SUSTAINABLE AGRICULTURE FOCUS OF NEW COURSES
Monday, September 26th, 2011 -- 11:11 AM
Wisconsin is on the cutting edge of a new trend in higher education: offering students greater opportunity to learn about sustainable agriculture. A grant made possible an alliance between the Midwest Organic and Sustainable Education Service (MOSES), UW-River Falls and Chippewa Valley Technical College to give students hands-on experiences.Faye Jones, executive director of MOSES, calls this an exciting development.
"Education and how we learn is changing, right? It isn't just in agriculture. This is across the board in our institutional settings, where to really prepare students for real life the college experience should be interfacing a little more with everything from nonprofit organizations to businesses."
Juliet Tomkins, an adjunct agricultural economics professor at UW-River Falls, says the alliance has had tangible benefits.
"In our institution here at River Falls, we now have a Sustainable Agriculture minor that we already have students enrolling in, that didn't exist before and wouldn't have existed had we not had this grant that worked collaboratively amongst the three institutions. There has been good reception so far, and it's only going to get better in the future."
Chippewa Valley Technical College horticulture instructor Susan Frame says the hands-on experiences in sustainable ag provided through the alliance have been very beneficial in giving the next generation of farmers some actual experience in the real world.
Jones agrees that the alliance with the educational institutions has generated a lot more interest in organic and sustainable agriculture.
"From where I sit, our organization receives more phone calls - I have more students calling me than ever before. I have more interest in our events, our field days, our downloads on the website - all are increasing."
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