INDUSTRY NEWS
Ag Education Not a Major Loss Yet (Editorial) By Bruce Hotchkiss, Senior Editor, The Delmarva Farmer
The
agriculture education major at the University of Delaware has been closed to further enrollment. That should not come as a surprise, where shrinking enrollment has hinted strongly that a stand-alone ag education major was not sustainable. But it is not as final, as conclusive as it may sound. The university’s College of Agriculture and Natural Resources is fully and firmly committed to students presently on that track and will provide a path for future students seeking a career in ag education. The situation at Delaware is similar to that faced by the ag college at the University of Maryland about a decade ago when officials revived an ag education curriculum by providing two paths: one, an articulated double major in secondary education and a Bachelor of Science degree in agriculture science and technology, and the second, a Bachelor of Science degree in agriculture science and technology, and a Master of Education degree in curriculum and instruction, known as the four-plus-one program since both degrees are planned on a five-year schedule. University of Delaware officials are pondering a similar path. Here’s a summary, provided by the ag college: Students who want to become agricultural educators and teach in Delaware have two alternate pathways to do so, even
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MTC Turf News
without an agricultural education major. • The Alternative Routes to Certification program allows students from a variety of academic backgrounds to become certified to teach agriculture in the state. • The ag college will continue to support the Master of Science degree program in agricultural education, which, like the ARTC program, provides a post-graduation route to a career in agricultural teaching for students with various BS degree credentials. The ag college also is exploring the “4 plus 1” strategy that will allow students to secure a BS degree in one of several disciplines in the college and an MS degree in agricultural education in just five years, substantially reducing the time and cost commitment of the traditional MS program. The rationale that led University of Delaware officials to yank the ag education major is hard to fault. It was one of 18 different majors supported by the college. The university registrar’s database shows that 11 of the college’s 733 undergraduates are enrolled in the major, or about 1.5 percent of the college and less than one-tenth of a percent of UD’s undergraduate population. Just two new students were admitted in fall 2012, and three were admitted in fall 2013. The college does not have a Department of Agricultural Education or any
full-time faculty to support the major. Teaching is done primarily by one individual on a year-to-year contract and by hiring an adjunct instructor for one or two of the required courses. Prior to 2012, a committee (which included an agricultural educator from Delaware) was tasked with studying the major and suggesting alternative ways to keep it viable. The study suggested eliminating it as a stand-alone major and moving it to a concentration within the agriculture and natural resources major. The committee also suggested that at least two new faculty would be required to support the program. This would require an investment that the college budget was unable to support. Interestingly, this all is occurring even while a demand for ag education teachers is developing across the country. There is an explosion in FFA chapters in high schools across the country (particularly in the mid-America farm country), and presumably each one requires a trained and certified ag teacher. It is a noble vocation, designed to instruct and excite kids about agriculture, an industry to which those kids can align in scores of diverse disciplines. Those students who choose to accept the challenge of a career in ag education will form the front line of the ag industry’s march into the future, the caretakers of the nation’s agricultural legacy. We wish them God’s blessing. •