New building allows more teaching; hands-on learning included all facility landscaping
–by Terry Ostmeyer, Golf Course Management magazine
As community colleges go in Middle America, Kirkwood in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, is a notch above most and recently took steps to elevate its horticulture program to parallel other disciplines at the school.
Kirkwood, 15,200 students strong, opened a new $7 million horticulture education center in time for its fall term this year. The center is part of a sparkling school of agriculture complex and has accommodations for more than 500 students, offering two-year degree programs in such studies as parks and natural resources, landscaping and turf grass management.
The facility sports a 6,000-square-foot shop and classroom space for hundreds and a grounds irrigation setup fed by roof rainwater runoff into a 6,500-gallon tank. But its showcase features are twin state-of-the-art greenhouses comprising 8,000 total square feet with the latest in technology, such as computerized controls with pinpoint accuracy. The greenhouses also include facilities for turf care study.
Teaching golf course and athletic turf grass management in the program is Troy McQuillen, an assistant professor who has been at the college for four years. McQuillen says the new center is a boost to student recruitment and defines the horticulture program.
“It’s basically just, `get the students in the door’ – it’s a no brainer,” he says of the new center’s attraction. “Our message to students is about vocational education. It’s all hands-on—see, feel, smell—everything they’re going to learn.”
McQuillen is hoping to eventually develop an articulation with the turf program at Iowa State University (of GCSAA Turf Bowl fame) and arrive at a two-plus-program—two years at Kirkwood and two years at ISU, leading up to a four-year degree in turf management.
“I can deliver the applied education and they can deliver the technical education,” he says.
Both the horticulture staff and college officials believe the best is yet to come at the center: A six hole golf course on an adjoining 35-acre parcel that would stress educational aspects while serving as a demonstration lab and research facility. The golf venture is in the final design stages and could possibly come to fruition in a year or more. Besides fairways and greens, it would feature actual irrigation systems, plant identification gardens, native prairie areas and wetlands.
“Many of our students are potential superintendents, and in the course of their careers they could be exposed to native-based greens, sand-based greens, bluegrass fairways and bentgrass fairways—a whole magnitude of difference between golf courses,” McQuillen says. “So we’re going to try to integrate that between each golf hole of our facility. For instance, maybe we’ll have a USGA-modified green with traditional Penncross, or a USGA-spec green with A-4 or another of the new cool-season grasses, or a green with an interesting velvet bentgrass/fine fescue mix.”
As the professor says, it’s nothing but the latest and greatest at Kirkwood.
[Copyright 2008, Golf Course Management magazine. Used by permission.]