K-State's department of horticulture, forestry and recreation resources and Division of Continuing Education will offer a 16-credit hour graduate certificate program in horticultural therapy beginning this fall.
The program will train professionals to use live plants and the growing environment to heal and rehabilitate people.
Candice Shoemaker, professor of horticulture and director of the program, said the new graduate certificate at K-State was developed to meet the demand for distance learning programs in horticultural therapy, an emerging profession and practice.
Horticultural therapy is accepted as a viable treatment for individuals in places like vocational training centers, rehabilitation hospitals, nursing homes, veterans' facilities, hospice, alcohol treatment centers and cancer treatment centers. It has been linked to positive outcomes like creating a sense of hope, reducing stress, developing social and cognitive skills and improving the quality of life in patients.
Most course work for the graduate certificate program will be offered online, and the curriculum consists of five required graduate-level courses that may be applied to a K-State master's degree. More information is available at http://www.dce.k-state.edu/ag/horticultural-therapy
K-State experts in food safety and security will train special visitors from Egypt on topics related to food safety policies.
K-State's Doug Powell, associate professor of food safety, and Justin Kastner, assistant professor of food safety and security, both in the department of diagnostic medicine and pathobiology in K-State's College of Veterinary Medicine, will train five U.S. Department of Agriculture Foreign Agricultural Service Cochran Fellows visiting from Egypt.
Instruction started July 23 and will continue through Aug. 4 via lectures and with field trips in the Manhattan area. The sessions will cover topics such as food safety-related legislation, foodborne illness prevention, international regulations and import-export controls.
The training sessions will take place at the K-State Alumni Center, and the field trips will include tours of facilities and food processing plants at K-State and in northeast Kansas. Kastner said the training is similar to the training that took place last summer with Cochran Fellows from Thailand.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture's Foreign Agricultural Service administers the Cochran Fellowship Program. It is U.S.-based and provides agricultural training opportunities for senior and mid-level specialists and administrators. Countries must be classified as middle-income, an emerging democracy or an emerging market to be eligible.