Norwegian University of Life Sciences - UMB (Norway)

URL: http://www.umb.no/

The Norwegian University of Life Sciences (UMB) began in 1859 as the only Norwegian agricultural post-graduate college, a mainly educational institution. UMB is recognised as a leading international centre of knowledge, focused on higher education and research within environmental and biosciences. In total, UMB has some 2,800 students of which about 248 are PhD students.

The Agroecology group in the Department of Plant and Environmental Sciences at UMB has been providing courses in Agroecology and Organic farming since 1985. Since 1999 the group has offered an international Master Programme in Agroecology, where presently students from more than 15 countries are enrolled. The group has a strong record of studying and developing agroecological pedagogics, and has published widely in the field. UMB has played a leading role in the establishment and development of the Nordic School of Agroecology (AGROASIS) of the NOVA University Network, and is an active member of ENOAT since 1998.

UMB is mainly involved in the educational design activities (WP3 leader), where it will lead the design of the educational scenarios related to the agricultural universities; will also coordinate the design and development of the OA and Agroecology domain model in WP2; will play a major role during the content population, contributing content to the ENOAT repository and the repository with publicly-available content (responsible for Nordic content collection and description); will participate actively in the dissemination and exploitation of the project results, especially in forming liaisons with other agricultural universities (though NOVA and BOVA) and creating a European network of interested/affiliated organisations.

Key People