Hot News

7.29.2008

By SEAN CLOUGHERTY
Associate Editor

COLLEGE PARK, Md. — Midway through her undergraduate studies at the University of Maryland College Park, Katy Nolte, a Frederick County native, was on track for a career in agricultural technology.
She had an internship at a chemical company on her resume and was completing an Agriculture Science and Technology degree in the College of Agriculture and Natural Resources (AGNR).
But “ag education is really what I wanted to do,” she said, and began asking what could be done to customize her degree.
A specific major in ag education at the AGNR college had been absent for more than 15 years, a result of budget cuts at the time.
Many high schoolers interested in becoming agriculture teachers went outside the state for schooling and certification but with the trail
Nolte helped blaze, three new paths to become an ag educator were formed at the college and will be available this fall to attract students to the college and increase the supply of ag teachers at Maryland high school ag programs.
With help from her advisers, Nolte acheived dual enrollment at the College of Education and put together a minor in secondary education. During her senior year, Nolte found out a second ag teacher position opened up at Liberty High School in Sykesville, Md., interviewed for it and got the job, starting this fall.
Nolte said she’s entering the job with not as much teaching experience as graduates with a traditional degree in ag education, but said she “made a little breakthrough” by committing to the minor and will continue to take education classes as she starts the new job.
Nolte’s persistence was just one of the breakthroughs made at the University of Maryland by ag education stakeholders at the state and university level to bring an ag education major back to the AGNR college. Those involved in the process said it was the lengthy collaboration of several groups —the colleges of Agriculture and Natural Resources and Education, Maryland State Department of Education (MSDE), Maryland Agri-Science Teachers Association (MATA) and Maryland Agriculture Education Foundation (MAEF) among them — that made the program’s rebirth a reality.
“At times we would have 15 people together representing different elements,” said Dave Miller, retired Montgomery County ag teacher and Frederick County Public Schools administrator who worked to get the various groups together.
In an e-mail to The Delmarva Farmer, Dr. Cheng-i Wei, AGNR college dean and Dr. Leon Slaughter, associate dean for academic programs at the college, said discussions that began about five years ago to bring the major back “languished” when then-Dean of the College of Education Dr. Edna Szymanski — “a champion for ag ed” — left the university to become provost at another school.
Wei and Slaughter said the discussion picked back up again about two and a half years ago when the university, MATA and MAEF realized a shortage of ag teachers in the state was possible.
Results of a survey of state ag educators showed one-third of ag teachers were eligible for retirement and another third had fewer than five years experience, the period when teachers are most likely to leave the profession.
“That meant there was a large group of people who could leave in a short period of time,” said George Mayo, MAEF executive director.
Mayo credits Miller, with having the “institutional knowledge” of the university, secondary school system and teacher certification process to bring the groups together.
Miller said through a series of meetings, both one-on-one and as a group, the program began to take shape.
“My emphasis was on connecting the dots with the key stakeholders and when they all got together, they conceded, ‘Wow, this is really doable,’” Miller said. “These partnerships in connecting the dots is really what’s made this work.”
Miller said the program is necessary at College Park because an average of six new ag teachers at high schools across Maryland have been needed each year for several years. That means the state would need about 30 students in the program’s pipeline to continually supply the demand for new ag teachers.
Miller added, however, that on a national scale, about half of all students majoring in ag education take jobs within the industry because their training is staff development and leadership is prized by agricultural companies and don’t make it into the classroom. That, in effect would double the amount of students needed in the program’s pipeline to meet the demand for ag teachers and Miller said the number could be even higher considering the FFA’s “10 x 15 initiative” which calls for a 40-percent increase in ag education programs in high schools across the country.
“We probably need about 80 students in the pipeline,” Miller said.
The result of the meetings and cross collaborations was the creation of three ways students can pursue a degree in ag education:
An articulated double major in secondary education and a bachelor of science in agriculture science and technology; a bachelor or science degree in agriculture science and technology and a Master of education degree in cirriculum and instruction, known as the four-plus-one program since both degrees are planned on a five-year schedule; and beginning in the Institute of Applied Agriculture (IAA) taking introductory courses and then transferring to the baccalaureate program after two years. The double major and four-plus-one programs include teacher certification for Maryland schools before entering the workforce. Students pursuing ag education careers prior to the majors returning to College Park sought out certification after landing a job in the high school which could prove difficult depending on the area they were teaching in, Miller said.
“It was a matter of someone working with them a whole lot after they got out,” he said.
With existing courses in the colleges of agriculture and natural resources and education, the group developed a program sufficient enough to get certification in Maryland, but Miller said there was concern that a lack of courses specific to working with the FFA program and its Supervised Agricultural Experience (SAE) would leave a void in the students’ training and not meet the national standards for ag teachers.
Miller said the cost and hassle of getting new courses at Maryland and hiring more teachers to staff them could have sunk the effort or seriously delayed it.
By working with longtime colleague Dr. Gary Moore at North Carolina State University, Miller was able to get permission to use the cirriculum for the courses that were needed. University of Maryland students will take the classes online, but register for them through the University of Maryland and turn in assignments to Maryland teachers, Miller said.
“That was a big breakthrough for us to get those few courses,” Miller said. “It’s a bit non-traditional, but it gets us there.”
“This new program provides an opportunity for youth to become involved in agriculture in a fundamental way — the ability to teach and train future generations about the science and art of agriculture. It will strengthen agri-science education across the state by meeting future manpower needs, such as the ag teachers in the high school,” Wei and Slaughter stated in the e-mail.
Miller said offering three options to a career in ag education will attract a wider variety of students to the career. The double major path can get students into the workforce in four years with certification. The four-plus-one program allows for students who decide to pursue ag education a year or two after starting college to finish their undergraduate courses and get the master’s degree in the fifth year. Students who struggle to gain admission at first to the university can begin at the institute or at a community college closer to home, Miller added.
The success in re-establishing the program was not without challenges, though. Wei and Slaughter said the absence of the major for so long meant the college had to build faculty expertise in ag education and find a faculty member willing to coordinate the program.
“We also needed to re-establish networks within school systems where students would be able to intern and get real-world practical experience working with high school youth in a classroom setting before graduation,” Wei and Slaughter said in the e-mail.
With experience working with 4-H and FFA youth, Dr. Scott Glenn in the plant science department accepted the role.
“There is definitely a need for it,” Glenn said. “The overriding reason so many students come to the College of Agriculture and Natural Resources is because their high school teacher stimulated their interest and many of them wanted to emulate those teachers. I think it’s a real credit to all those ag teachers out there in the state.”