Melinda Lloyd, CABLE Leadership Training Program lead; Serpil Guran, Rutgers CABLE faculty mentor and director of Rutgers EcoComplex; Maxwell Melnick, Rutgers CABLE student delegate; and Dennis Hall, CABLE program director, assistant professor, The Ohio State University.
At the conclusion of a four-day Spring Conference at North Carolina State University during which students gave their final presentations about current issues in the bioeconomy, Rutgers student Maxwell Melnick was recognized as a graduate of CABLE (the Consortium for Advanced Bioeconomy Leadership Education). Melnick is an undergraduate major in environmental sciences with a minor in sustainability.
Melnick and his faculty mentor Serpil Guran, director of the Rutgers EcoComplex, represent Rutgers in CABLE, a nationwide organization of 20 universities led by The Ohio State University and supported by the United States Department of Agriculture, National Institute of Food and Agriculture (USDA NIFA). The CABLE program provides students with a year of leadership development in the bioeconomy, including organizing and presenting a major campus-based event as part of his CABLE requirements.
At the conference CABLE student delegates and faculty mentors had the opportunity to hear from current industry professionals representing Syngenta, BASF, Stephen Gould, and BioFuels Digest, as well as present their final reports on issues currently affecting the bioeconomy and take a tour of biotechnology company, Novozymes.
Having access to industry professionals is a key benefit of the CABLE program, as student delegates are groomed to become leaders themselves, ready to fill bioeconomy careers as chemists, engineers and scientists, among others.
CABLE Program director Dennis Hall, assistant professor at The Ohio State University, noted that ‘the advanced bioeconomy is critical to a more sustainable future for society but largely invisible to all but few college students. The ultimate goal is to equip more students with the knowledge and leadership skills necessary for successful bio-based enterprises.”
Over the course of the 2018-2019 school year, Melnick worked with peers from Alabama A&M University, Iowa State University, and The Ohio State University to provide a technical and market analysis of the future automobile market with a particular emphasis on comparing and contrasting biofuel-based vehicles and electric vehicles.
Guran, who mentored Melnick at Rutgers, expressed great pride in his successful completion of his CABLE term and his recognition as a graduate of the program. “We look forward to the wonderful things Max will accomplish throughout his career. He is well positioned to do well as CABLE is intent on expanding the leadership education of students and aiding them in achieving their goals of becoming future bioeconomy professionals.”
