|
In 2005, CariPac was formed as a consortium of all of the Land Grant institutions in the insular areas to help address the challenges of providing food and agricultural education to college and university students in the Caribbean and Pacific islands (CariPac). Over the years, CariPac institutions have strengthened their academic offerings with resident instruction funds by facilitating outreach activities to prospective students, equipping some labs with state of the art equipment and rooms with Virtual Classroom (VC) capabilities, providing for faculty development trainings, activities and salary support, reviewed and updated curricular offerings, providing scholarships to agricultural and related science students, and by offering some hands-on, research and study abroad (within U.S. and territories) opportunities for undergraduates. As in past years, the eight land-grant colleges and universities in the U.S. insular areas have come together to leverage their respective resources, develop new collaborative efforts and to further strengthen their own programs through resident instruction. The goals of CariPac are to harness research and education to help address local food, agricultural, and environmental needs; support local economic growth; and to prepare students to achieve their own personal career goals. To do this, CariPac is striving to help meet workplace needs through increasing the quality of undergraduate instruction, by developing new methods for delivering instruction, modernizing instructional technologies and methodologies; updating courses and improving students’ analytical, interpersonal, leadership, communications, problem-solving, computational, decision-making, and entrepreneurship skills and abilities. Our Mission summarizes our group’s intent: To provide excellent higher education in Agriculture and Food Science, within the Insular Areas, to meet the evolving needs of a global society.
|