We describe our pedagogical approaches and experiences with a novel course in agroecology (one semester, three credit-hours, for graduate students and upper level undergraduates). Our course responds to recent proposals that agroecology expand its disciplinary focus to include human factors as well as ecological factors, thus taking a more holistic and systemic perspective. the course structure and service-learning component are organized around the focal concept of "transformation," that is, a systemic change that addresses a certain ecological problem in an agricultural system. Our goal is to help train agricultural professionals who can work effectively in collaborative efforts to implement such transformations. toward this end, we have integrated methods from systems thinking, soft-systems methodology, and agroecosystems analysis, and used a service-learning component to provide students with an opportunity to apply and evaluate these methods in practice. Most students favorably evaluated the course. Ultimately, we expect that the course will help our students to develop a civic professionalism through which they apply their professional skills to complex public problems in agriculture. (Contains 2 tables.)