Public Practice Option
Future agriculture will be but one component of multifunctional landscapes. Negotiating agriculture's roles in these landscapes will require that practitioners effectively engage a broad range of the public and multiple sectors of the economy. This suggests the need for a new form of managerial expertise that combines technical competence in agriculture with willingness and ability to collaboratively evaluate agroecosystems embedded in a diverse landscape and economy. A timely example is that the state's new "Smart Growth" legislation is pressuring town and county governments to develop long-range land use plans. A central question in many areas is how agriculture should be viewed as a land use and a component of the local economy. Perspectives and tools to assist these local leaders are clearly needed.
Goals
The goal of this option is to train analysts who are able to increase the "quality" of the process of understanding and articulating the roles of agricultural systems in multifunctional landscapes, and the public policy that shapes these roles. Crucial to this is recognition that wise and tractable solutions to social conflicts involving agriculture necessarily involve human values and multiple perspectives that cannot be made commensurate. Further complicating the emergence of wise solutions are power differentials among stakeholders and the limited array of problems to which science can provide clear guidance
By coming to appreciate important contextual issues and through exposure to agricultural, ecological, and public process concepts, students completing the Professional Practice Option will be able to:
- Develop processes that assure participatory integrated assessment of agroecological issues;
- Facilitate social learning about an agroecosystem, in a multiple-objective and multiple-scale performance space;
- Check the quality of problem structuring or decision making processes (both in scientific and procedural terms) to help local communities or specific stakeholders make better decisions.
Academic Requirements
Central to the Public Practice Option's goal of giving students these skills is the encouragement of broad and balanced training in agroecology. Since the students will come from a multitude of backgrounds, no one sequence of courses can give each student the necessary balance. The program will provide this need through the use of "cross-training electives," chosen so as to balance each student's incoming background with the opportunity to reach into new areas, and as well to tailor the coursework to fit the student's career goals. In the first month of enrollment in the program, each student will work with the Student Progress Committee to design and sign an "individualized learning contract" that sets out a balanced plan of cross-training electives that fits the student's needs and goals.
The Public Practice Option is also designed to allow students to complete the program in three semesters, plus the one-week summer course. In exceptional circumstances, with students with an unusual level of preparation, it may be possible to complete the program in as little as 2 semesters, in addition to the one-week summer course. Minimum coursework requirements include 10 credits of the core curriculum, an additional 18 credits of cross-training electives, and 6 project credits for a total of 34 credits. The 18 credits of course work will by selected by each student as part of the learning plan. This compact curriculum may provide opportunities to students who are funding their own educations, or who are currently employed by organizations (government and otherwise) that wish them to develop the perspectives and expertise that the program offers.