NAAEA Track Sessions

Departments, Schools, and Colleges that comprise agricultural, food and natural resources within the Land Grant Universities and other public Universities are increasingly seeking better impact and productivity metrics to explain and justify the importance of research, extension, and academic capacity-building to long term sustainability and welfare. This track session is focused on designing and utilizing collaborative metrics to enhance our internal prioritizing and our education, research, and outreach efforts. It is both timely and instructive to explore the concept of collaborative metrics for the procession as a whole and at regional and state levels. Questions to be addressed in this session include opportunities related to technologies for data collection and transition from data to information for policy making and prioritizing. In a more data intensive/budget constrained age, are we capitalizing on techniques to collect and translate the date info useful information? How do we design and advance collaborative and credible metrics to compare and strengthen our disciplinary units across the country as well as provide credible information to build research-competitive cross-disciplinary units? How can such metrics be best used in communities outside the traditional agricultural agencies and sectors to secure resources and support for our applied research efforts and for academic and outreach programs? The discussion will draw upon the expertise of current and former department Heads, Deans, and faculty who have engaged in and managed the teaching, research, and outreach missions of universities and research institutions.

The project will create learning outcomes for knowledge, skill and experiential learning; and solicit input and reviews by a wide range of stakeholders; specifically addressing the challenges set forth by the NRC and subsequent responses to the study. The project will identify some common knowledge and skill areas that faculty and alumni believe all students should possess when they complete an agribusiness degree. In this sense, the effort is similar to the certification goals that business schools have. We are not, however, creating a review and certification mechanism at this point, we’re just trying to find common ground in the key knowledge and skill areas. The development of AAEA recognized learning outcomes will allow department administrators a list of outcomes that can be used in whole or modified to fit particular programs. Most faculty value alumni and agribusiness leaders’ inputs into the development of these outcomes. As a result the project will incorporate this input as appropriate. The scope of the project is national in scale, with a pilot study to be conducted in conjunction with the Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics at Colorado State University (CSU). The faculty at CSU have already begun planning a meeting with alumni to work on its undergraduate curriculum review. This will help leverage the funds allocated to the project. The project will cover all undergraduate food and agribusiness management degrees by setting national guidelines that can be modified to fit the needs of specific programs.