsoy.org. Deadlines to apply start Friday.

"There's a perception that there's not a lot of science involved in crop sciences, and we try to dispel that notion," says Fred Kolb, the crop sciences teaching coordinator at the University of Illinois. "We're doing real science that can have a huge impact. We're going to need bright young people."

The suburbs are a fertile source of those.

But most suburban kids (and parents) "don't really know" about the value of studying crop sciences, says Angelica Lagunas, a 21-year-old U of I senior from Tinley Park. "They assume farming."

While there certainly is nothing wrong with farming and farmers who must understand the science of crops, Lagunas takes graduate-level courses that emphasize organic chemistry and molecular biology.

"The past semester we were doing genetic engineering," Lagunas says.

While a few crop sciences majors come from farms and go back to farms, most find business careers doing research that results in better, stronger and more productive food plants.

Even in this down economy, crop sciences majors generally have multiple job offers and start at higher salaries (about $44,000 a year) than do graduates in other fields. And it's not just about the money.

"If you are interested in the humanitarian aspect, there's plenty of opportunity for that," adds Kolb, noting that crop sciences majors help develop ways to grow food in countries ravaged by droughts and pests.

"Our challenge is to continue to address food need but to be increasingly sensitive to the environment and consumer concerns about how food is produced," Emmert says.

That is the reason a small, experimental corn field has been growing in the middle of the Urbana-Champaign campus since 1876. While the school does use that plot for research, it's also a nice visual reminder about the importance of crop sciences.

As Kolb notes: "We all need food, right?"