Bioproducts Sustainability, a University Cooperative Center for Excellence in Education

Preparing tomorrow’s workforce

The biorefinery industry is already beginning to appear on the horizon, bringing with it novel technologies and innovative processes for converting biomass to fuels, chemicals, and materials. To further its development, a workforce that is knowledgeable in the structure, properties and behavior of renewable feedstocks is needed.

Funded by a USDA Higher Education Grant and working with North Carolina State University and North Carolina A&T, The University of Tennessee Agricultural Experiment Station is developing a new academic curriculum to provide that advanced workforce. BIOSUCCEED’s innovation is based on the development of a complete MS degree program that can be delivered by any of the three University partners, and via distance education. It will develop six graduate level classes, two classes aimed at undergraduates, and modules that can be inserted in individual classes. Ultimately, these classes will be offered at no cost to the national biomass community for customization by any institution around the country.

Advancing the Quality of Education

Biomass is a renewable and sustainable resource consisting of forest, agriculture, and organic-based materials (biomaterials=value-added biomass) that can be exploited to address current societal energy and materials needs in a manner similar to the current petroleum-based economic paradigm. A confluence of factors, including regional importance of biomass, current curricula, land grant and agricultural missions, regional energy policy issues, and existing collaborative arrangements have created a favorable environment for the creation of an electronic, advanced degree program in biomass.

The goal and mission of BIOSUCCEED is to build and deliver excellent courses and instructional modules to support educational excellence and technological innovations related to biomass utilization. The project is intended to catalyze vigorous and effective research in such areas as the composition and characterization of biomass, and chemical and biological processes used to convert biomass to useful products and the economics and environmental impacts of harvesting and collecting biomass and residues.

BIOSUCCEED will diverge from the most usual approaches to pedagogy. The approach that will be used in course development can perhaps best be compared to the development of open-source software. Thus, because the end goal of the exercise is to provide course materials that can be made widely available, a policy of open content sharing will be practiced by the participating faculty and participating institutions at each stage.

BIOSUCCEED will develop the future bio-workforce and move the nation’s ability to develop a sustainable bioeconomy forward.

BioSucceed Flyer (Download and Print a PDF File)