National post-secondary education conference in January
A national participatory conference on post-secondary sustainable agriculture educa-tion is scheduled January 24-25, 2006 at the Asilomar Conference Grounds in Pacific Grove, immediately prior to the 26th Annual Ecological Farming Conference. "Facilitating Sustainable Agriculture" is designed to promote the development of sustainable ag educational programs at U.S. college and universities. It will feature interactive and participatory workshop formats with some conference content being determined by participants. To help identify the goals of participants, all registrants are asked to fill out a Needs Assessment and Interest Form.
The conference is sponsored by the UC Davis College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences and Student Farm, the UC Santa Cruz Center for Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems, and The Farm Foundation. Based upon preliminary assessments, organizers have identified probable content areas, including the current state of sustainable agriculture education, course/program content and teaching methods used in sustainable agriculture education, the roles of interdisciplinary studies and experiential learning, critical analysis of learning and education theories, pedagogies and curricula, assessment of specific program development needs for sustainable agriculture education, forming collaborations to facilitate the development of sustainable agriculture programs, and strategies for developing sustainable agriculture as a field of study to meet defined education and training needs.
For forms and registration, access the Web site at http://zzyx.ucsc.edu/casfs/ or http://studentfarm.ucdavis.edu/. Registration fee waivers for students may be available; for more information, contact Albie Miles (afmiles@ucsc.edu) prior to registration. The early registration deadline is Nov. 15, 2005. The conference receives support from UC SAREP, Oregon State University (OSU) Department of Horticulture, USDA's Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education (SARE) program, and Education and Competence Studies, Wageningen University.
