PITTSBORO — Sustainable agriculture students at Central Carolina Community College’s Chatham County Campus will benefit from a $10,000 grant from the Arthur Carlsen Charitable Fund of the Triangle Community Foundation. 

The grant will fund work-study scholarships for students at the on-campus organic farm. There, students have the opportunity for hands-on reinforcement of principles and practices learned in class. The grant will also fund need-based academic scholarships for students in the Sustainable Agriculture associate degree program, enabling the college to retain students who might otherwise have withdrawn due to financial circumstances. In addition, it will increase the capacity for training opportunities through regionally competitive work-study on-farm options.

“We believe that increasing the practice of sustainable agriculture directly and indirectly benefits everyone in the community,” said Robin Kohanowich, coordinator of the colleges’ Sustainable Farming Program. “Increasing the practice of sustainable agriculture through training the future growers of the Triangle area brings direct benefit for the student farmers, their families and the larger community through the provision of locally produced food and generation of additional ‘green’ jobs in the agricultural sector.”  

The college’s Sustainable Agriculture program trains students in hands-on farming that is, like nature itself, diverse and self-sustaining. Students learn how to implement small business and technical skills that result in agricultural systems and rural communities that are healthy, environmentally sound, profitable, and humane. 

Students can earn an Associate in Applied Science in Sustainable Agriculture or certificates in Sustainable Vegetable Production, Sustainable Livestock Production, and Agricultural Sustainability. 

The Arthur Carlsen Charitable Fund of the Triangle Community Foundation was created by Carlsen to provide support to local charitable organizations. He and Alice Lee Carlsen, his wife of more than 60 years, moved to Fearrington, in Chatham County, after retiring from a successful business they owned and operated together. She died in 2006 and he, in 2007. 

The scholarship funds will be allocated through the Central Carolina Community College Foundation.

For more information about a degree in Sustainable Agriculture at Central Carolina Community College, contact Kohanowich at (919) 542-6495 ext. 229, or rkohanowich@cccc.edu. For more information about scholarship endowment opportunities at the college, contact Diane Glover, CCCC Foundation executive director, at (919) 718-7231 or dglover@cccc.edu.