The new learning center at Horry-Georgetown Technical College will provide a real world learning experience for students. Photos courtesy of HGTC
Horry-Georgetown is taking hands-on learning to another level for students in its golf and sports turf management program.
This week, the school celebrated the grand opening of its new 27,000-square-foot learning center at its Conway, South Carolina campus. The learning center, which has been open since August, includes a variety of warm-season and cool-season turf plots grown into a 65-yard par-3 hole with a TifEagle putting green that students can utilize for real world experience they can't get from a textbook.
The facility was built by Craig Schreiner of Schreiner Golf in Myrtle Beach. At a cost of $75,000, the project was completed with help from many other industry suppliers who either donated products or services or made them available at a deep discount.
It will be used by students in the turf program and will provide a place for first-year students to learn tasks such as walk mowing and second-year students to master spraying herbicides, pesticides and fertilizers.
"Somewhere along the way, instruction even at the technical level, became more collegial and less hands-on," said HGTC professor Ashley Wilkinson. "We are lucky to have gotten this done. This allows us to get back more to our roots, at least here we are.
"We have plots, but we are not a research school, but, if we want to take the students out and look at weeds, or 'hey, let's go damage some turf' then we can do that."
The center includes Bermuda, paspalum, zoysiagrass and a couple of creeping bentgrass plots, as well. It will serve as a place where students can develop spray programs, experiment with BMPs and height of cut. A soon-to-be-built 1,200-square-foot laboratory building will serve as a location where students can pull samples and study various diseases under a microscope.
Students have been using the center as a learning lab since the start of the current school year, and also help maintain it on a daily basis.
"We weren't sure how they were going to take that, or if they thought they were just being used as free labor," Wilkinson said. "We've found that kids today don't know what they need to know to succeed when they get here. This is good experience for them."
Although it started at a time when many things were shutting down, the project plodded through the pandemic uninterrupted.
"As others were hunkering down, the school told us they'd earmarked the money for it and to go ahead," Wilkinson said.
"It has helped that Craig is local and that we are near the golf tourism capital of the country and there are so many partners here willing to help us.."
Partners in the project include: Schreiner Golf, Smith Turf and Irrigation, New Life Turf, Bill Nelson Irrigation, American Materials Corp., Pike Creek Turf Farms, Revels Turf and Tractor, Coastal Floratine, Helena, S & R Turf & Irrigation Equipment, Quail Hollow Club, SiteOne, Hackler Golf Course Founders Group International Prestwick Golf Club, Legends Resort, Vereen's Turf Center, Simplot, Barenbrug and Tee2Green.