The Degree course in agricultural engineering provides core competences in the field of agricultural production, of agricultural land surveying techniques, as well as of the main analysis, implementation and management techniques for agricultural businesses.
Graduates of this course should acquire basic knowledge in propaedeutical subjects such as mathematics, statistics,, physics, chemistry, plant and animal biology, needed to understand the basics of specific professional subjects. This knowledge enables graduate to achieve professional competences including the principles of agronomics, cartography and land survey, rural buildings and animal productions. Graduates will also acquire the competences they need to solve some applicative issues, and this will enable them to carry out technical assistance activities in the agricultural sector. Graduates will also acquire the knowledge and operational competence needed to carry out land valuation and basic design of business plants and works.
Graduates of this course are capable of managing water distribution in irrigation districts and planning land reclamation works. The profile requires the dialectics needed to disseminate and argue his/her technical ideas with specialists and non specialists, as well as the command of English language or of another European language needed to reed and understand technical texts, to carry out professional exchanges and basic dissemination activities.
The acquired competences enable graduates to face and solve, as junior professionals, the following issues:
- Consulting and planning with respect to artefacts for agricultural farms, water and drainage plants, greenhouses, stables, rural buildings and rural streets;
- Choice of machines and equipment for agricultural production lines;
- Management., in the fields of competence of reclamation consortia, of collective distribution works and land reclamation works;
- Project analysis and allocation of funds for land improvement in farms;
- Implementation of European Union programmes for the use of European economic resources in agriculture.
The educational programme provides for frontal teaching, laboratory and field practice and mid term tests.
The duration of this course is three academic years. To obtain the degree, students should have acquired 180 credits, including credits related to the knowledge of an European language, besides Italian. The educational programme entails:
- 19 mandatory examinations;
- 1 elective examination;
- 1 computing skills test;
- 1 language test;
- A practice period in associated facilities
- Final examination on course-specific issues.
12 elective credits may be acquired in other degree courses of the Faculty of Agriculture as well as in other Faculties of the University of Palermo or of other Italian and foreign Universities.
