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Sponsor a Pesticide Course

Looking for an approved pesticide training course? Visit the PaPlants Pesticide Recertification Course Locator.

Instructions for Sponsors of Pesticide Courses

Applications for pesticide applicator training courses must be submitted at least 15 business days prior to the course date to allow sufficient time for review and approval of your course. However, submitting your course for approval more than 15 business day prior to the meeting is much appreciated. Applications are to be submitted through our PaPlants Application for Course Approval portal.   

Your pesticide course submission will need to include the following information:

    • The name, address, phone number and email of the contact person who is coordinating the meetings.
    • The specific location of the meeting.
    • The date and time of the meeting
    • A detailed description of training topic or course agenda.
        • Start and stop times for each topic.
        • Description for each topic should be an accurate representation of what the speaker will be presenting on.
    • Complete biographies for all speakers. 
        • The trainer is required to have at least 3 years experience as a certified applicator in the appropriate category or have documentation of other qualifications to serve as a speaker such as educational background or experience in the field.

Meetings with concurrent sessions should each be submitted separately and will each receive a meeting ID.

Once submitted, you will receive an email confirmation with the meeting ID.  Subsequently, once your meeting is reviewed and approved by a PDA staff member, you will receive an email with the course credit approval.  Your meeting approval email will include a link to print off your course attendance sheet. Please refer to this sample agenda and biography (PDF) for help.

Course Approval Process

Your pesticide recertification course will be reviewed and approved for credit by a PDA staff member. The credit approval will be based on the information provided. Courses approved for credit are based on 1 credit per 30 minutes of applicable instruction, exclusive of breaks, lunches, visits to exhibits, and the like. Credits assigned may be modified if either the content or time of the actual meeting differs from the original request. 

Course Sponsor Responsibilities

It is the responsibility of the course sponsor to uphold the integrity of the recertification course. Falsification by the course sponsor of submitted materials, such as agenda and speaker biographies, may result in a warning, a fine, suspension, and the withdrawal of current or future course approvals. A person may not falsify attendance or that of another person's attendance at a recertification meeting. Falsification of attendance at a recertification course by a person may result in a warning, a fine or suspension or revocation of the applicator's certification.

Appropriate measures must be used to ensure the attendees sit for the entire course, start to end, as approved by the PDA. Attendees who arrive after the start of the meeting or leave before the end of the meeting shall not receive course credit and should not be submitted with the attendance information. 

The course sponsor is required to submit recertification course attendance information to the PDA within 10 business days following the meeting date and shall include the name of each individual attending and his/her applicator certification number.     

Sponsoring a Virtual Recertification Course

The PDA does approve virtual recertification courses for pesticide credits. Virtual recertification courses are those courses provided through the internet. Your virtual course should be submitted just as you would an in-person course except you would select either 'online' or 'webinar' as your site, rather than the onsite option.

Online courses are those that will be available indefinitely for applicators and can be taken at any time. Online course sponsors will need to resubmit their course for credit approval if the content of the course changes in any way.

Webinars are virtual courses that are available at a scheduled specific time with a live speaker.  You may provide the recorded webinar to attendees for a specified amount of time after the scheduled time as well.  If you plan to make your webinar available for pesticide recertification credits indefinitely, you will need to also submit your course as an online course.  

The sponsor will need to verify the person's attendance in the virtual setting. The PDA is flexible on your method of verification, but you will need to provide your verification plan to the PDA.  Your attendance verification method could be constant visual monitoring, poll questions throughout the course, a quiz at the end of the course, or any other appropriate method.

It is the sponsor's responsibility to collect attendee information to submit to the PDA. At minimum the sponsor will need to collect the attendee's name, pesticide certification number, and date of birth.  This information should be submitted to the PDA within 10 business days following the recertification course, unless other arrangements have been agreed upon by the PDA and the course sponsor. 

Monitoring of Pesticide Recertification Courses

PDA staff routinely monitor pesticide recertification courses for course content, time allocated to topics, etc. As a condition of course approval, sponsors must grant PDA staff access to monitor any approved recertification course and waive registration fees.