Inspiring Tomorrow’s Global Changemakers

“Transformative.”

That’s how Garner High School senior Dennisha Smith-Davis describes her experience in the 2025 North Carolina Youth Institute.

She was nervous when she signed up for the two-day event at NC State University’s Plant Sciences Building this spring. The gathering, one of 35 World Food Prize Foundation-affiliated institutes held around the globe, challenges students to research issues related to food, agriculture and sustainability and share their ideas for solving them.

“Coming from a nonagricultural space, I didn’t feel like I had enough knowledge to be a representative of my school,” Smith-Davis recalls.

But she was more than prepared. She spent months of time on her own studying the social, political and agricultural factors surrounding high obesity rates in Nauru, the world’s tiniest island nation. She thought deeply about potential solutions. And at the institute, she shared her work through a paper, a poster and a round-table discussion.

In return for that hard work, Smith-Davis gained confidence, built connections with others sharing her interest in agricultural and environmental challenges, and developed research and presentation skills that have helped her in school. The experience taught her that diligence and effort are strengths.

“I realized I don’t need to feel ashamed for trying too hard,” she says.

Smith-Davis credits the institute’s co-chairs, Liz Driscoll and Sarah Dinger, as “the most uplifting, motivational people I know. They’re so positive and optimistic, and being able to bounce off their energy is really helpful.” 

This year, Driscoll, an NC State Extension 4-H specialist, and Dinger, the N.C. Plant Sciences Initiative’s program manager for education and extension outreach, focused on expanding the institute. 

Thanks to generous donations from Larry and Judy Roberts, Becky Boston and Scott Shore, and International Farming Corp., along with the involvement of FFA advisers, 4-H agents and leaders, agriculture and science teachers, and industry scientists from across the state, the institute hosted 70 secondary school students. It was the largest group in the institute’s 11-year history. 

That record-breaking attendance allows North Carolina to send additional delegates — Smith-Davis and four others — to the all-expenses-paid weeklong Global Youth Institute in Des Moines, Iowa, in October. 

In another first for the North Carolina institute, the co-chairs invited students from Apex Middle School to attend as an initial step toward finding the best ways to involve younger students in the future. 

Other offerings for 2025 included a workshop for teachers funded by a National Science Foundation grant and a new research externship program for high school students. 

Through the externship program, selected students were paired with mentors, including Extension educators, an industry scientist and graduate students from the colleges of Agriculture and Life Sciences, Design, and Engineering. 

In the months leading up to the institute, regularly scheduled online meetings allowed mentees to discuss their projects with their mentors and get advice on planning, carrying out and writing up the results of their research. 

Then students shadowed their mentors on the first day of the institute and participated in a range of hands-on science activities, from flying drones to identifying plants to exploring bovine anatomy. St. Mary’s High School junior Claire Eveson was among those who participated in this year’s expanded offerings and landed a slot as an North Carolina delegate to the Global Youth Institute. 

Eveson, who studied a fungal pathogen responsible for major crop losses in India, calls her youth institute experiences “life-changing.” 

“It’s shown me what it’s like to work at NC State or go to NC State, what it’s like to work in a lab with other people and what it’s like to collaborate,” she says. “It’s been inspirational to see how much people here love what they’re doing and how they can make an impact, not only in North Carolina, but around the world.”