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MSU Awarded Grant To Expand Career Education Opportunities In Food, Agriculture, And Natural Resources Fields
This three year effort will support urban Michigan students and teachers through the development of food, agriculture, and natural resources curricula and five Jr. MANRRS chapters
Lindsay Mensch - September 1, 2020
This three-year effort will support urban Michigan students and teachers through the development of food, agriculture, and natural resources curricula and five Jr. MANRRS chapters.
Michigan State University was awarded $280,997 from the National Institute of Food and Agriculture at USDA to strengthen food, agriculture, and natural resources career pathways for students in urban Michigan.
The project, “Collaborative Approaches to Building Food, Agriculture, Natural Resources, and Human Sciences Content and Career Learning in Urban Michigan,” will focus on developing food, agriculture, and human sciences curricula with school science teachers in cities like Detroit, Flint, Lansing, and Saginaw.
The project team includes Dr. Buddy McKendree, Dr. Aaron McKim, Dr. Jennifer Hodbod, Dr. Quentin Tyler, and Dr. Mike Everett from MSU. Dr. Antomia Farrell from the National Society of MANRRS (Minorities in Agriculture, Natural Resources and Related Sciences) and Dr. Orlenthea McGowan from Langston University are also collaborators on the project.
Dr. Buddy McKendree
“In Michigan, some of our most populated areas do not have any school-based agricultural education. This proposal was really a way for us to reconsider how we can get that content and career learning in areas that don’t have school-based agricultural education,” says lead investigator Buddy McKendree, Assistant Professor in the Department of Community Sustainability.
“We have to prepare our future leaders in the agriculture industry,” says Antomia Farrell, National President of MANRRS.
The curricula developed through this collaboration will be designed in accordance with Next Generation Science Standards, with the ultimate goal of increasing student, teacher, and administrator interest in establishing formal school-based agricultural education programs.
Orlenthea McGowan, Professor at Langston University, will support teachers to integrate these curricula in their classrooms through a one-week immersive teacher training.
The Agriculture, Food, and Natural Resources Education program in MSU’s Department of Community Sustainability has always focused on K-12 education and career development. Expanding existing agriculture, food, and natural resources career pipelines through the lens of diversity, equity, and inclusion is a critical next step for the work.
Dr. Quentin Tyler
“This is a culmination of multiple things we’ve been working on,” says Quentin Tyler, Associate Dean and Director for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion in the College of Agriculture and Natural Resources (CANR). “This effort not only focuses on recruitment but also retention.”
In Tyler’s role in CANR, he is responsible for increasing student diversity and recruiting and retaining students. This project will support that effort as more pre-college students in Michigan will access career learning opportunities in the food, agriculture, and natural resources fields.
Working with the National Society of MANRRS is integral to diversifying and strengthening this career pipeline. There is a strong MANRRS chapter at MSU, but there are currently no registered Jr. MANRRS chapters in the state of Michigan. One outcome of this project is to develop five Jr. MANRRS chapters in urban Michigan schools over the next three years.
Farrell says, “I think representation is very important: to see that there are BIPOC communities who have been through these particular careers, and from an educational standpoint, to know that they can do the same thing that we’re doing today.”
Dr. Antomia Farrell
“Within MANRRS what we’re really looking at is developing a cohesive structure for our Jr. MANRRS program” shares Farrell. “We focus on developing a pipeline approach as early as 7th grade to bring awareness of the agriculture, natural resources, and related sciences industry.”
This new initiative is building on past and current efforts in coordinating a Jr. MANRRS presence in the state of Michigan by the MSU MANRRS chapter and advisors Stephanie Chau, Dr. Eunice Foster, and Phillip Seaborn.
The national and statewide perspectives involved in this work make this project particularly exciting. The team hopes that this collaborative approach can be replicated in future efforts.
Tyler notes, “This effort is a collaboration between an 1862 institution, an 1890 institution, and a nonprofit, so to me, it’s a model showing different ways we can work together across organizations and across universities.”
Ultimately, this project will help meet the growing demand to fill jobs in the agriculture, food, and human sciences fields. Educating young adults about where food comes from and how to sustainably manage natural resources is a critical entry point for these careers.
McKendree sums up the significance of the project well.
“Agriculture, food, and natural resources are intertwined in our lives,” he says. “Everybody eats, everybody interacts with the environment. It’s relevant for everyone.”
This project is one of six recently awarded Secondary Education, Two-Year Postsecondary Education, and Agriculture in the K-12 Classroom Challenge (SPECA) grants. The SPECA program seeks to promote, strengthen, and foster linkages between secondary, two-year postsecondary, and higher education programs to encourage more young Americans to pursue and complete a baccalaureate or higher degree in food, agriculture, natural resources, and human science disciplines.
Learn more about the project in NIFA’s Current Research Information System.
USA - COLORADO - Geodesic Growing Dome Nears Completion On CMC Campus, Benefits Multiple Programs
When it’s done, the dome will be full of trees, flowers and edible plants, offering a hands-on and in-person experience for students enrolled in the college’s sustainability studies, permaculture and culinary programs
August 27, 2020
STEAMBOAT SPRINGS — A geodesic growing dome has been erected at Bear Park on the Colorado Mountain College Steamboat Springs campus off of Crawford Avenue. The structure will serve, in part, as a greenhouse, extending the growing season and benefiting the sustainability studies program as well as others.
The dome is one part of an expansion project that was approved two years ago, allowing the college to construct the dome, a teaching pavilion, and a restroom. While the outside of the dome is complete, plumbing and electric are still being installed. The inside will take time to fill as well. Tina Evans, CMC professor of sustainability studies, expects the entire project to be completed sometime next summer.
When it’s done, the dome will be full of trees, flowers, and edible plants, offering a hands-on and in-person experience for students enrolled in the college’s sustainability studies, permaculture, and culinary programs.“
Clearly, its benefit is as an educational space, a demonstration space for growing in our region,” Evans said. “It’s really an awesome venue for learning about growing food year-round in the challenging environment in a mountain community.”
Evans said the Steamboat Springs growing season is 59 days and occurs in the summer when few students are on campus. The dome will allow year-round growing.
The design of the inside and outside gardens at Bear Park, where the dome is located, was created using permaculture, which creates beneficial relationships between all the elements of the garden. Some plants provide shade, and others offer ground cover. Some will draw in pollinators, and others repel pests. The strength of one plant benefits all of them.
“We’re trying to create systems that take care of themselves a little bit more than our food systems do in monoculture agriculture,” Evans said. “We’ll have nitrogen-fixing plants in with other plants. We’ll grow plants that provide really good mulch that pull nutrients up from the soil.”
The dome, which was funded by the Yampa Valley Electric Association’s Roundup program, the Craig-Scheckman Family Foundation, and an anonymous donor, was purchased from a Colorado company called Growing Spaces. The structure is 42 feet in diameter or nearly 1,400 square feet. The triangle panels, made of polycarbonate, are not only structurally strong but hold in heat and disperse light better than other materials like glass.
The interior of the dome will also be home to an aquaculture project of large water tanks filled with fish, although Evans isn’t sure what type of fish yet.
The water-filled with fish excrement will serve as fertilizer. The water tanks, as well as the cement, stones and the soil, are all thermal masses, or materials that absorb and release heat slowly. Having many thermal mass materials inside the dome will help the structure retain heat longer.
To help maintain an ideal temperature, a climate battery will be installed below the dome. When the dome gets too hot, the battery will pull air into the cool ground. When temperatures in the dome drop, stored hot air in the battery tubes will be released back into the structure.
“We hope to maintain a Mediterranean-like climate where it doesn’t freeze in there or freeze often,” Evans said. “We will have heaters in there for some of those days where it’s 30 below … but we expect to avoid running them.”
Evans and her colleagues won’t truly know what the climate in the dome will be like until it’s completed and they start planting.
Lead photo: A new geodesic dome on the Colorado Mountain College's Steamboat Springs campus is nearing completion.
John F. Russell
To reach Shelby Reardon, call 970-871-4253, email sreardon@SteamboatPilot.com or follow her on Twitter @ByShelbyReardon.