Outside teaching support personnel would be used for some of the education and training. The CCA manual and other materials would be used. Katie Miles (at ASA) has agreed to help with the program. Steve Sodeman already participates in SMSU’s classroom seminars. Other similar resources will be used, as needed. The applied-research and teaching field site is two miles from campus. A variety of crops and cropping scenarios are already used for Ag related classes at SMSU. CCA field exposure and utilization would fit right in with present teaching methods. Testing for CCA approval would be arranged using remote tools. SMSU has interactive teaching facilities.

Students in our proposed CCA educational program would be better prepared for the workplace. SMSU would also benefit in its capacity to serve the needs of agriculturally-related businesses and crop production supply-chain from the farmer to the retailer to the manufacturer.

Grant funding is needed to initiate this SMSU CCA educational program. We are making a relatively modest funding request, but it will be sufficient to get the job well. If funded, this grant will provide our students with the support they need to obtain the training, education, material, field maintenance and related items to prepare them to successfully earn CCA certification and be ready for the demands of job market.

Updated May 24, 2022:

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Executive Summary

The primary goal of SMSU’s 2020-2021 MSR&PC project is to create and promote an educational program that helps our students prepare to take and pass the Certified Crop Advisor (CCA) examination.
The major components of our project’s CCA educational programming effort are:

• SMSU faculty contacted representatives of the Minnesota Certified Crop Advisors (MCCA) organization and the American Society of Agronomy (ASA) to obtain resources and official materials that we could share with our SMSU students to increase awareness of the importance and relevance of CCA certification.
• In February 2020, before Pandemic restrictions were implemented, SMSU invited Dr. David Kee to visit directly with SMSU students, and help them realize the value of pursuing CCA Certification.
• In the beginning of Fall Semester 2020 at SMSU, SMSU Agriculture Faculty and the SMSU Ag Club used both class and meeting times to make students aware that CCA educational workshops would be offered. These workshops were scheduled to occur in both Fall and Spring to help interested students prepare to take the CCA Exams.
• SMSU students participated in the faculty-taught workshops in late November 2020, and also in early April 2021, just before the exams were administered. Because of the COVID-19 Pandemic, SMSU offered the workshops both in-person (socially distanced and masked) and on Zoom.
• The ASA assisted us by scheduling a test-time set-aside especially for students in April 2021.
• As we explained when SMSU filed for a No-Cost Extension (NCE) of our 2020-2021 project, a number or the activities originally planned for our project could not happen. We submitted a re-budget proposal, and it was approved through the NCE process. One aspect of SMSU’s re-budgeting process was to increase the subsidy from the grant to help students with the cost of the CCA examination fees. SMSU students who registered for the both the International and Minnesota CCA exams paid $25 each to sign-up for the exams, and the MSR&PC grant covered the remainder of the students’ exam fees.
• Seven SMSU students registered to take both CCA exams, and the ASA proctored these tests remotely because of the Pandemic during the week of April 14-20, 2021. Only six SMSU students actually took the exams. One student successfully passed the Minnesota CCA exam. No other SMSU student passed either the MN or the International CCA Exam during the April 2021 testing period.
• The SMSU students who took the exams were disappointed, but not defeated. They are ready to try again in either Fall Semester 2021 or Spring Semester 2022.

• SMSU faculty will research new teaching and learning strategies in an effort to help students have a higher success rate when they take the CCA exams again in the upcoming academic year.