Presented By: Art Wolfskill, Sam Houston State University
Co-Authors: Chad Reynolds, Sam Houston State University
Ryan Saucier, Sam Houston State University

Industry, academia, and government recognize that there are gaps between science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education and future required workplace skills in the 21st century. These skills refer to a broad set of knowledge, skills, work habits, and character traits that are vital to the success in the future of the world such as thinking, ways of working, literacy tools for working, and living in world. Unfortunately, multiple studies have reported that the overall business sector is generally dissatisfied with the job that higher education is doing in teaching these skills to recent graduates. Educators need to focus on teaching skills students that are needed and will help sustain businesses and grow the economy. The purpose of this study was to determine agriculture students' perceptions of their employability skills before entering the agriculture industry. The study was conducted during the Spring 2023 semester in a senior level course. All students in the course (n = 26) completed a self-evaluation of their employability skills at the beginning (pre) and conclusion (post) of the course. The instructor of the course also completed an evaluation of the students at the conclusion of the course. The evaluation contained 10 categories with a ranking of 1 to 10 with an overall rank of 0 to 100. The lowest ranked categories included (pre) Knowledge of Job - 5.21, (post) Accuracy, Speed of Work, and Work Habits - 6.81, and (instructor) Attendance - 6.73. The highest ranked categories included (pre) Attendance ” 8.88, (post) Cooperation ” 9.04, and (instructor) Cooperation “ 8.12. The average overall rankings of the evaluations are as follows, pre-evaluation: 76.3, post-evaluation: 81, instructor evaluation: 74.8. Overall students perceived a slight improvement in their employability skills throughout the course.