Southeast among five universities to share ag courses

Starting next fall, five universities, including Southeast Missouri State University, will share agricultural coursework by allowing students to take classes not offered at their home institution, a news release from Southeast said.

Southeast will partner with Truman State University in Kirksville, Mo., Missouri State University in Springfield, Mo., University of Central Missouri in Warrensburg, Mo., and Northwest Missouri State University in Maryville, Mo. Southeast's Department of Agriculture is participating in the consortium as a result of a three-year, $74,872 sub-award from Missouri State University under a $570,000 project grant awarded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture's National Institute of Food and Agriculture, the release said.

News bureau director Ann Hayes said MSU is the lead institution on the grant, and it distributed proceeds among the partnering universities. The $74,872 is Southeast's total for three years, she said.

Michael Aide, chairman of Southeast's Department of Agriculture, said the university has an estimated 300 to 400 agriculture majors. MSU has 400 to 500 majors, Northwest has about 600 majors, and Truman and Central each have 200.

"We've been discussing this for a year," Aide said. "And we visited each other's campuses and things of that nature. We know who our colleagues are. We're identifying our strengths."

One of those strengths will be a virtual expansion of faculty. At Southeast, Aide said he has seven instructors, while Northwest has 50. "Think about the intellectual capital increase that brings to the classroom," he said.

Courses will be offered online and through interactive TV. Southeast already has such as system set up between its main campus and those in Sikeston, Mo., Kennett, Mo., and Malden, Mo. Aide said the "vast majority" of the grant money will be used to build communications hardware and software.

He said some of Southeast's courses probably will be redesigned. "I will be importing ag futures from Northwest this coming fall and they have to put it in the proper format for teaching, because I don't offer that because I don't have the faculty expertise," Aide said.

Aide said this is a "whole new paradigm" but ultimately it will lead to one agriculture department. "That's the long-range vision right now. We've gotten to know each other now [and] starting to share best courses among us," he said.

Projections show that by 2015, there will be 54,400 agriculture job openings nationwide and 29,300 agriculture graduates to fill those spots, the release said. Aide said in the release the Missouri agriculture economy is 19 percent of Missouri's gross domestic product and employs 20 percent of the labor force.

With the consortium, Aide said in an interview, the universities will have the "largest graduate pool of any academic institution, if you consider us unified, in the Midwest. And so if an employer wants to look for a student with expertise 'X', he has or she has a student base spanning five universities," Aide said.

The grant project is titled Food Security through Linking Resources to Enhance Undergraduate Education, the release said.

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