Creating our new degree programme requires innovative thinking

The latter degree programme will be headed by the Department of Agroecology, but with participation of the Department of Animal and Veterinary Sciences, the Department of Food Science and the Center for Quantitative Genetics and Genomics.

The relocation of our degree programme from the AU Campus to AU Viborg (Foulum) has many strengths and opportunities but perhaps also weaknesses and threats. The challenges are significant. We must attract students, being fascinated by the safe environment in Aarhus with its wealth of opportunities in relation to both studies and social life, to the middle of nowhere at Foulum. It is important to focus on the opportunities the relocation out of our degree programmes will give us. With the establishment of a study campus at Foulum, we will obtain a closeness to our students, which we have missed since the start of our programmes in Aarhus. At the same time, we have the opportunity to create an entirely new degree programme starting from scratch.

At AGRO, a working group has been set up to provide the first proposal on how our new degree programme should be designed. The working group consists of AGRO members from both Flakkebjerg and Foulum, but has also participants from FOOD, ANIVET and the Tech Dean’s office. Some decisions have already been made, and we are going to create a new degree programme based on problem-based learning. This means, among other things, that the course programme each semester will be designed around a semester project in which the students concurrently take courses to support their project work. The degree programme will of course still contain elements of basic natural science subjects (mathematics, chemistry, statistics, etc.), but these subjects will be integrated into the remaining part of the degree programme to a far greater extent. In short, we will build a degree programme that is far more application oriented. With a campus that within a few years will have a population of several hundred students, we need to create a study environment in which the students find it attractive to stay – all day long. At the same time, we must utilise the unique research facilities which we already have and establish new initiatives to be used in teaching. To attract students, we must be unique.

Are you needed? Yes, we are about to design an entirely new degree programme with new courses and we must think through how we integrate problem-based learning methods into our education. This requires participation of a broad range of colleagues in our department. To succeed with this, we must think outside the box.