Presented By: Bob Williams, Texas A&M University-Commerce

Urban Agriculture is a required, junior level course for the major in Sustainable Agriculture and Food Systems that was approved in 2020. The course is offered each spring semester in an online, asynchronous format. It is open to any major as an elective course. This presentation will focus on the overall enrollment trends regarding total enrollment, as well as enrollment by major for the years 2021, 2022, 2023, and 2024. Data analyzed for this presentation included enrollment and student majors as reported on the detailed class roster for each year. Nominal data consist of majors represented in the course each year including Agricultural Sciences, Agribusiness, Agricultural Leadership, Education, and Communication (combined), Animal and Equine Sciences (combined), Ornamental Horticulture, Sustainable Agriculture and Food Systems, and majors Outside of the College of Agriculture. Enrollment by major will be presented in frequency and percentage of total enrollment by year. The frequency of Sustainable Agriculture and Food Systems majors increased during 2022, remained the same in 2023, and increased slightly in 2024. The frequency of Agricultural Sciences majors declined each year. Majors (combined) outside of the College of Agriculture varied by year but represented more than 10% of the total enrollment, annually. Agribusiness majors represented 11% in the 2021 but made up 57% in 2024. Clearly, students are interested in the topic with total enrollment in the course growing annually. While required for a relatively new major, students in that major alone could not provide sufficient credit hour production to justify offering the course every year. However, the popularity of the course, as an elective is growing. This leaves us with an objective for further investigation, to determine if it is the popularity of content or course delivery format that makes it an attractive elective for non-majors.