Integrated Decision Making and Management Skills

Introductory course to the graduate program. Some of the topics that will be covered are: motivation for management, decision making, introduction to systems, information management, and introductory statistics. Additionally,
the course will focus on effective communications topics including: how communication works, understanding your strongest communication attributes, cultivating leadership skills, communicating with personnel, and tested approaches to team processes and decisions like Coordinated Resource Management. An overview of subsequent courses will be provided and participating faculty for future modules will be introduced.

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Building the Business

This course is designed to equip students with the skills required to organize and implement a business. The tools learned in this course will be applicable to managing a farm, ranch or any small business. This course will also explore human resource management and introduce and explore new and innovative marketing possibilities (alternative revenue sources) to the modern manager. Information will also be presented on marketing the recreational and aesthetic value of the land.

Understanding and Managing the Land Resource

This course will introduce to current and future managers the fundamentals of natural resource response that contribute to successful land management. How to read and understand the land will be a key element in this course. Also included will be impacts of ecological process on operation products and the use of mechanism-based understanding to produce reliable management responses. Important elements of using biological tools, fire, mechanical intervention and chemicals to manage land will be included.

Understanding and Managing the Animal Resource

This course will focus on nutritional planes for animals in forage based environments and their impacts on reproduction in grazing animals. The focus will be on evaluating the nutritional requirements of a variety of animals including wildlife and how those requirements vary by stage and type of production, body size, activity and environmental stress. The course will evaluate different techniques to quantify the nutritional status of animals as well as explore effectiveness of nutritional supplementation. The course will also explore reasons for reproductive success and possible management
options for optimizing reproductive performance.

Animal Production Systems

This course will deal with the specific issues involved in developing animal management systems for one or more species of animals in a forage-based environment. The content will integrate ecological, nutritional, and reproductive traits to comprise good alternative routes to achieve desired product outputs. Genetic improvement methodology will be presented as an alternative to increasing performance of the animal enterprise.

Integrated Grazing Management

This is an advanced course in grazing management. The course will focus on understanding plant growth and response to defoliation, nutrient dynamics, animal foraging and the plant-animal interface. The question is, "what are the processes and what can be managed?" Knowledge of these processes will be used to create grazing management programs to achieve desired plant and animal response. The focus is the land.

Analyzing and Managing the Business

This course focuses on the fundamentals of managing the business of resource management. The student will be able to assimilate, prepare and analyze records and financial statements from the business enterprise and will learn to formulate appropriate budgets from records and other relevant data sources. The student will also understand the implications of income taxes and the opportunity cost of capital in business decisions and will devise strategies to manage these issues.

Understanding Policy and Emerging Issues

1. Policy Analysis--To understand how and why policies are made: why policies are needed, who the participants are, how policy is implemented, and how they impact society.

2. Agricultural and Community Issues—To study problems in agriculture that merit policy consideration and how rural landowners interact with the community.

3. U.S. Policies-- To familiarize you with domestic agricultural and resource policy.

4. Policy Applications-- To apply your newfound analysis skills to address policy problems.

Monitoring for Success

This course will address the process of effectively gathering information in regard to management meeting the goals and objectives of the operation. Techniques for acquisition of monitoring information and synthesis will be discussed and practiced. Elements of range, animal, economic and human resource monitoring will be included. The student will be able to evaluate management effectiveness based on qualitative and quantitative responses of the various components of the system.

Products to Profit

This course will focus on marketing and all aspects of the enterprise, including the production, land and forage resources. All potential products and marketing opportunities at different stages of production will be discussed. The various benefits and cost of different marketing alternatives will be explored. Students will learn how to evaluate different marketing alternatives and compare to operational objectives to arrive at the best available marketing decision.

The Integrated Resource Management Plan

This course will integrate the many key concepts presented in earlier courses. These concepts will be solidified and woven into the management of the system. Students will formulate a complete management plan for all aspects of the land resource. Students will also learn how to evaluate the effectiveness of the plan and how to make adjustments to the outcome after implementation of the plan.