2017 ASHS Annual Conference

Like many U.S. Land-Grant institutions, over the last decade, Washington State University (WSU) has consolidated several of its former agricultural department-based, undergraduate degree programs and restructured them into multi-departmental, interdisciplinary programs. One such program is called Agricultural and Food Systems (AFS, afs.wsu.edu) which has five majors: Organic Agriculture Systems, Agricultural Technology and Production Management, Agricultural Education, Agricultural and Food Business Economics, and Agriculture and Food Security. The other consolidated program is called Integrated Plant Sciences (IPS, ips.wsu.edu) with six majors: Agricultural Biotechnology, Field Crop Management, Fruit and Vegetable Management, Landscape, Nursery and Greenhouse Management, Turfgrass Management, and Viticulture and Enology. These successful four-year degree programs currently have more than 460 undergraduate students enrolled. Students in either program are required to take a culminating, integrative capstone course to assist them in becoming “job ready, day one” upon graduation. For the AFS program, there is one capstone course (AFS 401, “Advanced Systems Analysis and Design in Agricultural and Food Systems”) that combines students from all of the AFS majors. For the IPS program, there are three capstone course offerings: VIT_ENOL 433 (“Critical Thinking in Vineyard and Winery Management”, for V&E students), HORT 425 (“Trends in Horticulture”) and CROP_SCI 435 (“Interdisciplinary Solutions to the Plant Sciences”). Each capstone course includes discipline-integrative, real-world projects, both individual and team-based, and involves interaction with horticultural/agricultural experts inside or outside the classroom. Differing capstone course approaches and examples regarding team assembly, project specifics, presentations, expert engagement, and student assessment (e.g., by self, team, and/or instructor) were compared and contrasted, which identified benefits and limitations of each approach. Professional skill development targets were compared and contrasted. Instructor feedback through student course evaluations, senior exit surveys and student focus groups identified both benefits and limitations to the different approaches.