Virginia Tech organized a Symposium on Capacity Building for Agricultural Training and Education in Developing Countries on September 18-20, 2013 in Fairfax, VA under its InnovATE project. InnovATE’s objective is to identify and disseminate strategies for building “effective and financially sustainable agricultural education and training institutions and systems.” InnovATE partners include University of Florida, Penn State University, Tuskegee University, in addition to lead Virginia Tech.

Deborah Rubin, Digest Project Coordinator, was invited to speak on a panel about gender in agricultural education and training. She spoke about transforming the agricultural development curriculum to more systematically address gender issues in international agricultural higher education. In her talk, “How much is enough?: Thinking about education for gender-responsive agriculture,” she noted that the current USAID and US University programs currently known as the Feed the Future Innovation Labs for Collaborative Research and formerly Collaborative Research Support Programs have a strong record of increasing support for women graduate students and faculty across many scientific disciplines. These programs build international scientific networks, and networking has been shown to be of particular benefit for women scientists.

In addition to gender, the symposium held sessions on the role of Agricultural Education and Training in Post-Conflict situations and on new trends in Technical Vocational Education and Training. Presentations from the meeting are available at http://www.oired.vt.edu/innovate/events.php.