We have designed a program to help and encourage students to develop and appreciate the broader ethical/environmental/social issues that are associated with technical solutions in their disciplines and to help students embrace efforts to minimize or avoid negative environmental impacts of crop production practices. The program emphasizes real life situations that can affect agriculture and society on a broad level.

You will be given a role to play and a technical problem to solve. After a technical solution is reached, you will be placed in a new role that has to deal with ethical dilemmas associated with the technical problems/solutions. You will be asked to make a personal decision and type a 300-500 word statement justifying your decision and reasoning. You must do this prior to attending the Thinker session. Then, you must attend and participate in class debate over the issue in the "Thinker" discussion period. During this period, students may be divided into different interest groups that look at the issues from different viewpoints. Students are allowed to discuss issues and present summary statements to the group. At the end of the period, a final vote on the technical decision in view of the "larger" issues may be taken. For this vote, we have each student vote their personal conscience.

Thinker Sessions usually are related to topics covered during the previous week's course material but do not have to be and may be related to a current event or issue related to our course material. Some of the Thinker topics are presented on the computer and others will be presented by hardcopy in the Plants Learning Center). But the guidelines and requirements for participation remain the same: 1)Study the technical issue and identify the solution, 2) study the ethical or envrionmental issue related to the technical problem/solution and formulate a personal decision, 3) type a justification statement and bring to the Thinker Session, and 4) actively particpate in the class discussions during the Thinker session.

This program will help you consider issues that are broader than the technical level. It will give you an opportunity to practice higher learning skills including analyzing, evaluating, recommending, judging, synthesis, and application, as well as improve your communication and persuasive skills. The issues are real life ones. So go ahead, put on your "decision making hat" and have fun while earning bonus points!

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