This is a one-year certificate which consists of eight carefully selected courses; a portion of which take place in-person on ECHO’s Campus in SW Florida. The certificate requires all eight courses (13 credit hours), with no availability to waive courses.
Courses taught onsite at ECHO’s Campus:
AA5201 Fundamentals of Tropical Agriculture covers principles and practices that are fundamental to small-scale tropical agriculture. Course content focuses mainly on crop production within systems. It covers basic requirements of successful cropping including quality seed, adequate water, healthy soil, and productive plants. Students will gain hands-on experience in meeting these requirements. Woven throughout the course will be instruction on factors such as climate, cost, resource availability, and level of risk that guide farmers’ management decisions and adoption of practices. Thus, students will be equipped with foundational knowledge and skills to grow food in ways that are appropriate to farmers’ growing conditions and needs.
AA5115 Tropical Crops in Small-Scale Agriculture introduces students to horticultural and agronomic crops they should be familiar with in serving small-scale farmers in the tropics and subtropics. It exposes students to categories of crops including annual and perennial vegetables, fruits, multipurpose trees, and green manure/cover crops. Information is taught in sufficient detail to help students match crops to tropical climates and equip them with practical skills in growing important tropical food plants.
AA5130 Tropical Agriculture Systems investigates sustainable tropical agricultural systems utilized around the world. The course will cover the biophysical and social-economic attributes of these systems, which are practiced by small-scale farmers. The course examines the crops and animals that are part of farming systems but also introduces students to a systems analysis where problems, causes of problems, interventions to resolve these problems, and the consequences of the interventions are investigated. The students will learn about specific systems through lecture and visiting systems both on ECHO’s Global Demonstration Farm and through field trips. Each student will prepare a presentation on a specific tropical agricultural system designated by the instructor and gain hands-on experience with the system that is assigned on the ECHO Global Demonstration and Research Farm during lab time.
AA5145 Community Development teaches principles and practices for holistic development. The focus will primarily be on international community development and for those working in agriculture development. Theories of knowledge transfer and communication will be emphasized alongside respect for community participants. Students will be exposed to various tools that may be useful when interacting with agricultural communities and will come away equipped to address opportunities and challenges of working in agricultural communities.
AA5160 Small-Scale Agricultural Experimentation provides students an overview and the basic skills of agricultural experimentation. Students will learn examples of how experimentation has benefited smallholder farmers around the world. The course will specifically focus on the context of applied experiments for small-scale farmers. The students will be able to implement small-scale experimental designs and research common questions that face agricultural practitioners in the tropics.
Courses available synchronously:
AA5150-OL Conference Course in Applied Anthropology
AA5370 (SL) Advanced Anthropology provides students with both a breadth of instruction and focus of specific data analysis applicable to research and applied work across all subdisciplines in anthropology. Students will learn organize, classify, analyze and interpret anthropological data.
AA5387 Training Across Cultures prepares for teaching and training people of different cultures, this course introduces students to adult learning theory, and equips them to analyze cultural factors affecting teaching and learning.