There is something genuinely hopeful about watching a community invest in its young people — not in a vague, hand-wavy way, but with real money, real programs, and real accountability for results. That is exactly what the Ubly FFA Alumni and Boosters have done with their Supervised Agricultural Experience Grant Program, and the 2026 round of awards is a testament to how well that investment is paying off.
This past cycle, the alumni organization awarded a combined $5,000 in grants to five Ubly FFA student members, funding a diverse and creative range of agricultural projects that span livestock, technology, food production, and small business ownership. The grant recipients are Mason Depcinski, Logan Klebba, Aaron Landenberg, Jerome Longuski, and Lucas Volmering — five students who submitted applications, made their case, and earned the support of an alumni organization that takes agricultural education seriously.
How the Program Came to Be
The SAE Grant Program is relatively new to Ubly. The Ubly FFA Alumni and Boosters launched it in 2025 after learning about the success similar programs had generated at other local FFA alumni chapters. Katie Volmering, President of the Ubly FFA Alumni and Boosters, was direct about the motivation behind starting the program.
“As the alumni, we were looking for another way to help our members explore all the opportunities possible in their agricultural education journey,” Volmering said. The alumni had seen what SAE grants could do elsewhere and wanted to bring that same opportunity to Ubly’s students. The goal was practical and straightforward: give students the financial foundation to start a project, and trust that the skills and returns generated from that first venture would carry them forward on their own.
“Our goal was to help members fund a beginning project, giving them the financial assistance to start,” Volmering explained. “In turn, the profit from the first project could be used to continue their project in the future. We are so pleased with the applications we received this year and can’t wait to see these members’ projects come to life.”
That philosophy — seed funding now, self-sufficiency later — is exactly the kind of thinking that makes agricultural education programs valuable far beyond the barn or the field.
What an SAE Actually Is
For anyone unfamiliar with how FFA programs work, a Supervised Agricultural Experience is not a class or a field trip. It is a teacher-supervised, individualized, hands-on project that the student designs and develops themselves, with the goal of gaining real-world experience directly applicable to careers in agriculture and related fields.
An SAE can take many forms. It might involve a student owning and managing an agriculture-related enterprise — raising livestock, growing crops, running a small business. It might be a placement or internship with an agricultural employer, a research project, a school-based enterprise, or service-learning work in the community. What all SAEs share is that they put students in the driver’s seat of their own learning, requiring them to make decisions, manage resources, handle setbacks, and measure outcomes. That kind of experiential learning builds skills that no textbook can fully replicate.
The numbers from Ubly’s current program reflect just how engaged students are. During the 2025-2026 school year, 89.7 percent of Ubly FFA members have active SAE programs. Together, those projects have generated an economic impact of $468,865. That figure alone makes the case for why SAE programs deserve community support — they are not just educational exercises, they are real economic activity happening right here in the Thumb region, driven by high school students.
The 2026 Grant Recipients and Their Projects
The five students selected for this year’s grants represent the range of what agricultural education looks like in a community like Ubly. Their projects are distinct, ambitious in their own ways, and reflect real thinking about how to build something sustainable.
Mason Depcinski received funding to purchase his first fair steer — a classic FFA project that teaches animal husbandry, financial management, and the discipline of caring for a living animal from start to finish. The county fair is where many of these projects ultimately come to fruition, and the skills developed along the way go well beyond what happens in the show ring.
Logan Klebba’s grant supported the purchase of frozen cattle embryos to implant in his cows. This is a more technically advanced livestock project, one that involves an understanding of reproductive science and the economics of cattle production. Giving a high school student access to that kind of hands-on experience is genuinely valuable, particularly in a region where agriculture remains a primary economic driver.
Aaron Landenberg took the program in a different direction entirely, using his grant to acquire equipment for a 3D printing business. At first glance, that might seem out of place in an agricultural grant program — but SAE programs have always recognized that agriculture’s future is tied to technology, innovation, and entrepreneurship. A student learning to run a 3D printing operation is developing skills in business management, customer relations, and manufacturing that have direct applications in agricultural technology, equipment customization, and beyond.
Jerome Longuski received support to expand a home garden — a project that is deceptively simple on the surface but involves real work in soil science, plant management, production planning, and potentially direct marketing if the produce is sold. Expanding an existing operation rather than starting from scratch shows that Jerome has already put in the foundational work and is ready to grow.
Lucas Volmering rounded out the group with a grant to start a layer chicken project. Poultry projects teach students about animal care, feed management, egg production economics, and the day-to-day discipline of maintaining a livestock operation. Layer chicken projects also have a relatively short feedback loop — students see results quickly, which reinforces the connection between good management decisions and tangible outcomes.
Five different students, five different projects, one shared thread: all of them are learning by doing, and the Ubly FFA Alumni and Boosters are making sure they have the resources to do it right.
Why Community Investment in FFA Matters
It would be easy to view a $5,000 grant program as a small thing in the grand scheme of educational funding. But context matters. These are not grants being written to large institutions with professional grant writers and development staff. They are being awarded to individual high school students who identified a need, developed a plan, and asked for support. The return on that investment — in skills developed, confidence built, and economic activity generated — is disproportionately large relative to the dollars spent.
Programs like this also have a multiplying effect on communities. Students who gain real agricultural experience in high school are more likely to remain connected to the agricultural sector in some capacity as adults, whether that means farming, working in agribusiness, or simply maintaining the connection to rural life that holds communities like Ubly together over generations. In a region where agriculture is not just an industry but a way of life, that matters enormously.
The Ubly FFA Alumni and Boosters deserve credit for doing more than writing a check. They built a program with a clear philosophy, a competitive application process, and a genuine commitment to watching students succeed. The applications submitted this year clearly impressed them, and the five recipients they selected represent exactly the kind of student investment that makes local alumni chapters worth having.
As the 2025-2026 school year moves toward its close, Mason, Logan, Aaron, Jerome, and Lucas will be putting their grants to work — feeding animals, planting seeds, firing up printers, and building the foundations of projects that may carry them well beyond high school. The Ubly community will be watching, and if the early results of this grant program are any indication, what they see will be worth celebrating.
This kind of community investment in youth education echoes broader conversations happening across the Thumb region right now. The Bad Axe Public Schools superintendent evaluation highlighted the importance of stable, committed leadership in local schools, and the Deckerville Community Schools budget situation is a reminder of just how important community-driven support becomes when institutional funding falls short. Programs like Ubly’s SAE grants show what happens when alumni and community members decide to fill those gaps themselves.
For anyone wanting to learn more about FFA’s Supervised Agricultural Experience programs and how they work nationally, the National FFA Organization offers a comprehensive overview of the SAE framework and its role in agricultural education. And for those interested in how Michigan’s FFA chapters are making an impact across the state, Michigan FFA tracks chapter news, award programs, and student accomplishments throughout the year.
