UPDATE: 12/20/05
Facilitating Sustainable
Agriculture:
A Participatory National
Conference on Post-
Secondary Education
January 24-25, 2006
Asilomar Conference Grounds, Pacific Grove,
California
Greetings Registrants;
This note provides an update on the upcoming
conference, "Facilitating Sustainable Agriculture: A Participatory
National Conference on Post-Secondary Education," including
information on the participatory methods being used and the schedule.
Current registration suggests that at least 100 participants,
representing over 40 institutions including community colleges, land
grants and other 4-year institutions will attend, with a good mix of
faculty, staff, administrators and students. There is still room for
more participants and student registration fee waivers are still
available. For those who haven’t registered yet, registration
materials must be received by 12:00 noon on Monday, January 23.
Conference Format
We are committed
to an open, interactive format for the conference. We believe that we
need to be creative and innovative in moving forward in our work with
curricula and programs, especially when examining an idea as
contestable as "sustainability." As a way of getting the conference
to lead us to an agenda of good practical questions, we are using
elements of Open Space Technology and World Café processes implemented
by an international team of facilitators (see below). The goal of each
of these formats is to enable meaningful conversations, including
in-depth explorations of each others' curricula, methods, and
experiences as students, instructors, and support staff.
Consequently, the conference does not include
predetermined topics. You, the participants, determine the agenda and
provide the ideas, information, challenges and solutions that together
comprise the conference.
As such, there will also
be opportunities to develop individual and collective action plans
within the conference format. The conference will also include a
Poster Session, an Educational Materials Exchange, a dinner with
keynote speaker, and other social events.
Key Questions
Within the
conference format, the agenda will be determined by the participants
who are present. To help anticipate some of the issues that
participants will want to discuss, we have asked each of you to fill
out a Needs Assessment and Interest Form [NAIF] (if you have not yet
filled this out, you may still do so, via the conference web sites).
While there are many topics of interest articulated in your responses,
the following themes have emerged as of particular interest to many
respondents:
·
What are the roles of interdisciplinary studies
and experiential learning in sustainable agriculture education?
·
What characterizes the different learning and
education theories, pedagogies and curricula?
·
How may we address program development needs for
sustainable agriculture education?
·
How may collaboration facilitate the development
of sustainable agriculture programs among institutions, states,
regions, and countries?
Conference Schedule
Monday, January 23
3:00 pm
Conference and lodging registration begins (Phoebe A. Hearst Social
Hall)
6:00 pm Dinner
on site
7:30 pm
Reception
Tuesday, January 24
(Day 1)
8:30 am Opening
and Welcome
9:00 am World
Café - N. Sriskandarajah
10:00 am
Open Space session #1 - Nancy Grudens-Schuck, with Mark Van Horn,
Albie
12:00
noon Lunch on-site
1:00 pm
Open Space session #2 - Nancy Grudens-Schuck
3:30 pm Engage
Café - N. Sriskandarajah
5:00 pm Closing
Reflection
6:00 pm
Dinner and Keynote address - Richard Bawden
7:30 pm Poster
session, educational resources exchange
8:30 pm
Optional program presentation and discussion
sessions
Wednesday, January 25 (Day
2)
8:30 am Opening
9:00 am
Selection of Action Items & Break Out Sessions -
Geir
Lieblein and Richard Bawden
10:00 am Decision Café
- Catherine Cloud
10:30 am Concurrent
Workshops - Geir Lieblein
12:00 noon Lunch
1:30 pm Concurrent Workshops -
Geir Lieblein
3:30 pm Celebration Café -
N. Sriskandarajah
4:00 pm Closing plenary -TBD
5:00 pm Dismiss and goodbye
Conference Site Logistics
Conference
and lodging registration
occurs in Phoebe Hearst Social Hall
·
Monday: 3:00 pm - 8:30 pm
·
Tuesday: 7:00 am - 6:30 pm
·
Wednesday: 7:00 am - 2:00 pm
Conference Format Notes
Both Open Space Technology and
the World Café encourage participants to talk and think more deeply
together about the critical issues facing them and to create
innovative paths forward.
World
Café is an interactive process that
combines the intimacy and fun of coffee and tea service (refreshments
are necessary to the format) with fast-paced dialogue and
note-taking. A facilitator poses strategic "key questions" that form
the basis for café conversations. World Café is paired in this
conference with Open Space Technology. World Café conversations are
especially useful for the following purposes and in these
circumstances:
·
For sharing knowledge, stimulating innovative
thinking, building community, and exploring possibilities around
real-life issues and questions
·
For conducting an in-depth exploration of key
challenges and opportunities
·
For engaging people who are meeting for the first
time in authentic conversation
·
For making conversations visible
·
For deepening relationships and mutual ownership of
outcomes in an existing group
·
For connecting the intimacy of small-group dialogue
with the excitement and fun of larger-group participation and learning
See also World Café web site:
<http://www.theworldcafe.com/worldcafe.html>
Open
Space Technology
structures the conference program in ways that enable participants to
engage each other deeply and creatively around issues of concern. The
format is different from World Café in several ways. First, Open Space
begins in a large group format for agenda-setting purposes. The agenda
is set by participants, not by facilitators. The technique lets
participants get their work done efficiently by allowing direct and
immediate control of the agenda by attendees. Participants then move
into smaller-sized discussion groups, which we will be shorter and
faster-paced than classical Open Space technique (but longer than
World Café discussions). Facilitators support, rather than control or
stimulate the small group discussions.
Open Space is
a tool that enables a self-organizing group deal with complex issues
like sustainability in a very short period of time. Open Space is:
·
a powerful group process that
increases productivity, inspires creative solutions, improves
communication, enhances collaboration, and under the best
circumstances, supports positive transformation in self-organizing
groups,
·
the most effective process for
learning communities such as ours to identify critical issues, give
voice to passions and concerns, learn from each other, and, if
appropriate, to take action in determining next steps.
Open Space
Technology meetings can produce the following deliverables:
·
All issues will receive as much
discussion as people care to give them.
·
Every single issue that anybody
cares about enough to raise will be "on the table."
·
All discussion will be captured in
a summary document, and made available to participants.
·
Issues may be prioritized.
·
Related issues will be converged.
·
Responsibility will be taken for
next-step actions
See also Open
Space Technology web sites:
<http://www.openspaceworld.org/wiki/wiki/wiki.cgi?EnglishHomepage>
<http://www.openspaceworld.org/tmnfiles/2pageos.htm>
Related Events
Ecological Farming Conference
(January 26 - 28)
Thursday January 26 (10:30 am -
12:00 pm) Workshop Session B: Sustainable Agriculture in Higher
Education
Thursday January 26 (7:30 - 9:00
pm) Mixer: Post-secondary Sustainable Agriculture Education
Facilitator Team and Steering Committee
International Facilitators:
Richard Bawden, Michigan State University; Catherine Cloud, University
of California, Davis; Nancy Grudens-Schuck, Iowa State University;
Geir Lieblein, NOVA Agroecology, UMB, Norway; N. Sriskandarajah, The
Royal Veterinary and Agricultural University, Denmark.
Steering Committee: Damian
Parr, University of California, Davis; Mark Van Horn, University of
California, Davis; Albie Miles, University of California, Santa Cruz.
For additional information,
please contact: Albie Miles:
afmiles@ucsc.edu <mailto:afmiles@ucsc.edu>
Conference websites:
<http://zzyx.ucsc.edu/casfs/sust_ag_ed_conf.html>;
<http://studentfarm.ucdavis.edu/FSA/FSAPNCPSE.htm>
