This presentation shares and reflects on lessons learned from the implementation of a yearlong Students as Partners (SaP) course within a college of agriculture at a large public research university. To our knowledge, our program is one of the only SaP programs to be housed within a college of agriculture. Despite its distinctiveness, we contend that SaP programs hold great potential for empowering leaders and learners within the realm of agricultural education.

Informed by decades of research and practice, SaP programs reimagine the conventional wisdom of higher education by granting students an active role in shaping how instructors approach curriculum development and teaching. In our case, this SaP program took the form of a credit-bearing course in which a cohort of 18 students partnered with instructors to serve as "curriculum consultants." For the first semester, students worked with faculty to design and implement curricular innovations for classes in forestry, equine management, agricultural biotechnology, and other disciplines. In the second semester, students took an active role in observing classes, conducting interviews with peers, and disseminating the impacts of their course innovations to a broader audience during a campus research symposium.

Consistent with the student-centered approach of SaP programs, this presentation focuses on sharing student reflections about the successes and difficulties that were encountered across the course of our program. In addition, students reported that this program enhanced students' feelings of community within the cohort and our college and provided important opportunities for students to engage with high-impact practices like connecting with faculty, conducting research, and collaborative projects.