The AHTA requires 12 semester hours and a minimum of four courses from the following topics:
Online horticulture courses are popping up right and left. I'm currently looking for a good plant pathology course for next spring. I haven't run any of these by the AHTA board yet, but from what I can tell they would all be credit bearing. So far I have found the following:
Fundamentals of Plant Pathology: a distance education course every Fall semester (late August – December) at the University of Florida. Contact Michael Sisk at mjsisk@ufl.edu
Plant Pathology: Auburn University offered on-line every May. Contact Kathy S. Lawrence, Ph.D. lawrekk@auburn.edu for more info.
Plant Pathology: University of Georgia, distance learning course. Contact Cookie Smith, General Advisor, IDL Georgia Center for Continuing Education, University of Georgia, Athens, Georgia 30602, cookie.smith@georgiacenter.uga.edu, 706-583-8206, 1-800-877-3243
Other courses:
Penn State offers Horticultural Science in spring and fall online.
Iowa State offers 1 credit courses in Topics in Horticulture courses including: Greenhouse Crops (Houseplants), Nursery Crops (Herbaceous Perennials), Nursery Crops (Annual Garden Flowers), Vegetable Crops, and Introduction to Horticulture. Each costs $212 plus $50 delivery fee. This list was as of 2006. For more info contact:
Southwest Iowa Regents Resource Center
3501 Harry Langdon Blvd
ISD Campus, Careers Bldg
Council Bluffs, Iowa 51503
Phone: 712‐366‐3647
Fax: 712‐366‐1723
E‐mail: swirrc@iastate.edu
Warning! Courses offered by ACS Distance Education.
4-6-2009 ACS Distance Education is not accredited and will not meet AHTA's requirements. Too bad, because the course I started was great!
I have found another on-line source for horticulture classes: Texas Tech Horticulture Program. They are certainly accredited. I'm taking two courses starting at the end of May and will post here on how that goes. They only teach on-line courses in a two-year rotation, so if you want to take courses here, plan ahead. I've taken Intro to Horticulture, Herbaceous Plant Materials and Entomology. I think they are figuring out how online courses should work. I wish University Of Phoenix offered hort courses because they have the system down! Beverly Brown Updated 12-21-2009
Texas Tech courses are fine - but the red tape with getting enrolled and paying for courses is a terror -- but possible. And it's expensive. I've also found another university that offers hort courses on-line -- North Carolina State University. Here's their schedule per Dr. Helen Kraus as of today:
Submitted 6-29-09 bjb
Introduction to Horticulture
The University of Georgia's online HORT 2000 satisfies the qualification for "Intro to Horticulture".
The tuition is $203 per credit hour, for a total of $609. They are registering for the Spring Semester until February 5th.
http://www.georgiacenter.uga.edu/idl/courses/offerings/horticulture/HORT2000.phtml