For graduate student Natasha Hightower, agriculture has always been more than a career path—it’s the foundation of her life. Raised on a small cattle operation in Bailey, Ark., she jokes that she was “trying to pet cows at two years old while my mom freaked out.”
That early exposure eventually led her into 4-H, where she discovered both her passion for agriculture and her love for educating others.
“4-H was really the jumping-off point,” Hightower says. “I started doing public speaking, demonstrations, competitions—anything that let me teach people about agriculture.”
After earning three associate degrees from the University of Arkansas Community College at Batesville, she transferred to the University of Arkansas to complete her bachelor’s in agricultural communications. Today, she’s in her second year of graduate school studying Agricultural and Extension Education, and her research returns to the very institutions that shaped her journey.
Hightower’s thesis centers on a content analysis of Arkansas community colleges. Her study asks several key questions:Do community colleges offer an agriculture-based associate degree?
- What agriculture-specific courses are required?
- Do colleges have transfer agreements such as 2+2 programs?
- How accessible is this information to prospective students?
- Are agricultural courses taught by trained agricultural instructors?
“It’s a simple study in terms of method, but I believe the impact could be big,” she says. “A lot of research depends on understanding what these colleges offer, and that information wasn’t easy to find. So, we backtracked and decided to start at the very beginning.”
Her findings, she hopes, will open the door for broader studies on how community colleges influence rural workforce development, agricultural education pipelines, and student access to higher education.
“I think community colleges are one of the best tools we have for supporting the ag industry,” she explaines. “For students who can’t leave home, can’t afford a four-year university, or just don’t know what they want to do yet—community colleges bridge that gap.”
Hightower speaks from experience. Many of her rural classmates didn’t believe college was possible. Community colleges, she says, provide another route; one that is affordable, accessible, and deeply supportive.
“Community colleges offer incredible scholarships and student support,” she notes. “Because they’re smaller, they can help you in ways that big universities just can’t sometimes.”
She encourages high school students to consider starting there, even if they plan to pursue a bachelor’s degree later.
“It gives you time to figure out what college is like, how to be independent, and what you want to do,” she says. “I felt so much more prepared going to Fayetteville after two years at a community college.”
With 22 community colleges across Arkansas, she believes the state is uniquely positioned to strengthen its agricultural workforce by shining a spotlight on these institutions.
“We’re lucky to have such a strong community college system,” she says. “If the awareness is there, they can be incredibly impactful for agriculture and for rural communities.”
