Placement/Internship: involve the placement of students in agriculture, food or natural resources related businesses, on farms and ranches, in school laboratories, at community facilities, or in a verified non-profit organization to provide a "learning by doing" environment. These experiences may be paid or non-paid.
Ownership/Entrepreneurship: The student plans, implements, operates and assumes financial risks in a productive or service activity or agriculture, food or natural resources-related business. In these types of programs, the student owns the materials and other required inputs and keeps financial records to determine return on investments. An SAE ownership / entrepreneurship program provides students the opportunity to develop the necessary skills to become established in their own business or gain employment. A student moves from an ownership experience into a true entrepreneurship experience when he/she expands the business enterprise to include a business plan that focuses on development of new product, new production / processing processes
or additional market opportunities.
Research: As agriculture has become more scientific, there is a need to conduct research to discover new knowledge to meet the needs of a growing world. There are three major kinds of research SAE programs.
o Experimental - An extensive activity where the student plans and conducts a major agricultural experiment using the scientific process. The purpose of the experiment is to provide students firsthand experience in verifying, learning or demonstrating scientific principles in the AFNR career cluster, discovering new knowledge and using the scientific process. In an experimental SAE, there is a hypothesis and a control group, and variables are manipulated.
o Analytical – The student chooses real-world agriculture, food or natural resource- related problem that is not amenable to experimentation and designs a plan to investigate and analyze the problem. The student will gather and evaluate data from a variety of sources and then produce some type of finished product. The product may include a marketing display or marketing plan for a commodity, product or service; a series of newspaper articles; a land use plan for a farm; a detailed landscape design for a community facility; an advertising campaign for an agribusiness, and so forth. A student- led analytical SAE is flexible enough so that it could be used in any type of agricultural class, provides valuable experience and contributes to the development of critical thinking skills.
o Invention – The student identifies a need in agriculture, food or natural resource- related industry and performs research and analysis in order to solve a problem or increase efficiency by developing/adapting a new product or service to the industry. The student plans, documents and develops his/her innovation through the iterative processes of design, prototyping and testing with the goal of creating a marketable product or service.
School-based Enterprise: A student-managed, entrepreneurial operation in a school setting that provides goods or services that meet the needs of an identified market. To provide for the greatest educational value to the student, the SAE should replicate the workplace environment as closely as possible. A School-Based Enterprise SAE is oftentimes cooperative in nature with management decisions made by students, while the teacher is responsible for the integration of technical content and skills. School-Based Enterprises may include, but are not limited to, cooperative livestock raising, school gardens & land labs, production greenhouses; school based agricultural research, agricultural equipment fabrication, equipment maintenance services, or a school store
Service Learning: A student-managed service activity where students are involved in the development of a needs assessment, planning the goals, objectives and budget, implementation of the activity, promotion, and evaluation/reflection of a chosen project. It may be for a school, a community organization, religious institution, or non‐profit organization. The student(s) are responsible for raising necessary funds for the project (if funds are needed). A project must be a stand‐alone project and not part of an ongoing chapter project, or community fundraiser. The project must present a challenge that requires leadership, but also something that students can do with unskilled helpers, and within a reasonable period of time. Service Learning SAEs may be individual or a small group effort among students.