Fox Valley Technical College’s Global Education & Services department celebrated 25 years of training students from the SEED (Scholarships for Education and Economic Development) program by hosting the 2015 SEED Leadership Conference at its Appleton campus.

Administered by Georgetown University’s Center for Intercultural Education and Development, SEED students visit the United States from Central America, Mexico, and the Caribbean through scholarships on behalf of the United States Agency for International Development to build leadership skills and technical proficiencies. Upon successful completion of the SEED program, participants return to their homelands to apply new skills they learned while attending a U.S. college or university that specializes in areas of foreign study, like FVTC.

At Fox valley Tech, SEED students have studied in such areas as agriculture, business, horticulture, natural resources, science, and more over the course of 25 years. Some of the SEED completers from the college have gone on to become elected officials in their homelands, food safety managers, deforestation supervisors, in addition to leaders in efforts behind opening libraries and schools.

The conference included representation from five technical and community colleges in the Midwest. In all, more than 250 students from seven different countries attend the SEED Conference.