Thirty-four participants from overseas partner institutions joined 19 local participants in two back-to-back events hosted by SEARCA and the University of the Philippines Los Baños (UPLB) for the Master of Science in Food Security and Climate Change (MS FSCC) project on 19 – 24 March 2018.
The MS FSCC is a project initiated by the SEARCA-established Southeast Asian University Consortium for Graduate Education in Agriculture and Natural Resources (UC) and led by Kasetsart University (KU) in Thailand. It is partially supported by the ERASMUS + program of the European Union and counts 11 other partner institutions in Southeast Asia and Europe.
The recently-concluded events in Los Baños consisted of a workshop to develop the joint curriculum for the MS FSCC and a Project Meeting to review the first-year implementation of the project. Part of the workshop outputs are detailed course analyses for the five MS FSCC program core courses and the required specialization courses for each of five training tracks. On the other hand, the review meeting looked at the project accomplishments in the past year, the challenges encountered, and the status of project implementation. As a result, some adjustments were made in the succeeding project activities and budget. This includes another workshop tentatively scheduled in July 2018 for the development of the course modules, teaching materials, and assessment tools for all required courses in the program to ensure the standardization of the course delivery across each of the UC members. Staff from the non-UC partners in the region including Prince of Songkhla University and Chiang Mai University, both in Thailand; Royal University of Agriculture and University of Battambang, both in Cambodia; Nilai University in Malaysia; and Central Luzon State University in the Philippines will also be asked to participate in the Summer Schools, so they can be trained to conduct similar events in their respective institutions.
The UC members include UPLB, KU, Universiti Putra Malaysia, Institut Pertanian Bogor, and Universitas Gadjah Mada. The European partner institutions in the MS FSCC are Montpellier SupAgro and Agreenium in France, Gottingen University in Germany, BOKU in Austria, and the consortium Agrinatura based in Czech Republic.
