Education Overview
Education programs support all CSREES National Emphasis
Areas. These programs promote teaching excellence,
enhance academic quality, and develop tomorrow’s scientific
and professional workforce. In cooperation with public institutions,
private sector partners, and the Land-Grant University System,
CSREES provides national leadership to address critical educational
issues.
The teaching partnership is the most recent addition (1977)
to the federal-state partnership comprising research, extension,
and education. CSREES teaching initiatives support human
capital development through programs that strengthen agricultural
and natural resource sciences literacy in K-12 education,
improve higher education curricula, modernize institutional
academic capacity, and increase the diversity and quality
of future graduates to enter the scientific and professional
workforce.
In 1981, USDA established Agriculture
in the Classroom (AITC) to promote agricultural literacy
in classrooms across the country. Today, AITC provides
lesson plans, professional development opportunities, and
teacher recognition programs for teachers, as well as maintains
a national resource directory and other sources of public
information on K-12 agricultural education issues.
The Food
and Agricultural Education Information System (FAEIS) project
gathers and compiles a broad range of higher education
information, including numbers of students enrolled in,
and graduating from, degree programs in the food and agricultural
sciences (agriculture, forestry, renewable natural resources,
human sciences/family and consumer sciences, veterinary
medicine/veterinary science, and closely allied fields).
FAEIS information is useful for planning, benchmarking,
and coordinating efforts—both within higher education
and throughout broad employment sectors in the food, agricultural,
and natural resource sciences.
CSREES education programs also administer various funding
opportunities where educators may submit competitive grant
proposals to innovate and revitalize curricula, recruit and
retain students, expand faculty competencies, incorporate
new technologies to improve instruction delivery, and develop
research and teaching capacity at minority-serving institutions.
Studies project that over the period 2005-2010, employment
opportunities for U.S. college graduates with expertise in
the food, agricultural, and natural resources systems are
expected to remain strong. The expected average openings
are over 52,000 per year, with some 49,300 qualified graduates
available each year for these positions. Annually, approximately
32,300 new graduates will be available from the U.S. colleges
of agriculture and life sciences, forestry, and veterinary
medicine. Another 17,000 qualified graduates from allied
higher education programs such as biological sciences, engineering,
business, health sciences, communication, and applied technologies
will be available. Details of the adequacy of our educational
system to supply the quantity and quality of graduates to
meet these workforce projections are found in the CSREES
study: Employment
Opportunities for College Graduates in the U.S. Food, Agricultural,
and Natural Resources System 2005-2010.
Through these and other education programs, CSREES assists
the nation’s schools, colleges, and universities to
develop essential strategies to meet future academic challenges.
These include expanding student recruitment, preparing graduates
in areas of national need, maintaining curricular relevance
through innovative degree programs and technologies, developing
academic infrastructure, and endowing graduates with problem-solving,
communication, and hands-on collaborative learning skills
and experiences they’ll need to lead scientific inquiry
and meet the challenges of an ever-changing world.
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