CALS Rural Works!: A Bridge Between Students and Opportunity

By Lara Ivanitch

When Wendy Fuentes-Cheque walked the production floor at Uchiyama Manufacturing America as part of an internship last summer, the NC State University student took steps toward a goal rooted in her childhood. 

Although the plant was in Goldsboro, North Carolina — 170 miles from her hometown of Monroe — Fuentes-Cheque found that during her three months there, she became part of a community much like the one she grew up in. It was an environment she hadn’t realized she wanted to return to after college until that experience.

Fuentes-Cheque’s formative internship was part of Rural Works!, an NC State program created through a partnership between the Division of Academic and Student Affairs, the Office of Outreach and Engagement, and NC State Extension to increase the university’s employment pipeline to North Carolina’s rural communities. Over the years, a divide between the state’s rural and urban communities has grown as students have left their small hometowns to attend college in larger cities and then sought employment in bigger markets instead of returning home to work.

“What we were hearing from local economic developers in these areas was this kind of talent-draining concept,” explains Sam Sanger, rural outreach coordinator at NC State’s Career Development Center, who manages the Rural Works! program.

This cycle seemed inevitable for Fuentes-Cheque, who grew up in rural Monroe, where she looked forward to feeding the animals on her neighbor’s farm. Living among pastures, cultivated fields, and the people who worked them inspired her to attend NC State in Raleigh to study agricultural business management and biological and agricultural engineering technology in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. She wants to use the skills she’s learning to protect the natural world that created the setting for her childhood.

“I’m really hoping to get into environmental health and safety once I graduate from NC State,” says the fourth-year CALS student. “I do think preserving anything environmentally would mean a lot to not just me, but anybody in agriculture.”

Rural Opportunities

Rural Works! makes internships in North Carolina more accessible for students by recruiting companies in rural areas. Sanger says many of these companies have never hired — and likely never thought they could hire — students from NC State. Sara Lane, director for CALS Career Services, says that many of the college’s students who hail from rural areas want to return to their home counties or hometowns, but summer jobs and internships, as well as work after graduation, can be difficult to find in those places.

“We’re trying to build the bridge between those two groups — rural employers and NC State students,” Sanger says.

The first student in Rural Works! whose internship was funded by CALS, Fuentes-Cheque has paved the way for expanding the program. In summer 2026, the new CALS Rural Works! program will provide supplemental stipends to more than 25 CALS students completing internships with rural employers in the agriculture and life sciences sectors. The program gives small businesses affordable access to top-tier talent while setting students up with high-impact experiences and mentors who will prepare them to be the next generation of industry leaders.

“CALS Rural Works! is an incredible opportunity for our students — a great fit for the types of experiences that a lot of our CALS students are looking for,” Lane says. 

For Fuentes-Cheque, Rural Works! created a path that allowed her to participate in an internship she probably wouldn’t have found otherwise. While working as an environmental health and safety intern at Uchiyama, which produces automotive gaskets and hub seals, Fuentes-Cheque supported the implementation of a Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM), part of the European Union’s efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in production processes globally. She also conducted safety audits on machinery, worked with Uchiyama employees to determine and address safety issues within the manufacturing facility, and aided in maintaining OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health Administration) standards.

Looking Toward the Future

As she prepares for life after graduation, Fuentes-Cheque knows there’s a need to set herself apart from other job seekers in the competitive job market. The internship at Uchiyama gave her a leg up when she applied for a co-op at Smurfit Westrock, a sustainable paper manufacturer in Michigan, where she worked as a safety intern in the fall of 2025. 

“When I interviewed with that company, they mentioned immediately how they were impressed with what I did with Uchiyama,” she says. “That’s why they decided to move forward with me.”

With a variety of real-world experiences under her belt, Fuentes-Cheque has a better sense of where she wants to put her skills to use. Now, when she thinks about her future career, instead of imagining her workdays beginning with an urban commute, she pictures herself driving on a country road, in a place that looks a bit like home. 

The months she spent interning at Uchiyama helped shape this vision. “At first, I thought maybe I’d want to work for a bigger company once I graduated, but it solidified that I want to be in a rural area.”