Forty-four (44) students and twenty-five (25) staff from the members of the Southeast Asian University Consortium for Graduate Education in Agriculture and Natural Resources (UC) and from partner universities under the Master of Science in Food Security and Climate Change (MSFSCC) project converged at SEARCA this 15 July 2019 for the joint opening of the UC-MSFSCC Summer School and the MSFSCC Training of Trainers.
This year's Summer School with theme "Sustainable and Resilient Food Systems in Vulnerable Areas" is jointly organized by the University of the Philippines Los Banos (UPLB), the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna (BOKU), Universitas Gadjah Mada (UGM) and SEARCA. It will run until 31 July 2019 with field work in Camarines Sur on 19 – 29 July.
The Training of Trainers, which is being held simultaneously with the Summer School, aims to discuss the planning and implementation of the MSFSCC core course on Sustainability Assessment in Agricultural Production and Food Processing, including the technical and administrative challenges for instituting such a transdisciplinary course. It will consider both the content and pedagogy related to the course, as well as look at budgeting, programming, student assessment and reporting. The training is led by experts from Montpellier SupAgro and Kasetsart University (KU).
The UC consists of UPLB, UGM, KU, Institut Pertanian Bogor (IPB), and Universiti Putra Malaysia (UPM) as regular members with Tokyo University of Agriculture (NODAI), National Taiwan University (NTU), Universitas Brawijaya (UB), University of British Columbia (UBC), and Gottingen University (UG) as associate and affiliate members. SEARCA serves as Secretariat of the Consortium.
The MSFSCC project is partly funded by ERASMUS+ under its Capacity Building for Higher Education component. The project is led by KU with the other regular members of the UC, Central Luzon State University (CLSU), Prince of Songkla University (PSU), Chiang Mai University (CMU), Nilai University, Royal University of Agriculture (RUA) and University of Battambang (UBB) as university partners in the region, with BOKU, SupAgro and UG as university partners in Europe. SEARCA, Agrinatura and Agreenium are network partners of the project.
