Agricultural Leadership I Course Description

Agricultural Leadership I is a year-long course designed for students in grades 9-12 in North Carolina public secondary schools. It is also designed for home schooled students as well as students taking Agricultural Education in private schools. It is the primary course for students enrolled in the leadership component of the Agricultural Education curriculum. It is a technical course designed to introduce students to the fundamentals of leadership development. The textbook, Developing Leadership and Personal Skills, written by Sharon Hunter, Marshall Stewart, Brenda Scheil, Robert Terry, Jr., and Steven D. Faze, and published by Interstate Publishers, Inc., Danville, Illinois, copyright 1997, has been adopted as the major content of this course. You may order this textbook by writing:

This course is designed to encourage the development of leadership skills that are necessary to be successful in the vast agricultural industry. Personal and interpersonal leadership traits will be studied. The course is structured to make learning about leadership fun. It does this through the emphasis of the FFA and the career development activities related to leadership that are generated by being a part of this organization. It also encourages the development of record keeping skills through the requirement of establishing and maintaining a supervised agricultural experience program (SAE).

1. Determine who and what is leadership.
2. Develop personal responsibility in leadership.
3. Investigate ethics for a good agricultural leader.
4. Investigate social behavior necessary for a good agricultural leader.
5. Develop one-on-one communication skills for a leader.
6. Develop non-verbal communication necessary for a leader.
7. Develop people skills necessary for agricultural leadership.
8. Practice keeping commitments necessary for agricultural leadership.
9. Develop agricultural leadership roles and behavior.
10. Apply systems thinking to agricultural leadership development.
11. Assess personal mastery principles as they relate to agricultural leadership development.
12. Determine perceptions necessary for agricultural leadership.
13. Develop agricultural leadership by speaking in public.
14. Develop agricultural leadership through the leadership organization.
15. Develop agricultural leadership through the history of the leadership organization.

There are no specific prerequisites for this course other than the desire to learn more about agricultural leadership.

The textbook, Developing Leadership and Personal Skills, written by Sharon Hunter, Marshall Stewart, Brenda Scheil, Robert Terry, Jr., and Steven D. Faze, and published by Interstate Publishers, Inc., Danville, Illinois, copyright 1997, has been adopted as the major content of this course. You may order this textbook by writing:

Interstate Publishers, Inc.
510 North Vermilion Street
PO Box 50
Danville, IL 61834-0050
Telephone: 1-800-843-4774
Fax: 217-446-9706

Other resources you will need that may be obtained for a nominal fee by calling Belinda Niedwick at 919-515-4206 include:

Course requirement activities will be listed for each week of the course. You are to complete these activities and follow the directions for each individual activity as how best to deliver them to the instructor. Required activites will count 70% of your grade.

Two exams will also be given. One exam will be given during Week 9 and will cover the first half of the course. The second exam will be given during the final week and will cover the 2nd half of the course. The first exam will count for 10% of your grade and the second exam will count for 20% of your grade (30% total).

All work should be neat. There is no excuse for sloppy work. Hundreds of resumes are thrown into the trash every year because they aren't crisp and sharp.

All work should also poccess proper grammar. Words should be spelled correctly, sentences should be complete, paragraphs should be paragraphs, and rules of correct English usage should be followed.

ATTENDANCE

Web students are strongly encouraged to plan a regular time each week to go to the web site and complete the lesson. If you don't do this, you will quickly get behind. You may move through the lessons more rapidly than indicated on the syllabus; but you should not go slower.

This course does not have a laboratory. However, you will be working on your computer during the lessons. Thousands of computers are damaged each year because of power surges, and most of these come through the phone line and damage the modem. You are strongly encouraged to get a modem surge protector and/or to unplug you computer include the modem/phone connnection during stormy weather.

1. Each week you will click on the class link that corresponds to that week. You should complete the lesson some time during that week.

2. When you go the the weekly lesson, you are to view the list of activities for the lesson. This is your guide as to what you should learn.

3. Next, complete the activites by following the directions as listed. Some activities may have you contacting certain individuals by regular mail or telephone. Other activities may have you e-mailing responses to questions back to your instructor. Still other activities may have you identifying a proctor and disseminating information to him/her.

One of the benefits of taking a course on-line is the opportunity to experience a multitude of varied materials found on the Internet. In this class, we will try to utilize the power of the World Wide Web (WWW). Sites under "Activities" will be listed when deemed appropriate for the class. For some of the materials, you might need to have the Acrobat Reader on your computer. If you don't have this program, it can be downloaded for free from Adobe .

5. On most weeks, you will complete the activities that relate to the weekly lesson. When instructed, they must be e-mailed (or faxed) to the instructor of record for the course. The e-mail address is benjie_forrest@ncsu.edu and the fax number is 252-793-5142. .

6. You should establish a standard time every week to work on this class and then do it. You don't want to get behind because it will be hard to catch up.