Teaching Approach at Lincoln University

Wednesday, March 3, 2010

Jack has been keeping some notes on what he is seeing here at Lincoln University. He put together this short message to his colleagues at CSU. Thought you would find it interesting.

We’ve been here 2 weeks, classes began on Monday. I continue to meet faculty and students. Lincoln is an interesting university; they have developed themselves as a place for students from all over the world to come for an international experience. Some spend their whole college career here; others come for a semester or two as part of an exchange with their home university. The entire student body is around 3,500 students, about 40% of which are international students. Additionally, Lincoln is a foundation agriculture college, started as Canterbury Agricultural College in the early 1900’s and has stayed close to its roots while evolving to address new issues and technologies. Research by the faculty seems to be a big thing too, at least the younger faculty. Research funding, though competitive, seems to be available from many sources.
Teaching is taken seriously here too. The system is very British – Lecturers, Senior Lecturers, Professors: analogous to Assistant, Associate and Full Professors in the U.S. There is a first year diploma program for students who just want some basic courses. They refer to these as DipAg students. If a DipAg (diploma in agriculture) student chooses to go on, and if their grades are good enough after the first year, they can continue on to a bachelor’s degree which they can obtain in 3 years, this includes the DipAg year (I think – still a bit unclear on this). There seems to be a pretty good cadre of graduate students with lots of research projects going on. Many of the graduate students seem to be international students too. For instance, I met a young lady who is a PhD student from Brazil. She is in a program she called a “sandwich PhD” program from her university in Brazil. She has taken most (maybe all) of her classwork in Brazil, done most of her research there and has now come to New Zealand to do another small project at Lincoln, then will return to Brazil and finish her PhD there. Seems like a very good system to train students in more than just their home setting.
Another teaching approach that I experienced yesterday involved a sophomore level farming systems class (ANSC203). The class has about 100 students (includes two of our CSU students) and covers most facets of New Zealand livestock production. Yesterday the class rode busses to one of the LU sheep farms ( called the Ashley Dene Farm) where there were two flocks (mobs) of ewes of about 100 ewes each that had been designated for a class project. One mob is grazing Lucerne, the other a ryegrass clover pasture. Daylength is now shortening which is the cue for ewes to begin cycling ahead of the joining (breeding) season which begins in late March. A few of the ewes are starting to cycle now. There are sterile rams with marking harnesses with the ewes now. The ewes are Copworth breed a stabilized breed developed here at Lincoln in the 1950’s as a cross between Border Leicester and Romney. It has been a closed breed for many years. Lincoln produces rams for sale. They refer to the ewes as a “stud mob” because they produce seedstock.
In brief, the students are to monitor the cyclicity of the ewes on both pastures over the next month as the ewes begin to show estrus, keep the marking harnesses functioning, collect and analyze the data, then develop a paper that addresses factors affecting sheep reproductive rates and a management scenario where they act as a consultant to a group of farmers. The teaching approach seems to be very hand’s on with direct application. One aspect that I think has a bearing here in general is that the attitude of New Zealanders is very pro-agriculture. It is not uncommon while watching television to have advertisements for fertilizer, seed dealers, etc. The base population of students seem to come from an agricultural background, likely this is more prevalent here at Lincoln with its Ag history, but I sense that the pro-agriculture attitude is widespread.