Welcome

A Leadership Summit to Effect Change in Teaching and Learning
October 3-5, 2006
Washington, D.C.

Thank you to those who participated in the summit or listened in on the webcast. Speaker presentations have been posted to the agenda; links to background reading, participant list, poster abstracts, speaker biographies, and more information may be found on the meeting materials page.

Subscribe to the AGEDU-SUMMIT mailing list to continue the conversation began at the summit. More information

The committee welcomes additional input to summit@nas.edu.

The National Academies will convene a two-day summit of educators and employers to explore how universities can more successfully attract, retain, and prepare a diverse student population for careers at the intersections of agriculture, environmental and life sciences. The summit will focus on what works, and examine teaching innovations that are successful at better equipping graduates with knowledge and skills appropriate for multiple career paths in the food and fiber system. The goal of this national meeting is to provide momentum for educational leaders inside and outside of colleges of agriculture and related sciences to foster improvements to undergraduate education and faculty preparation. These improvements include: better programs to recruit, retain, and graduate a population of students more reflective of the diversity of our society; the employment of new teaching/learning strategies for the development of subject area competencies; the cultivation of pedagogy as a rigorous academic pursuit among faculty; and the deployment of new learning experiences to assist students in the application of knowledge and the development of those "soft skills" important to succeed in the increasingly global marketplace. In short, this project is about advancing the effort to ensure that the preparation of new graduates is consistent with the demands and reality of the food and fiber system and its related fields in the 21st century. The Summit will be a hands-on, participatory meeting. Space at the meeting is limited to approximately 300 participants, who will meet primarily in groups of working sessions focused on developing solutions and strategies to improve undergraduate education.

Audiences for the Summit:

• Academic Program deans, associate and assistant deans and Department chairs
• Undergraduate Curriculum Coordinators/Leaders
• Emerging faculty leadership
• Employers from business/industry, government and non-government agencies
• Current and future undergraduate and graduate students
• The entire Food and Fiber System

After the Summit, a follow-on report prepared by a National Academies committee will identify opportunities and mechanisms to effect change in undergraduate and graduate programs that enable those programs to produce a flexible, well-prepared workforce that is appropriately skilled, socially responsive, and technically proficient.