This is a brief update on the Agriculture Workforce Training for Collaborative Leadership (AWT4CL) project. Our intent is to send a message like this once a month to keep various stakeholders informed of activities and opportunities related to the project. If this is no longer of interest to you, please reply to let us know. Otherwise, here’s the news…
AWT4CL Update for April 2023
New VCCS Peer Group for Agriculture & Food Systems: The Virginia Community College System (VCCS) maintains Peer-to-Peer Connection Groups as a system-wide tool to collaborate with colleagues on curriculum development and topics of concern to a field. In 2023, VCCS is debuting a new peer group on “Agriculture & Food Systems.” This is a direct response to the request by the AWT4CL cohort that emerged from the July 2022 cohort meeting. For more information, contact Amy White: awhite@virginiawestern.edu
Cohort Blogging: Last month, Heather Butler shared a valuable post on teaching strategies to improve student engagement on field labs: The Art of Seeing—Student Engagement and Teaching in the Field. While Heather's post focuses on dendrology, the teaching practices transfer to other types of field trips and field labs. All of the AWT4CL project-related blog posts are available at the following URL: https://sites.google.com/vt.edu/awt/blog
Hiring for Durability, Not Technical Ability: A recent article on HR.com highlights changes in the workforce, as well as related hiring practices. The article is titled “Equitable Hiring: Why Durable Skills Matter More Than 4 Year Degrees,” and it presents a new approach to bridging the persistent skills gap. It is a useful connection the AWT4CL project focus on durable skills and how to teach them.
Learning Badges for Employability Skills: As we continue to follow-up on ideas from the July 2022 cohort meeting and the January 2023 check-in, plans are emerging for learning badges that feature the APLU employability skills. The AWT4CL Badgr site is beginning to take shape, and we look forward to more pilot testing of these open badges.
This work is supported by Agriculture and Food Research Initiative (AFRI) 2020-67037-31032 1022287 from the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture. Inquiries about the project should be directed to Dr. Eric K. Kaufman, the primary investigator. Additional information about the grant is available online at the USDA-NIFA project portal.