At a glance
“I chose agricultural business because I worked at some family farms, and I really enjoyed that, and I love animals, so I knew I needed to do something in that field.”
Katelyn Merle
Katelyn Merle (Rochester, NY) loves animals and wants to work with family farms. She found the right education mix with her Agricultural Business studies at Alfred State.
Katelyn's Pioneer PROfiles video
“I chose to come to Alfred State because my dad went here, so it was always in the back of my mind, and I liked how hands-on everything seemed.”
“I chose agricultural business because I worked at some family farms, and I really enjoyed that, and I love animals, so I knew I needed to do something in that field.”
Katelyn envisions consulting for farms, doing accounting for farms, or just visiting farms and helping them with the financial side in her future career.
Half of her classes are at the campus dairy farm while the other half are business classes. “I like how it's not all at the farm or all in the classroom. I like how it changes half and half and how you don't need to be in a textbook all the time or out in the field getting dirty.”
Katelyn was able to gain hands-on experience at the Northeast Regional Dairy Challenge. “It was a cool experience. We went to a farm to evaluate it and then had to do a presentation. This allowed us to combine the business part, financials, while also doing agricultural suggestions.”
Outside the classroom, Katelyn has enjoyed living on campus and being part of the college community. “My favorite part about living on campus is how close everything is. You can walk to everything and honestly just meeting people in your building is a nice resource to have.”
Alfred State has given Katelyn opportunities that she did not know existed.