The 2009 ASHS Annual Conference

Reductions in teaching resources and the loss of teaching positions have made it difficult for departments in the plant agricultural sciences to provide courses and maintain high quality curricula. This phenomenon has resulted in a less diverse and thorough curriculum in the undergraduate plant agricultural sciences. The participating institutions created the Alliance for Cooperative Course Exchange in the Plant Sciences (ACCEPtS) which will serve as a mechanism to create and share courses. To initiate this project, an initial group of eight courses are being developed that will be shared by the participating institutions in their plant agricultural science curricula. This approach provides for a significant amount of flexibility for the participating institutions to utilize the shared courses as best serves the needs of their departments and students. Additionally, the participating institutions have agreed to a tuition exchange program under which 20% of the tuition from courses shared through the ACCEPtS program will be retained by the ACCEPtS program for operations and future course upgrades and development of new courses. This will allow the ACCEPtS program to grow and respond to emerging needs in the future. The ACCEPtS program is also designed to grow by allowing other institutions to join ACCEPtS. In addition to improving the curricula available to students, this program will improve the efficiency with which the participating institutions utilize their teaching resources and their ability to offer the type of curricula needed to prepare students for careers in the plant agricultural sciences.