The 2011 ASHS Annual Conference

Many colleges of agriculture have become smaller with faculty positions not being filled resulting in a decreased number of course offerings.  This phenomenon has resulted in less diverse and thorough curricula in the undergraduate and graduate plant agricultural sciences.  To address these problems the University of Arkansas, Louisiana State University, Oklahoma State University and Mississippi State University created the Alliance for Cooperative Course Exchange in the Plant Sciences (ACCEPtS).  The ACCEPtS program serves as the mechanism for the participating institutions to share teaching resources to reduce course duplication, offer students courses taught by experts in the subject matter, jointly develop core classes as well as classes related to emerging issues that they would otherwise be unable to offer students, and increase the efficiency with which they utilize teaching resources.  So that this program could be properly instituted a memorandum of understanding (MOU) was developed and approved by the participating institutions and designates operations, institutional responsibilities, student registration and enrollment, tuition exchange and course delivery.  The first nine courses developed by ACCEPtS have been taught at least once with a total 320 students enrolled for 888 credit hours. Future plans include expanding both the number of courses shared as well as the number of institutions participating in the ACCEPtS program.  The development of the MOU, course delivery methods and student feedback will be described.