Back to School

Paul Fisher, Rosanna Freyre and Brian Pearson

There’s considerable angst in universities about decreased horticulture student enrollments. At the same time, growers are crying out for trained staff. How do we solve this apparent disconnect?

Until job market demand leads to increased salaries, the rising cost of a four-year education means that horticulture programs will struggle to compete with alternative career paths.

However, there’s also a largely untapped potential to train staff already in the greenhouse business. These employees, who may have started as irrigators and progressed to section grower level, have already proven themselves to be loyal and promising team members. There’s a direct return on investment for a business to develop the “human capital” in these individuals. Improving staff understanding of the “why” of growing decisions will increase quality and efficiency, and their ability to take on greater responsibility.

In addition, there’s considerable international demand for training. More of our industry is being outsourced, especially for seed and cutting production. The U.S. is almost unique in having a robust publicly funded extension service—growers in most countries are starved for access to quality horticulture education.

At the University of Florida IFAS Extension, we’re exploring how to meet that need using online certificate courses for greenhouse growers. “Greenhouse 101: Plant Science for Commercial Production” is currently being piloted, with around 90 industry participants. Another course, “Nutrient Management for Container-Grown Crops: Level 1” was completed by 85 industry members in January and will be offered again from August 24 to September 18, 2015. Feedback has been very positive and we’ve taught growers from places as exotic as Ethiopia, El Salvador and Grand Rapids.

You can learn more about these courses in BackPocketGrower.org under “Training” and “Online Courses.”

Based on grower feedback, here are some features of our courses:

All of our lectures and activities are in both English and Spanish. Our material is aimed at an industry audience.
We have a four-week format over specific dates, primarily from June to December. Creating a class as an event helps keep participants to a deadline and complete the course.
A typical course has eight one-hour lessons, four short activities and takes 12 hours to complete.
Registration is $200 per student, with discounts for 20 or more employees from a company and for Floriculture Research Alliance members (floriculturealliance.org).
Streaming video lectures can be accessed any time of the day and on virtually any device.
Live instructors are available for chat sessions at least twice each week. We believe that having interaction between students and with teachers is an important part of the learning experience.
Growers receive a personalized certificate of completion from the University of Florida IFAS Extension.

If you would like to try our online courses, including the upcoming Nutrient Management course, check out
backpocket grower.org/onlinecourses.asp. We’re all still figuring out how to take advantage of the Internet for learning and appreciate your feedback. GT

Paul Fisher, Rosanna Freyre and Brian Pearson are with the Environmental Horticulture Department at the University of Florida IFAS Extension.