Collaboration and Institutional Innovation

The intended purpose of this article is to provide a policy educator’s perspective on issues that are likely to affect agriculture, food, and its related industries, resources, and interests for the remainder of the 21st century. That is a tall order for an educator who spent more time in the last century than in the current one in a discipline that is less than a century old. The past is not prologue for the future. This article does review the author’s perceptions regarding public policy education history, track record, changing environment, development of new institutional models, and continuous search for resources. The challenge in addressing this topic is to make a few key points regarding the relevance and importance of collaboration and institutional innovations in public policy education without too much wandering around. It is hard to boil one’s chosen profession down to a few lessons learned for the sake of posterity. But how else can we expect the next generation to learn from our efforts, successes, and mistakes.