The college's revitalized teacher education program gives its students a first-rate scientific education and prepares them to be effective and critically reflective teachers of science and agriculture.

 

Rosemary Caffarella, the new Department Chair

Agriculture education in New York State's high schools is poised for an upswing. Six thousand of New York's high school students currently participate in 160 programs throughout the state, including urban areas such as New York City, Albany, Buffalo, and Syracuse.

Yet there are only 250 agriculture teachers statewide. More are needed to meet the demand of secondary schools that want to start new programs and to replace teachers about to retire.

One of the major problems facing agriculture is a lack of agricultural literacy in today's society, points out Susan A. Henry, the Ronald P. Lynch Dean of the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. "The majority of the population is far removed from the food system and has little understanding of where food comes from or the scientific basis for food production," she says. "Moreover, there is a lack of understanding of the critical role agriculture plays in land stewardship and environmental sustainability."

Henry says, for these reasons, "It is particularly important that our college take the lead in preparing educators to fulfill the critical mission of bringing this understanding to society, enabling others to participate as literate citizens."

The Department of Education in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences (CALS) is newly revitalized and has recently welcomed Bill Camp, nationally known and respected professor of agricultural education, to its faculty.

The department offers two professional degrees that prepare young men and women to become agriculture educators: the bachelor of science in agriculture education and the master of arts in teaching. The course of studies that leads to these degrees offers an experience available nowhere else.

The hallmark of the college's agriculture education major within the Cornell Teacher Education (CTE) program is preparing new teachers to use an integrated approach to presenting mathematics and science in the context of a wide range of agriculture-related subjects.

"The notion of individual disciplines isn't going to hold up much longer in math and the sciences, let alone in agriculture," says Rosemary Caffarella, chair of the Department of Education. "Discoveries in the field of genomics, for example, depend on integrating the biological sciences, mathematics, computer science, and engineering to the degree that no single discipline can function alone anymore."

Of the 88 colleges and universities in the United States that certify agriculture education teachers, CALS-which admits up to 40 select students each year to its CTE program-is the only one where math, science, and agricultural science education are taught in the same department. In addition, at the master's level, students can receive dual certification in agriculture and either general science, earth science, or biology. Graduates with dual certification are highly sought after by rural school districts with limited budgets.

Agriculture teachers prepared in this way bring a new perspective to helping high school students understand science. Too often science is taught in the abstract, notes Donna Moore, coordinator of Agricultural Education Outreach for the CALS Department of Education and a graduate of Cornell's B.S. program in 1989 and the M.A.T. program in 1993 in agricultural education. Through courses in aquaculture, metal working, equine management, and large engines, students see how science concepts work in the everyday world. Even highly abstract courses like Regents physics can be taught from an applied orientation.

"In my agriculture applied physics class, I taught the principles of physics as they were imbedded in a motor that operates a tractor or bailer," says Moore, who also taught basic agriculture science, agriculture business, and environmental, animal, and plant science at Lowville Academy in Lowville, N.Y., from 1989 to 1996.

Dual certification with a specialty in teaching science as inquiry isn't the only reason that the master of art in teaching is the most popular of CTE's degrees (26 students received M.A.T.s in 2002-2003). The course sequence saves students both time and money.

When students graduate in education with a bachelor's degree alone, they receive only initial certification and must complete their master's degree within three years. "It is very difficult for most new teachers to start taking graduate courses so soon after embarking on such a demanding career," Caffarella says.

At Cornell, an undergraduate working on a bachelor's degree in agriculture education, mathematics, or a science can begin taking education courses in their junior or senior year, including fieldwork that will prepare them for the classroom. Then in a fifth year they can devote the first semester to student teaching. The final semester is devoted to reflecting and building on their experience in the classroom, analyzing teaching strategies, and pursuing additional courses in their academic specialty. (Students with bachelor's degrees from other colleges may need an additional year.)

Students can also gain admission to CTE directly from the five State University of New York agricultural and technical colleges located in Cobleskill, Morrisville, Oswego, Alfred, and Delhi. Qualified students can enter the undergraduate program after completing an associate's degree or a bachelor's of technology. In both cases they can continue on to complete the M.A.T.

Graduates from CTE often end up being more than just teachers to their students. They often become leaders in their schools, helping other teachers change their teaching practices.

Cornell agriculture education teachers are also looked up to because they carry a degree from one of the premier colleges of agriculture and life sciences in the country.

Students in the Department of Education take courses across the university, learning first-rate science from internationally recognized authorities in their fields. And because Cornell is a research university, students are often in the classes of researchers pushing at the edges of knowledge-right there when new discoveries are made.

The same holds true with faculty in the Department of Education, who specialize in conducting field-based research in areas including cultivating and sustaining critically reflective practitioners; designing professional development programs for teachers; promoting ethical communities of learners; moral education for K-12 students; and the linking of policy and finance to issues like high-stakes accountability, equity, and school reform.

The College of Agriculture and Life Sciences is also an acknowledged leader in fostering informed debate about ethical issues in agriculture and the environment, including cloning, genetic engineering, and animal rights.

In addition to ethical and moral issues, CTE students examine sociological issues including race, class, and gender.

Caffarella Is New Department Chair

A year ago Rosemary Caffarella undertook a rare opportunity in higher education: the chance to grow a department. She seized it with relish.

Rosemary Caffarella

"The faculty was ready for mentoring and for working together collaboratively," says Caffarella, who has 35 years of experience in the field of adult and extension education. In previous appointments at the University of Maine, Virginia Commonwealth University, and University of Northern Colorado, Caffarella was responsible for major program redesigns. She was keen to work together with the faculty here to develop a framework for revitalizing the Department of Education.

"Our vision is to become a premier academic department that is supported through field-based research," Caffarella says. "While we will continue with a number of excellent extension programs, our major thrust will be to strengthen and expand the academic side: programs in teacher education and adult and extension education, and expanded research activities in several areas. Samples of these areas include teacher development; agricultural science, mathematics, and science education; Cooperative Extension; program planning for adults; adult learning and development; community education and development both nationally and internationally; and educational policy."

Caffarella began her career in 1968 as an associate director of extension activities for a YMCA that served three suburban Massachusetts communities. In the intervening years she would work with a wide range of adult populations and come to write two textbooks used widely in the United States and Canada. The first, Learning in Adulthood: A Comprehensive Guide (co-authored with Sharan Merriam), which first appeared in 1991, is a comprehensive synthesis of the major research in the broad field of adult learning. In 2000 it received the Cyril Houle Award for Outstanding Literature in Adult Education. The book is currently being translated into Chinese.

Her second text addresses research in a subset of the field of adult learning. Planning Programs for Adult Learners: A Comprehensive Guide (2nd Ed.) was published last year.

In addition, Caffarella spent 12 years working in the field of leadership development with K-12 communities and higher education. The college's continuing commitment to extension and outreach activities in New York State's K-12 schools was another draw for her coming here as is the college's long history of collaborative research with universities abroad, particularly those in Asia. This September, Caffarella traveled to Malaysia to launch a nationwide education campaign on breast cancer, through disseminating culturally sensitive translations of five publications of the American Cancer Society. Not only is this a first in offering Malaysian women and their families information about a disease that has an unusually early onset and high death rate, it's also an opportunity for Caffarella to conduct research in the newly emergent field of "culturally sensitive translation." She is embarking on this multiyear effort in collaboration with Professor Mazanah Muhamad of the University of Putra Malaysia.

The Malaysian project was well underway before Caffarella arrived here. As time permits, she'll increase her involvement.

Then there is Caffarella's last love, most apropos for a professional in the field of education. "I'm highly committed to quality teaching," she says. In addition to her administrative and research responsibilities, Caffarella is co-teaching a research seminar during the fall semester with Professor Arthur Wilson. She intends to keep her hand in the classroom in the years to come.

- Metta Winter