Abstract:

Agriculture perhaps one of the subjects being at the state of sunset conditions all over the world started at the end of 20th century up till now. The number of enrolled freshman students declines significantly due to a major shift of interest to more indrustry-based subjecst that are seen offers a better job for the graduates as compared to agriculture-based disciplines. Consequently, it is essential for agricultural colleges to change strategy to meet the demand of freshman students to win challeges of 21th century.In addition to that the global issues on climate changes, biodeversity conservation and sustainability have forced us to reconstruct the traditional-oriented curriculum of agriculture to meet such demands which have lead the Indonesian Communication Forum of Higher Education in Agriculture concurred to recommend the establishment of a new study program of agro-eco technology adheres to the faculty of agriculture since the academic year of 2007.
In this context, the Faculty of Agriculture, Brawijaya University has taken immediate action by conducting a tracer study as the basis of (1) SWOT analysis towards the steakholder demand, market orientation and scientific vision; (2) reconstruction of curriculum that was designed to address the achievement of graduate competency on food safety, food security, nature conservation, environmental impacts and economic stability.
This paper describes the leason learnt derived from experiences on designing and developing the agro-eco technology study program, the response of freshman students and the employability of the first graduate from Brawijaya University.

Keywords:

Faculty of Agriculture, agro-eco technology, competency-based curriculum design and development, sustainable agriculture.