Implementing the Agricultural and Environmental Sciences Doctoral Program at Tuskegee University

<p>NON-TECHNICAL SUMMARY:<br/> Tuskegee University aims to develop a new Ph.D. program in Agricultural and Environmental Sciences Engineering (AESE ) in order to (i) ) provide an innovative learning and teaching environment as a basis for research, outreach and development in agriculture, renewable energy, food science, environmental sciences; (ii) recruit highly talented students, focusing on African American and other under-represented minorities and (iii) advance diversity within the STEM workforce. The Ph.D. program will be based on three thrust areas: Environmental and Natural Resource Sciences Engineering; Renewable and Bio-energy; Food Science and Processing Engineering. These thrust areas cover CBG USDA Priorities and NIFA Challenge areas such as food safety, water quality, global climate change and sustainable agriculture. The activities to be undertaken are: recruitment and admission at national and international levels; various interdisciplinary teaching and mentoring activities; internships in a non-academic setting such as private corporation, non-governmental agency or other partner research/education institutions; management and organization of the PhD program by AESE Deans Council and a Leadership Team; career placement and professional development. Measureable outcomes include the number of students enrolled, retained and graduated within program guidelines; the number of publications by students and faculty within the program, and internships with government agencies and private sector partners. External evaluations will be scheduled once a year during the second and third years of the project by partner institutions. The new Ph.D. program (i) will respond to the need to help brilliant but socially disadvantaged African American and other minority students to enroll in a Ph.D. program otherwise inaccessible, and (ii) will provide a multidisciplinary training to students who will acquire critical skills for solving emerging problems that require knowledge from different areas.
<p>APPROACH: <br/>The new curriculum is based on three major teaching and research thrust areas: (i) Environmental and Natural Resource Sciences Engineering; (ii) Renewable Energy, Biomass and Bioenergy Conversion; and (iii) Food Science and Processing Engineering. Science-based knowledge will be delivered to students through a combination of educational programs and processes including traditional classroom instruction, laboratory instruction, or field experiences, seminars, internships with collaborating universities, private corporations or federal, state, and local agencies; participation to workshops and professional meetings. The co-advisors will report quarterly to the PhD program's Deans Council on the progress of each student. The program's Deans Council and leadership team, which will serve as the project leadership and management team, will be responsible for reviewing program implementation progress. The leadership team will hold meetings once every two months to review and evaluate progress towards meeting the stated objective timelines and to coordinate the monitoring and evaluation aspects of the project An External Evaluator will provide written evaluation of the AESE Program on an annual basis. Moreover, an external board consisting of members from other universities and federal institutions will be set up to provide independent evaluation with program implementation progress and provide suggestions to improve the quality of the program. Written progress reports for each student will be provided by the student's Advisory Committee to the Leadership Team, AESE Deans Council at the end of each semester as a basis for timely evaluation of individual student performance. In addition, faculty and students will conduct self-evaluations at the end of each activity (seminars, courses, etc.). This will provide an assessment of the extent to which specific goals have been met, as well as immediate recommendations for improvement. Measureable outcomes and indicators for assessing student performance and program implementation success include: Student learning and progress in course completion based on number and relevance of courses taken, and GPA obtained within the first two years. Number of AESE research dissertations completed in the first 3-4 years. Number of AESE peer reviewed publication in the first 3-4 years by students and faculty. Number of AESE presentations at professional meetings. Number of AESE internships developed and completed. Yearly graduation rates starting in year four. Student placement after graduation. The internship, which constitutes a key-component of the students training, will be evaluated by the cooperating partners. This evaluation will be used to strengthen the students overall development. Tuskegee University will seek the commitment of external partners to serve as internship and career placement advocates for the AESE students.