It must be remembered that the core business of academic departments in colleges of

agricultural and life sciences at land Grant Universities is still teaching and learning, just as in any

university, public or private. It is perhaps the foundation reason for being, upon which research and

extension programs are built. If this is true, then it seems reasonable to expect published output

generated by academic departments to reflect some appropriate level of publications oriented toward

the teaching and learning function. Traditionally, there have very few publications dedicated to

teaching and learning subjects in the Food and Resource Economics Department. But again, given

the dominance of the research and extension responsibilities, this should not be too surprising.

 It must be noted that the faculty in most academic departments in colleges of agricultural

and life sciences, and other non-education colleges also, are not trained to be teachers, but rather

trained to be basic and applied researchers. While this training often transfers well to the analytical

and information-generation and transfer aspects of the extension function, it does not transfer so

well to the teaching function. Thus, many agricultural economists may not feel confident in

addressing teaching-related topics, often in spite of considerable teaching experience and success.

Again, it is possible that a contributing factor is the lack of appropriate outlets for such writings.

Thus, writing on the subjects of teaching and learning is, at best, not encouraged, and, at worst,

discouraged by the lack appropriate publication outlets and support for such endeavors.

 Given the situation outlined above, and the continuing increase in emphasis on the teaching

function at both the college and university level, a new publication series is being introduced

specifically to provide a publication outlet for and focus on teaching and learning. The new series

is entitled the "Teaching and Learning Paper Series" to reflect not only the importance of teaching

activities, but also the importance of learning activities and the fact that the facilitation of student