Former Agilent CEO Mike McMullen, a Delaware native, said the new hub at DSU in partnership with Agilent shows what can happen when vision meets execution.
“You can have all the ideas in the world, but what’s special here is that it actually happened, and it happened quickly,” he said during the event. “We wanted to give scholarships but also provide a place for world-class research. The real secret sauce is the students.”
Manager of Agilent’s Philanthropic Program Sally Frank was lauded during the event as a key player in ensuring the company and historically black universities continue to work together for the betterment of the students. She said, to date, more than 100 employees have mentored students since 2022, a big part of Agilent’s connection with DSU.
“When you mentor students, you grow as a person and as a professional,” Frank told the Delaware Business Times. “This partnership allows students to learn about Agilent’s culture before they ever interview. Even if they choose another company, those relationships endure.”
Along with mentoring and scholarships, the hub itself also includes a Food Innovation Lab which will serve the students, as well as the broader community, offering small producers space to test new products and meet regulatory standards at cost.
The hub opening came just a few years after DSU made the strategic decision to join its agricultural college with its science and technology programming, creating the College Agriculture, Science & Technology. Dean Dr. Cherese Winstead said it has since helped propel the hub into existence.
“Since I came in, I saw it as an opportunity. Maybe we could influence students in other majors to go into agriculture and that’s really where we’re seeing a surge,” Winstead told DBT. “Even our faculty members who are in biology, they’re going through our farm incubator program. Fancy that. Meanwhile, our local stakeholders can’t always afford the latest technology. We’ll provide that access here while our students work on testing, research, technology and production themselves. So, it is a bigger mission than just a building.”
For Delaware Agriculture Secretary Don Clifton, that mission is key to improving the pipeline of future farmers in the state. He tied the new hub the push to bring ag back to Black farmers in Delaware; that population has dropped from 14% in the First State in 1940 to less than 1% today.
“A big part of what this facility provides and what DSU is instrumental in providing is building the aspirations of people that can be engaged in agriculture, whether it’s in research, in policy making, in finance or in production. And quite frankly, few of them will go into production,” he told DBT. “We want to make sure they have opportunities in in production, but agriculture touches everything and this facility can have global reach. And that’s what excites me a whole hell lot.”
Winstead added that students are already carrying Delaware’s influence abroad through their agriculture work at DSU with study trips to Costa Rica, Jamaica and Senegal while studying water and soil quality and more.
“We want them to impact Delaware agriculture, but we also want them to understand challenges worldwide,” she said.
The building features drones, growing systems with the help of the Internet of Things and even humanoid robots programmed by students to pick strawberries and identify plant diseases — part of DSU’s designation as a Center of Excellence for Emerging Technologies.
Allen said the investment reflects a wider growth moment for the university, which welcomed its largest freshman class in history this fall.
“All of these adults are here because they believe in you,” he told students in attendance during the event. “Expect great things of yourselves and watch the magic happen.”
This article was originally published by the Delaware Business Times at https://delawarebusinesstimes.com/news/dsu-agilent-hub/.
