A Rose by Any Other Name: An Analysis of Agricultural and Biological Engineering Undergraduate Curricula
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Since 1905, the Department of Agricultural Engineering, now the Department of Agricultural and Biosystems Engineering (ABE), has been a leader in providing engineering solutions to agricultural problems in the United States and the world. The department’s original mission was to mechanize agriculture. That mission has evolved to encompass a global view of the entire food production system–the wise management of natural resources in the production, processing, storage, handling, and use of food fiber and other biological products.
History
In 1905 Agricultural Engineering was recognized as a subdivision of the Department of Agronomy, and in 1907 it was recognized as a unique department. It was renamed the Department of Agricultural and Biosystems Engineering in 1990. The department merged with the Department of Industrial Education and Technology in 2004.
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1905–present
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- Department of Agricultural Engineering (1907–1990)
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- College of Agriculture and Life Sciences (parent college)
- College of Engineering (parent college)
- Department of Industrial Education and Technology, (merged, 2004)
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Abstract
The objective of this study was to assess the extent to which a common thread exists among all of the ag-based biological systems engineering programs across the U.S. through a course-by-course analysis of individual program curricula. Publically available curricula were used to determine the coursework requirements for 88 unique curricula in the U.S. Due to the lack of standardization of course titles in the discipline, disciplinary courses were grouped into themes, and summary tables showing the distribution of courses by theme in the different curricula were made. In addition, a self-organizing map was made using the categorized data to provide visual mapping of curricular similarity among programs. Results indicate that although all programs require similar basic math, science, and engineering fundamentals, there is wide variety in the discipline-specific requirements. For example, the two most common discipline-specific themes are required by only 61% and 75% of programs (basic engineering applied to agricultural and biological systems, and instrumentation and controls, respectively). Furthermore, results show that the name of the program and/or option generally conveys limited information about the content of the curriculum, although some differentiation between agricultural engineering programs and biological engineering programs is evident.
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This article is from Transactions of the ASABE 55, no. 6 (2012): 2371–2378.