By: Jeremy D’Angelo
Kansas State University Department of Communications and Agricultural Education faculty and staff hosted a Curriculum for Agricultural Science Education (CASE) Conference this past summer where 16 teachers and a K-State instructor became certified in Agriculture Food and Natural Resources curriculum.
According to Dr. John Ulmer, K-State Ag Education faculty member, CASE is a national curriculum program that teaches agricultural instructors agricultural education curriculum and certifies them in different agricultural curriculum topics. This year’s topic was Agriculture Food and Natural Resources which Brandie Disberger, K-State Ag Ed Instructor, became certified in.
Ulmer and Disberger were the main organizers of this year’s workshop. However, the department has hosted a workshop every summer for the past 7 years, Disberger said.
“Once they got here, I turned into a participant and Dr. Ulmer turned into the host,” Disberger said. “We have a variety of areas within CASE and I became certified in Agriculture Food and Natural Resources (AFNR) this summer, which is predominantly the introductory course for most students to take in agriculture and honestly in the CASE curriculum.”
The course was around seven days long, costs around $2500, and included the participant’s food, lodging, and conference expenses, Ulmer said.
According the Ulmer, facilitators are typically current agricultural education instructors who are certified in the curriculum. This year’s workshop enlisted the help of two facilitators from Colorado and Tennessee who are certified in AFNR through CASE.
“The philosophy of CASE is that the best way to implement it [the curriculum] is to get people trained in it before they do it,” Ulmer said. “Rather than buying a curriculum and just using it you [teachers] get trained and then you get the curriculum.”
“Being able to go through the curriculum will now allow me to support teachers across the state who are certified,’ Disberger said.
The cool part is that once you are certified you are in that particular curriculum you are certified for life and just get the new curriculum when they [CASE] revise it every few years, Ulmer said. You don’t have to get recertified.
This year’s certification was in AFNR, last year both Agriculture Power and Technology and Principals of Agricultural Science – Plant were offered, but we don’t know yet what next year’s topic will be, Ulmer said. We [K-State] will decide this fall after talking to CASE and should know by November or December if we will offer one or two conferences and what topics we will teach.
