Our Center recognizes the need to train IPM scientists, educators, and practitioners. It is critical to maintaining the IPM knowledge base that there are trained individuals who understand IPM basics, whether students or professionals or those from other fields. Our Center, in partnership with individuals in academia, aims to educate students, both young and old, in IPM through online and face-to-face, hands-on courses, and through research and extension projects. An invaluable component of education at the undergraduate level is the internship. Our Center is capable of advising students on internship projects that provide real-world experience and allow for partnerships to be built with growers, educators, researchers, and industries who will want to work with these interns and possibly employ them post-graduation.

One example of our Center’s work in this area is the collaborative effort with each state IPM coordinator in the 12-state region to develop an undergraduate IPM training program for the Northeast. The goal is to create the infrastructure to train highly-motivated and talented undergraduate students in the fundamentals of IPM so that they build the skills necessary for graduate study or an academic, business, or government career. The objectives are to 1) provide hands-on experience with IPM practices at educational institutions throughout the Northeast; 2) train undergraduate students in the field of IPM to equip them with the knowledge to join the agricultural and pest management workforce, or pursue undergraduate and graduate studies with confidence and vital skills; and 3) provide undergraduate students with strong mentoring, research, and extension experiences to ensure their success at the next level.

Our Center works to provide training and education directly through projects, such as StopPests, or indirectly by exhibiting at conferences or co-sponsoring a poster session at a meeting, such as the International IPM Symposium. Our Center has organized sessions on cutting-edge topics, such as advanced technology, put together training material on the brown marmorated stink bug, and then posted the videos on YouTube. The platforms for educating elementary students to professionals ranges from workshops with lectures to online, interactive webinars to conference calls. With continued development of communication tools, our Center will be taking the lead in incorporating the latest and most effective into our teaching and education.