Highlights

Late fee for Walk-Ins the Day of Conference
A late fee of $50 in addition to regular conference costs will be charged to those either completing a new registration, or paying for an incomplete registration, on July 11.

CONFERENCE FORMAT

One of the primary goals of this conference is to model innovative approaches to teaching and learning with the conference design. Below is a thumbnail illustration of the conference program. Click to enlarge.

The unique, participatory format for this year’s conference is a learning exchange.

The conference will be organized around the following theme areas. These theme suggestions are intended to serve as a springboard. They reflect the work organized at the last conference.  Participants are encouraged to identify new and different themes, should their needs and interests not be represented, in general terms, by those listed.

• Pedagogies for sustainable agriculture (examples include interdisciplinary, experiential, and systems approaches)
• How to start and sustain a sustainable agriculture education program
• Developing a curriculum for sustainable agriculture
• Ways of knowing: putting educational theory into practice
• Student farms

A fuller description of these themes, and what they include, can be found here.

The first evening, participants will brainstorm specific topics of interest within the thematic area or areas of their choosing. They will then organize topics into clusters using an Affinity Diagramming technique. 

On Thursday morning, Study Teams will self organize based on the clusters of topics.  These Study Teams will generate specific questions that they want to address in sessions. A Resource Directory reflecting the diverse knowledge and material resources offered by participants will be used to develop the Study Team sessions for the different topics. 

The main content learning of the conference will take place during the Study Team sessions, generated through use of the resource directory, on Thursday afternoon and Friday morning.  The study team sessions will be posted and participants are welcome to move between sessions based on their interests at any time.

Two field trip options will be offered on Thursday and Friday.  A launch party to celebrate the newly forming Sustainable Agriculture Education Association will be held on Thursday evening, followed by a performance by singer-songwriter Adrienne Young.

Friday afternoon will be a planning meeting for the formation of the Sustainable Agriculture Education Association (SAEA). The development of the SAEA is a direct outcome of participants’ work in the 2006 conference. Friday afternoon will also provide a structured opportunity to develop action plans and future collaborations based on outcomes of the workshops. 

Material resources that participants bring to share will be on exhibit throughout the conference.  A designated time for networking and sharing these materials and resources will occur on Friday after dinner.

On Saturday morning groups will provide more detailed reports based on their workshop discussions and action plans. 

CONFERENCE THEMES

Pedagogies for Sustainable Agriculture Education:

Sustainable agriculture education has the potential to incorporate many different pedagogical tools for teaching and learning from traditional lecture/lab formats to experiential education. Topics discussions could include the logistics of teaching an interdisciplinary class, or ways to teach systems thinking in an agricultural framework. We expect that an especially important feature of this theme would be examples and stories about teaching methods. Such methods could include Service Learning, Problem Based Learning, Critical Pedagogy, Inquiry Based Learning, successful discussion and lecture strategies, case studies, debate activities, oral/group exams, and evaluation strategies. Resources that might be shared in this theme include handouts from classes you have taken or taught, syllabi, instruction guides, teaching handbooks, or results/publications from research related to teaching strategies.

How to Start and Sustain a Sustainable Agriculture Education Program

The logistics of creating a new program or sustaining an existing one will be covered within this theme. Topic discussions in this group may include: funding sources for sustainable agriculture programs and educational activities, strategies employed and lessons learned in gathering support and input from diverse stakeholders, how to recruit and retain students, how to organize interdisciplinary programs that have faculty and administrative support, institutional rewards for sustainable agriculture education and alternative approaches to learning and teaching, how to design an interdisciplinary program within a department-structured institution, and how to promote sustainable agriculture education to fellow students, colleagues, administrators, and policy-makers. Resources might include: designs of majors, results of surveys of student and employer needs and interests, journal articles, testimonials from students, examples of external funding obtained to support development of a program, examples of institutional reward systems, and presentations from established programs about how they recruit and retain students.

Developing a Curriculum for Sustainable Agriculture

Many disciplines and courses can touch upon sustainable agriculture, and how they are integrated to create a program of study. The ‘curriculum’ theme may include topics such as what core courses to include within a sustainable agriculture program, idea brainstorming for developing new courses, the inclusion of capstone classes, creating interdisciplinary curricula, teaching sustainability in all agriculture classes, and student developed curricula. Resources that might be presented in this theme are: curriculum designs, course requirements for sustainable/organic agriculture programs, course syllabi, textbooks, and journal articles about curriculum development.

Student farms

Student farms touch upon several thematic areas, yet also cover topics that are unique to their management and integration into sustainable agriculture education. Because of this, we have created an entire student farm theme. Possible topics might include funding options for starting and sustaining student farms, creating marketing opportunities such as CSAs & farm stalls, how to maintain farms from year-to-year when new students are managing each year, integrating teaching hands-on sustainable farming skills and theory at a post-secondary institution, recruiting faculty to utilize student farms for teaching and research, and creating courses that integrate and build on activities on student farms. The conference program also includes a visit to the Dilmun Hill Student Farm with a lesson plan created by this year’s student managers.

Ways of Knowing: Putting Educational Theory into Practice

Why is experiential learning and knowledge (local knowledge) undervalued compared to lectures and knowledge generated though scientific inquiry (trans-local / universal knowledge)? Why is interdisciplinary learning and teaching so difficult to accomplish institutionally? Why do faculty rewards and incentives within department and college administrations often result in instruction that is not student or learner-centered? To begin answering these questions, this theme examines educational philosophies and epistemologies best and worst suited for learning and teaching sustainable agriculture post-secondarily.

CONFERENCE PROGRAM

The Second National Conference on
Facilitating Sustainable Agriculture Education
Cornell University, July 11-14, 2007

CONFERENCE PROGRAM (with room locations)

Wednesday

2:00 pm      Check-in begins (Cook House Lobby)
5:00 pm      Welcome and Socializing (Cook House Lounge)
5:30 pm      Dinner (Cook House Dining Room)
6:45 pm      Program Introduction, Dialogue Principles (Cook House Dining Room)
7:45 pm      Affinity Diagramming (Becker House Dining Room)
9:00 pm      Adjourn

Thursday

7:00-8:00 am       Breakfast (Cook House Dining Room)
8:30-11:30 am     Study Team Formation and Learning Resources Exchange
                          (Becker House Dining Room) (break at 10:00 am)
11:30 am             Conference Workshop Schedules Posted (Cook House Lobby)
11:45 am             Lunch (Cook House Dining Room)
1:30-3:00 pm       Study Team Session I (Multiple locations)
3:30-5:00 pm       Study Team Session II (Multiple locations)
3:30-5:45 pm       Dilmun Hill Student Farm & MacDaniels Nut Grove Field Trip
                          (Meet in Cook House Lobby)
6:00-7:00 pm       Dinner (Cook House Dining Room)
7:15 pm               The SAEA Takes Off! SAEA Business Meeting
                           (Becker House Dining Room)
8:15 pm               SAEA Launch Party and Adrienne Young Concert (9:00 pm)
                           (Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art)

Friday

7:00-8:00 am            Breakfast (Cook House Dining Room)
8:30-10:00 am          Study Team Session III (Multiple locations)
10:30 am-12:00 pm   Study Team Session IV (Multiple locations)
12:30-2:00 pm          Lunch and Report Outs (Cook House Dining Room)
2:00-3:30 pm            Actions Plans/SAEA Session I (Multiple locations)
4:00-5:30 pm            Action Plans/SAEA Session II (Multiple locations)
2:00-5:30 pm            West Haven Farm Field Trip (Meet in Cook House Lobby)
6:00-7:00 pm            Dinner (Cook House Dining Room)
7:30 pm                    Materials & Resources Exchange with Local Wine, Beer & Cider
                            (Cook House Lounge)

Saturday

7:30-8:30 am            Breakfast (Cook House Dining Room)
9:00-11:00 am          Action Plan Report Outs and Send-Off (Cook House Dining Room)

 

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