Snead State Community College’s spring semester has been full of useful opportunities for students to learn.

Accounting and Economics students experienced a new way to demonstrate the law of diminishing marginal product. The economic principle states that while increasing one input and keeping other inputs at the same level may initially increase output. However, further increases in input will eventually have limited to no effect or a negative effect.  

The concept may be complex to some, but for Dr. Jackson’s students, a simple activities such as bagging candy brought the accounting principle to life. Dr. Jackson began with having one student bag assorted candy then continued to add a new worker until students were able to measure product output and how it relates to the law of diminishing marginal product. 

Snead State Biology Instructor Dr. Tom Warren took his Introduction to Horticulture class to Noccalula Falls in Gadsden to meet with City of Gadsden Horticulturalist Christina Richardson. Despite the rainy day, the Horticulture students were able to use the beautiful setting of the Falls to learn about the day-to-day tasks of a city horticulturalist, career options and best management practices.

In addition to gathering information about career opportunities in municipal horticulture, the Horticulture students were also given an opportunity to apply for a City of Gadsden horticulture paid internship for this summer that is exclusively available to horticulture students in college.

Students enrolled in Business classes learned more about how technologies are changing business. Dr. Ravi Patnayakuni, Associate Professor of Information Systems from the University of Alabama in Huntsville, was the guest speaker for the classes. He was accompanied by Dr. Wafa Hakim Orman, the Associate Dean for Undergraduate Programs in the College of Business at UAH. 

Dr. Patnayakuni, who has been at UAH since 2004, shared with Snead students the impact of new technologies such as artificial intelligence and blockchains, a digital ledger of economic transactions that can be programmed to record not just financial transactions but virtually everything of value.