Katelyn Leibhart is home from Oklahoma State University. Leibhart is taking her classes online and working at Nutrien Ag Solutions. — Megan Kelley | Johnson Publications
College students with ag side jobs staying busy during pandemic
A handful of college students from Chase County Schools (CCS) are back in the area due to on-site classes being moved online because of the coronavirus.
But that doesn’t stop them from keeping busy, working in different ag-related side jobs.
Jack Bauerle, a 2018 graduate of CCS, is back home helping his dad with planting on their farm near Champion.
Bauerle attends Southeast Community College in Milford, Nebraska and is studying ag diesel technology.
“It’s nice to be home,” he said.
Bauerle has a physics class that he’s taking online. The rest of his classes are kind of hard to do online, he said.
“I can’t really do my hydraulics class online,” he said.
But some things he’s doing for his dad could be considered practice, such as fixing pivots and maintaining farming equipment.
“It’s weird because I’ve always been in school during this time (of planting).”
Scott Wheeler, a 2019 CCS grad, is completing classes online while working in Chase County. Wheeler is a freshman at Chadron State College studying education.
“I’m taking all of my classes online,” Wheeler said, “but I can do most of them on the weekend.”
During the week, Wheeler works for Luhrs Certified Seed near Enders, Nebraska.
Also working for Luhrs is Molly Luhrs.
Luhrs attends Texas A&M University, where she studies real estate appraisal.
Because she was coming home from another state, Luhrs had to self-quarantine before she could start working with everyone else.
In addition to her online classes and working for her dad, Luhrs has a part-time job for one of her professors.
“I do the honor registry for the agriculture economics department,” Luhrs said, “so I developed biographies for potential nominees.”
Luhrs said it was nice to have all the college-aged kids back to help.
“We had a big increase of orders when this kind of started happening so it was really nice to have everybody back,” she said.
Read the full story and many others FREE in the 2020 Salute to Beef special section.