Diploma in Agricultural Sustainability

at Lakeland College - Vermilion Campus Canada

As you work towards your one-year certificate or two-year diploma, you’ll learn about:

• Human development
• Health, safety and nutrition to support child development
• How to create a creative and developmentally-appropriate curriculum and design a safe and inviting space for children
• How to support children with exceptionalities
• The business side of running a childcare practice.

Each semester has a practicum. Your third practicum is unique to Lakeland. You and your classmates will set up and run a play program. Together, you’ll:

• Create a parent handbook
• Plan the activities, snacks and schedule
• Create a dynamic theme for the space
• Put your theory into practice

• Take the next step in your environmental career with Lakeland's applied degree.
• Choose to major in either reclamation and remediation or monitoring and environmental protection. Get equipped to be a project manager, inspector, or specialist.
• Whether you come from a diploma or degree program, this applied degree will build on and add to your practical skills
• In the first year you’ll build advanced technical and field skills. You’ll also connect with industry on field trips.
• In the second year you’ll put your knowledge to work in an 8-month placement.
• You complete the program with a capstone presentation about your practicum.

Break ground for an agricultural business career at Lakeland College.

Start agribusiness by choosing where you want to focus:

• Crops
• Livestock
• Marketing

 Whatever your stream, you’ll grow your agricultural and business knowledge. You'll:

• Evaluate new and future technologies for agriculture
• Develop commodity marketing skills
• Learn financial and risk management
• Receive negotiations and sales training
• Create marketing plans
• Expand your leadership and management skills

You’ll put what you learn into action:

• Develop and present business plans
• Operate a farm through a simulation course
• Plan an event (Band in the Sand)
• Compete in an agribusiness case competition
• Host and run a major retail event

Environmental monitoring and protection emphasizes water quality protection, a growing area of employment and environmental concern.  You'll learn how to protect and sustainably manage both water and land resources through field procedures and best practices such as protecting surface water and riparian habitats. 

Whether on a field trip or in a lab, your hands-on training uses modern field equipment to learn how to do full environmental monitoring, field surveys and protection programs for water and soilsstudents measure water flow.  You’ll be job ready on two fronts: practical job skills and industry-required safety certification. That includes safe ATV and boat operation.

You’ll develop employable skills in environmental sampling, site assessment and waste management. They include:

• Surface water, ground water, air, vegetation and soil monitoring & sampling techniques
• Field techniques in biomonitoring and habitat assessment
• Phase I and II site assessments in upstream oil and gas, commercial and industrial settings

Combine your love of the outdoors with employable skills from Lakeland’s Applied Environmental Sciences major.

You now have 2 options:
Take the first year courses and earn a certificate or move into the 2nd year of the applied environmental major, or another of our environmental sciences majors.
 
You’ll start by learning a wide range of environmental concepts related to water, soil and plants. You start in the classroom, but you’ll be in outdoor labs within your first month.
Your training is fun, hands-on and useful. You'll apply and practice what you’ve learned using real-life situations. These are the same skills you’ll use throughout your career; skills that employers will notice. They include:

• Aquatic habitat assessments
• Wetlands & soil classification
• Water monitoring and sampling
• Environmental site assessment
• Plant identification

Through our program you’ll gain skills and experience to ensure industry and the environment can coexist. This means either reclaiming disturbed lands or minimizing industry’s effects on natural habitats

You’ll learn how to

• Classify, manage and conserve soils
• Recognize and understand a variety of ecosystems
• Do detailed site assessments
• Apply reclamation regulations, guidelines and techniques to disturbed lands

You’ll visit and study forested, mined and cultivated lands as well as native and reclaimed areas.

On field trips , you’ll see current industry practices and technologies. In hands-on field labs you’ll develop and practice more than 20 applied skills industry wants.

You’ll develop essential skills such as:  

• Observing, reporting and assessing skills in case management situations  
• Building therapeutic relationships  
• Helping children and youth who have behavioural or learning difficulties  
• Supporting family interventions  
• Recognizing symptoms of abuse & addiction  
• Building resiliency  
• Working with children and youth in diverse setting

Ecosystems and biodiversity are at the heart of conservation and restoration ecology (CARE).
The acronym fits. As a CARE graduate you’ll be making a difference for plants, soils, water and wildlife. Not just for now, but for future generations.

How you’ll do it is by learning practical field skills. Enough skills you'll be able to work in the field between 1st and 2nd year.
In second year, you’ll focus on best management practices and stewardship techniques. You’ll learn how to renew, restore and or conserve anything from grasslands to forest.

Field labs, outdoor classrooms, if where you practice [applied skills].  Some examples include:

• Identify critical habitat requirements for plants and animals
• Use environmental standards to classify wetland, forest and grassland
• Assess, inventory and map disturbed and undisturbed ecosystems
• Apply restoration techniques to real rural and urban landscapes
• Collect field data and report per industry standards

As a graduate you’re work-force ready. You also qualify for an Alberta Institute of Agrologists or the Alberta Society of Professional Biologists designations.

Lakeland's Bachelor of Agriculture Technology prepares you to take on the challenges of this rapidly evolving sector.

Integrating computer technologies and the Internet of Things has transformed agriculture. At Lakeland, you'll be immersed in those kinds of hands-on, real world experiences--experiences that bring together ag tech with production and business management. You'll use the latest in:

• Ag equipment and its tech
• Software
• Hardware
• Digital devices

 You'll learn:

• On our Student-Managed Farm–powered by New Holland
• In your lab, the new ag tech centre
• From your industry practicum

 Graduate with expertise and technical skills including:

• Precision data systems
• Machinery learning
• Artificial intelligence
• Robotics
• Bioengineering 

Focus on the creatures that live in our forests, lakes, prairies, rivers and wetlands as you prepare to be an accredited wildlife and fisheries technician.

You’ll learn to identify-- by sight, sound or sign-- the smallest creatures in a pond to the largest animals on land. That means you’ll learn how to:

• Use spotting scopes and trail cameras
• Identify songbirds to owls, and frogs to toads by their calls
• Identify wildlife by tracks, scat, burrows, nests and chews

You’ll spend lots of time in the field learning and practicing applied skills such as electrofishing, GPS operation and live trapping. You’ll earn outdoor certificates including wilderness first aid, bear awareness, and quad/snowmobile/watercraft operation.

In class, you’ll learn about:

• Both animal and plant biology and ecology
• Conserving species-at-risk
• Protected areas, and conserving and enhancing habitat
• Game and harvest management
• Wildlife diseases