VISION
Contribute meaningfully to the development of Agriculture Sector in Papua New Guinea.
MISSION
To provide knowledge, training and research that will enhance the development of social, economic and environmental aspects of Agriculture across Papua New guinea.
HISTORY
In 1971, the now Department of Agriculture at the Papua New Guinea University of Technology (Unitech) was established as the Faculty of Agriculture at Port Moresby under the administrative control ofUniversity of Papua New Guinea (UPNG). The founding vision of the Faculty was training professional manpower for the agriculture sector including teaching, research and community development of Papua New Guinea. The overall mission was to develop and implement appropriate academic curricula adept with the changing knowledge and skills, focussed on a strong research based teaching.
Late Professor Brown Enyi was the foundation Professor and Dean of the Faculty of Agriculture at UPNG. The Agriculture Faculty was an addition to the existing Faculties, such as the Faculty of Science, the Medical Faculty, and the Faculty of Law and among others. Professor Brown Enyi, at the direction of the University Council, guided the development of the undergraduate degree program. While developing the curriculum, the name for the new degree program was debated at length. After much deliberation, the undergraduate program was named as the Bachelor of Agriculture (BAG), a 4 year degree program with an additional one year Bachelor of Agriculture Honours (BAG-Hons) program for academically top students. Although the curriculum was reviewed a number of times, albeit minor, to keep pace with changing knowledge, the name of the degree program essentially remained until its first major review in1985.
The BAG was a 4 year degree program with streaming into the Agriculture after completing the first year Science foundation courses covering basic science courses (plant and animal biology, chemistry, physics) including mathematics, language and economics courses. The remaining 3 years of the degree program covered courses in Agricultural Sciences, namely, Crop Science, Animal Science, Soil Science, Agricultural Engineering, Agricultural Economics and Agricultural Extension.
After 15 years of its establishment at UPNG, the Faculty was transferred to Unitech in 1985 as the Department of Agriculture. The decision to transfer the Faculty of Agriculture to Unitech was taken in 1985 after a tripartite consultation process between UPNG, Unitech, and the Office of Higher Education (OHE) following a National Executive Council decision. Much of the arguments for the transfer of the faculty were centred on logistics and the greater need to expose the students to a wider range of agricultural production practices. The first argument was to unify and deliver the BAG degree program in one location rather than the split arrangement with the final year of the program completed at Lae, Unitech. The one location idea of delivering the program was to maximize resources use and make it cost effective.
The transfer enabled the first major review of the BAG program in 1985. This was done to unify the split offerings into a unified program and secondly to adjust the program to merge our program into Unitech structure of academic programs, particularly in the first year foundation year courses. In that review, the Bachelor of Agriculture (BAG) Degree program was changed to Bachelor of Science in Agriculture (BSAG). The revised program was implemented in1986.
Just before the Faculty of Agriculture was transferred to Unitech in 1986, the Government’s Department of Fisheries program conducted at Unitech was transferred to New Island, where it exists today as a Fisheries’ College. The Fisheries Building left behind was then allocated to the Department of Agriculture to conduct its academic programs. This building housed the Head of Department’s (HoD) Office, reception, staff common room, 2 lecture rooms, 1 laboratory, 1 storage room and 1 preparation room. The Department, however, was faced with inadequate space in terms of teaching laboratories, lecture rooms and staff offices. The space problem was swiftly addressed, with the Forestry Department, making available some lecture rooms, offices for academic staff, and laboratory which were located in the then Department of Forestry Building. Laboratory 3, housed in the same building, now exists as the Unitech Analytical Services Laboratory (UASL). The Department also had a computer laboratory, which is now part of NATSL. Moreover, a 38 hectare farm was made available before the transfer of the Department from UPNG. In the later years green house and the Sir Julius Chan Postgraduate Building’s were added to the infrastructure of the Department. The green house was constructed soon after the transfer and the Postgraduate Building, which now houses the Unitech Biotechnology Centre (UBC), was established in 1996.
In 1998, the Department, under the leadership of Professor Innocent Onwueme, decided to conduct a review of its undergraduate program after its last major review in 1984/1985. This was the second major review after 23 years. In the revision, many existing courses were merged together and some new courses were introduced. The other two major changes made were: the introduction of a semester long Industrial Training or Attachment (IT) in the second semester of 3rd year; and specialization through the introduction of “Tracks”: science, production, extension and economics. Even though much of the review process was completed by 2000, it could not be implemented until 2003 due to severe staff shortage in the Department. Under the leadership of Professor Abdul Halim in February 2003, the revised undergraduate degree program was implemented.
In the same year, the Department took the initiative to create an outreach Centre in the Department to use it as a conduit to conduct community outreach programs. A centre titled South Pacific Institute for Sustainable Agriculture and Rural Development (SPISARD) was approved in the Departmental meeting and later, in November, 2003, endorsed by the Academic Board of the University for its Establishment as a Centre in the Department. In 2008, six more academic staff establishments were approved by the University, and following that the Department is staffed with 18 full- time academics.
In 2013, the Department conducted its third major review of the undergraduate degree program. In the consultation process with stakeholders and former students of the Department, the feedback suggested the need to provide a more in-depth knowledge through a general degree program than the tracked program which offered some specialization through tracking into science, production and extension. Few new courses such as Horticultural Science and Microbiology were introduced into the curriculum. The revised program was approved by the academic board in 2014 and is now under implementation.
The Department in 2010 developed a two year undergraduate degree program, known as the Bachelor of Agriculture and Rural Development (BARD). This program is tailor made targeting the middle managers of agriculture both in the public and private sectors. These are students who have attained certificates and diplomas, but not able to upgrade their formal education and qualifications to a Bachelors level.The program is offered on the distance mode with a six-week period of residential sessions beginning in November of each academic year. The residential sessions are conducted for subjects that cannot be completed without laboratory work/practicals and for those subjects that are difficult to understand without formal classroom instruction. The BARD program, which was implemented in 2011, graduated its first batch of 12 students in 2013 with the 2nd and 3rd batches of 22 and 13 students in 2014 and 2015, respectively.
The Department offered three different postgraduate programs; a 1 year Postgraduate Diploma (PGD) program, a 2 year Master of Philosophy (MPhil) program and a Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) program. The first one is course work based, while the latter two are research based programs. In 2011, a 2 year course- based Master of Science in Agriculture (MSc) program was initiated with first intake of aspirants in 2012. Between 1988 and 2015, the Department has graduated 108 postgraduate students (4 PhD, 31 MPhil, 6 MSc and 67 PGD). PGD program in Agriculture was phased out in 2016.