Innovate to Lead: Curriculum Innovations to Meet Students’ Needs in Applied Agricultural Economics and Agribusiness Programs

Applied Agricultural Economics and Agribusiness programs aim to equip graduates with decision-making and problem-solving skills for a globally competitive and dynamic business environment. Ensuring student success requires instructors to explore innovative curriculum formats that augment the learning of theoretical concepts, while promoting students’ preparedness for future careers. In this commentary, we highlight three categories of innovative curriculum ideas and present evidence from corresponding student feedback and instructor experiences. We begin with examples of distinctively designed single-hour credit offerings that intend to enhance student learning of the subject matter and business applications while offering professional development opportunities. We further describe programs and courses constructed to enhance global awareness and exposure for students, citing experiences from study abroad programs and from courses employing the Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) model. The third category uniquely identifies courses with opportunities for incorporating industry sponsorship in classroom projects, and ideas to shift graduate thesis projects toward writing industry-focused case studies.