Establishing a Soil Judging Program at Fresno State University: Renewing a Tradition at One of California's Leading Hispanic-Serving Agricultural Universities.

The purpose of collegiate soil judging is to give undergraduate students an opportunity to identify, evaluate, describe and classify soils in the field while competing with students from other colleges and universities.  The skills learned in soil judging are valuable to students majoring in various disciplines such as agricultural and environmental sciences and natural resources management.  While soil judging contests are quite popular among land grant and agricultural universities east of the Rocky Mountains, western states historically have had much less participation.

During the week of April 2-9, 2016, the American Society of Agronomy’s 55^th National Collegiate Soil Judging Contest was hosted by Kansas State University. Twenty-three colleges and universities from around the nation competed at Kansas State, including California’s Fresno State University, which had not fielded a soil judging team in more than thirty years.  Fresno State’s re-emergence in this important soils educational activity is very significant.  Not only does it hopefully indicate a renewed interest in soil judging in the western part of the country, but Fresno State was the only Hispanic Serving Institution participating in the 2016 national contest.    

The formation of the 2016 Fresno State soil judging team is a success story, demonstrating how a group of students can work as a team to accomplish a goal while proudly representing their school and learning valuable field skills in soil science.  The process also demonstrated how faculty from a university, soil scientists from a private sector consulting firm and the USDA-Natural Resources Conservation Service and others can team up for the benefit of soils education and helping students succeed.   The Fresno State soil judging program could be a model for other interested schools in the way that groups and individuals worked together to get the program started.