Opportunities in Digital Agriculture

As an undergraduate in the College of Agriculture, you have numerous opportunities to develop knowledge and skills in data science and digital agriculture. Each of our 11 academic departments offers data-focused courses to enhance your expertise in this area.

Prepare for a Data-Driven Future

In today’s digital age, data skills are essential across agriculture, food, life, and natural resource sciences. As a College of Agriculture undergraduate, you’ll find opportunities to build expertise in data science and digital agriculture through courses in all 11 departments. Gain experience in programming, databases, GIS, statistics, and data visualization—skills that employers seek in interns and graduates alike. Talk to your advisor about adding data science to your degree plan.

Data Science/Digital Agriculture Courses

While the fundamentals are the same across disciplines, the way data is collected and used can be different. Each of our 11 academic departments offer data-focused courses and most of the majors align well with the additional certifications identified below. Talk with your advisor about what courses might fit best in your plan of study.

Data-Driven Agriculture Minor 

Pursuing the Data Driven Agriculture Minor allows you to gain valuable skillsets to leverage the complex data sources that are becoming increasingly important in all aspects of the agriculture industry from production through processing to marketing and decision-making.

This minor will help you understand the entire data pipeline from data origination, computations, analytics, visualization, to informed decision making and automation. You will gain valuable experience with organizing and managing data. There are 21 credits required, but many of these may overlap or fit within your major field of study.

Data-Driven Agriculture Minor in the Purdue Catalog

Certificate in Applications of Data Science 

This Purdue certificate is designed to prepare graduates to develop and apply techniques and tools to extract knowledge from complex data.

It requires 16 credits of targeted coursework, but many of these may overlap or fit within your major field of study. You will learn statistics, computation, data management and analytics, and data ethics. The final 6 credits toward the certificate are applications which will tie to your major field of study related to data visualization and data-driven decision making. With some planning and coordination from your advisor, many College of Agriculture students are able to obtain this certificate without any additional credits.

Certificate in Applications of Data Science

Learning Communities

Part of Purdue’s Integrative Data Science Initiative, which is designed to train students in data literacy, the Data Mine Learning Community is a research-based community created to introduce students to data science concepts and equip them to create solutions to real-world problems. 

The Agriculture Technology and Innovation Learning Community covers topics of technologies related to environmental protection, plant and livestock production systems, agricultural machinery, and more. Through tours and extracurricular activities, you will get a broad-spectrum view of tech in ag and meet many faculty and staff across the college. With a little historical perspective but mostly a forward-looking focus, we will introduce you to some innovation opportunities on campus and hopefully spark your inventiveness toward the pursuit of new solutions.