Curriculum

Safety concepts, principles, practices, rules and regulations as they relate to agriculture will be explored. Developing and conducting safety programs, and conducting safety inspections and accident investigations are other aspects of the course.

Converting biorenewable resources into bioenergy and biobased products. Biorenewable concepts as they relate to drivers of change, feedstock production, processes, products, co-products, economics, and transportation/logistics. The pre-requisites are college algebra and introductory college chemistry.

Systems, components, operation practices, and safety procedures used in the chemical application industry. Liquid and granular application systems and respective components will be studied along with procedures for equipment sizing and maintenance, minimizing drift, systems calibration, and safe handling, transporting, storage, disposal and spill clean-up of agrichemicals.

Course begins with section on how to minimize errors while collecting spatial datasets. Datasets may include yield data, soil chemical and physical properties with real-time sensors, and soil nutrient data from grids or management zones. The course then continues with a section regarding data analytical techniques such as interpolation. The second half of the course will focus on writing prescriptions based on actual data obtained from industry leader experts. This portion of the course will highly integrate industry experts as well as hardware/software tools.

An overview of the current problems and technology in the fields of fire protection and fire prevention, with emphasis on industrial needs, focusing on the individual with industrial safety responsibilities.

A review of the common legal issues facing safety practitioners in the workplace. Includes OSHA, EPA and DOT regulations; workers' compensation, as well as common liability issues.

This course focuses on agricultural equipment that is commonly used in conjunction with GPS technology. Planters, combines, fertilizer application equipment and sprayer application equipment are commonly equipped with GPS equipment to control and record operational parameters. These parameters focus around the equipment's geographic location and can be recorded simultaneously with the volume of product applied and weather information (wind, temperature, humidity, etc.). The management of this equipment and the GPS technologies used to control and record this information are the focus of the course.

Identifies safety and health risks in industrial work environments. Focus on how managers and supervisors meet their responsibilities for providing a safe workplace for their employees. Includes the identification and remediation of workplace hazards. This course is 3 credits.

Introduction to occupational safety and health administration and management. Focus on development and management of safety programs and obtaining employee involvement in occupational safety programs. This course is 2 credits.

Fundamental principles of mechanics, heat, electricity, magnetism and electromagnetism and their relationship to energy utilization and conservation. Principles then applied to problem situations in agriculture and life sciences.

Principles and management for grain quality preservation. Grain drying and storage. Fans and airflow through grain. Grain handling methods and system planning. Grain quality measurement and end-use value analysis.

Basic foundations of injury causation and prevention in home, motor vehicle, public and work environments.

Analysis of processing and handling operations. Chemical and physical characteristics of agricultural products. Application of pyschrometrics. Power requirements, capacities, and efficiencies of drying and conveying systems. Discussion of safety issues, logistics, and survey of industry technologies.

Course begins with section on how Precision Agriculture Technology can be used to benefit a farm's financial sustainability. Discussion of various types of farm operations and currently available Precision Agriculture Technology that is already developed and in use will be examined. The course continues by considering cost factors that create barriers for farm operators to adopt Precision Agriculture. The second half of the course will focus on developing a plan to implement various technologies into an existing farm operation and draft a business plan for cost, equipment, and transition the farm into using the following types of technologies, GPS, GIS, VRA, RS, RTK and other types of tracking and monitoring systems.

There are many solutions to a given problem, but selecting the solution with the lowest annual cost would be the most desirable one. Modeling, linear programming and search optimization techniques along with spreadsheets allow us to examine alternative solutions for a problem. This course will introduce the key ideas of modeling and optimization of systems, and methods of management decision-making using Solver™ and MS-Excel™.