Students from Portugal completing ag internship at Fresno State

FRESNO, Calif. (KFSN) -- A group of college students from Portugal is entering the last few weeks of an agriculture internship at Fresno State.

The program is part of the Portuguese Beyond Borders Institute, which launched at the college in 2018.

For nearly a month, four University of the Azores students have been helping out Fresno State's College of Ag Sciences and Technology.

"They spend anywhere between six to eight, sometimes even as much as nine, hours a day on the farm," said Diniz Borges. "So that involves the creamery, involves the Gibson Market, involves the dairy, involves the sheep program."

Borges, the founding director of PBBI, said the internship provides students with hands-on experience in the different ag fields.

According to one sophomore intern, she would have never gotten this kind of experience in Portugal.

"I always say, in two weeks, I learned more like experience, especially hands-on, then in two years of my degree," Mariana Aguiar said.

She added that the internship confirmed she made the right choice when majoring in ag science.

"I came from the city and I was never related to this life, to be honest," Aguiar said. "Then I started to studying and I saw the opportunities that I could have, what I could do with this. It's been like I don't want anything else."

The learning is happening on both sides.

Borges said Fresno State is also benefiting from the internship program.

"It gives our students here and our faculty, and our staff, a window into a different culture into a different lifestyle," he said. "It's a different way of being."

Students from Fresno State also get to intern abroad in Azores.

Borges hopes to continue the partnership and expand it to other academic areas -- such as nursing, cultural studies and journalism.

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