Utilizing Graduate Students' Firsthand Horticultural Experience in An Undergraduate Production Systems Course

Teaching experience is important in a graduate student's professional development. However, opportunities are limited. Our department has only three graduate teaching assistants per semester, each assisting in three or four courses. Students can be a graduate teaching assistant for up to two years. Thus, there is a lack of opportunity for other graduate students to gain teaching experience. We describe how graduate students were integrated into an undergraduate horticulture production systems course as guest lecturers. Certain graduate students, who were in the TPSS 654 Communications in the Sciences course, were asked to make a presentation in a lecture or laboratory section of TPSS 300 Tropical Production Systems. Students were selected based on their firsthand knowledge and experience in topics relevant to TPSS 300. If a student consented to guest lecture, we discussed in person or via e-mail the specific topic they were to speak on. We also discussed what kind of laboratory experience they could provide such as a tour of their laboratory, observing their experiments in the greenhouse, or going on a campus tour. In addition, a TPSS student who had graduated and previously taken TPSS 300 was asked to speak about his sod farm from an owner's perspective. We also asked several students in the current TPSS 300 course to speak about our college's Sustainable and Organic Farm Training organization and on-campus vegetable gardens, example of urban agriculture. Graduate students spoke on diverse topics including orchid nurseries, innovative horticultural enterprises in China, tissue culture, bioreactors for micropropagation, operation of a tissue culture laboratory, vermicomposting, aquaponics with lettuce and tilapia, setting up a hydroponic system, campus landscape facilities and operations, Varroa mite problem on honeybees, and beehives and pollination. Speakers used PowerPoint presentations, tours of laboratories and greenhouses, on campus tours, and laboratory exercises. The integration of graduate and undergraduate guest lecturers into our undergraduate course worked well, providing benefits to both the speakers and the students. TPSS 300 students learned firsthand from knowledgeable speakers who were their peers. Graduate students gained valuable teaching experience. The problem of asking the same faculty to guest lecture in TPSS 300, some of which had given the same talk in other TPSS courses, was minimized. Lastly, this experience helped bridge the gap between our graduate and undergraduate students who sometimes have minimal contact and interaction in our department.