The Urban Agriculture Career Cluster: A Prospectus for Partnership and Community Impact
1. A Vision for Urban Agriculture: Cultivating Careers, Community, and Resilience
In the heart of our cities lies an untapped potential for profound transformation—a potential rooted in the soil, powered by innovation, and cultivated by a new generation of skilled professionals. The Urban Agriculture Career Cluster is a forward-thinking initiative designed to unlock this potential. It is more than a curriculum about farming; it is a dynamic ecosystem designed to cultivate homegrown talent, launch green-collar careers, and build a more equitable, self-reliant urban future. This program aims to build robust community food systems, enhance public wellness, foster economic self-sufficiency, and strengthen our collective resilience against climate change.
This prospectus serves as an invitation to visionary leaders across academia, non-profit organizations, and the corporate sector. We are seeking partners to join us in building a skilled, locally-sourced workforce prepared to thrive in the emerging green economy. By connecting rigorous, hands-on education with real-world opportunities, we can create a powerful workforce ecosystem of learning and professional growth that benefits students, employers, and our community as a whole.
Our vision is ambitious, and its foundation is an innovative educational framework designed for maximum flexibility and impact, outlined in the sections that follow.
2. The Program Framework: A New Model for Agricultural Education
The strategic importance of the Urban Agriculture Career Cluster lies in its unique educational model. Unlike traditional, rigid academic programs, this framework is engineered for adaptability and broad community reach. Its dual-audience design and modular structure are key differentiators, ensuring that world-class, industry-aligned agricultural education is accessible not only to high school students but also to adult learners seeking new skills and career pathways. This flexibility maximizes our collective ability to cultivate talent wherever it exists in our community.
The program's architecture is built on four core components:
• Dual-Audience Design: The curriculum is intentionally engineered to serve two distinct but interconnected audiences: high school students in Career, Technical, and Agricultural Education (CTAE) programs and adult learners participating in community education, workforce training, or job readiness initiatives. This integrated approach creates a seamless talent pipeline from youth through adulthood.
• Modular & Flexible Structure: The entire curriculum is built from 1-week "mini-units." This modularity allows for unparalleled flexibility. These units can be assembled into traditional year-long high school courses, condensed into intensive adult education workshops, or deployed as specific job training modules to meet the immediate needs of employers and community partners.
• Project-Based Learning: We believe in learning by doing. The curriculum is rooted in a hands-on philosophy where abstract concepts are mastered through tangible "Performance Tasks." Students are consistently challenged to build hydroponic systems, design farm layouts, analyze soil safety, develop marketing materials, and create real-world solutions.
• Capstone Integration: Each career pathway culminates in a capstone course. This final experience serves as the bridge from learning to professional practice, requiring students to synthesize their skills and apply them to a significant, real-world project with community impact.
This robust framework provides the structure for ten distinct career pathways, each offering a specialized road to a greener future.
3. The Career Pathways: Ten Roads to a Greener Future
The Urban Agriculture Career Cluster is built upon ten distinct career pathways, each containing a sequence of three courses. This comprehensive structure is designed to move beyond traditional production agriculture, equipping students for a wide array of careers in technology, business, community wellness, creative media, and policy. By offering specialized training in these diverse fields, the program prepares graduates to become the multi-talented leaders our modern urban ecosystems require.
Contact: Karen Gordon, Founding Director at kgordon@growingaugusta.org or (762) 233-5299 to explore partnership opportunities.