Source: UNIVERSITY OF CONNECTICUT submitted to NRP
INNOVATION ON SMALL FARMS THROUGH A PROJECT-BASED LEARNING CURRICULUM
Sponsoring Institution
National Institute of Food and Agriculture
Project Status
ACTIVE
Funding Source
OTHER GRANTS
Reporting Frequency
Annual
Accession No.
1031609
Grant No.
2024-70003-41449
Cumulative Award Amt.
$719,756.00
Proposal No.
2023-05278
Multistate No.
(N/A)
Project Start Date
Jan 1, 2024
Project End Date
Dec 31, 2027
Grant Year
2024
Program Code
[ER]- Higher Ed Challenge
Recipient Organization
UNIVERSITY OF CONNECTICUT
438 WHITNEY RD EXTENSION UNIT 1133
STORRS,CT 06269
Performing Department
(N/A)
Non Technical Summary
Small farms are crucial to building resilient local food systems, yet they face compounding issues including loss of quality farmland, increases in severe weather, and high labor costs. In order to run a successful business, farmers need tools and infrastructure suited to their scale that is not widely provided by the market in the US. Our goal is to develop a project-based learning curriculum that partners both engineering and agriculture students with farmers to develop innovative solutions to the problems identified by the farmer. This could be development of a new tool, a new management approach, or an infrastructure project. Through these projects, we aim to generate innovative tools or systems that can benefit all small farmers. We aim to train students on skills such as teamwork, critical thinking, leadership, or entrepreneurship, and make students aware of the opportunities in the agricultural field that would benefit from their education and skillsets.We plan to establish an online curriculum with a focus on agricultural challenges for the small farmer, skills development, and career opportunities. We will also develop a process for recruiting farmers and projects, managing project teams and supporting their success, and sharing that success with others in the farming communities through outreach events. As we evaluate and iterate on this curriculum, we will share it with the higher education community in order to promote its use elsewhere. We also anticipate students that participate in the program to more likley pursue careers or higher education in the agricultural fields.
Animal Health Component
(N/A)
Research Effort Categories
Basic
(N/A)
Applied
(N/A)
Developmental
(N/A)
Classification

Knowledge Area (KA)Subject of Investigation (SOI)Field of Science (FOS)Percent
4025399202025%
4025399302025%
9035399302050%
Knowledge Area
903 - Communication, Education, and Information Delivery; 402 - Engineering Systems and Equipment;

Subject Of Investigation
5399 - Structures, facilities, and equipment, general/other;

Field Of Science
2020 - Engineering; 3020 - Education;
Goals / Objectives
The increasing use of technology in agriculture, coupled with the increasing difficulty of farming economically on small farms increases the challenges for the farmers in the northeast, but also increases the opportunities for students trained in a wide variety of disciplines to enter a career where they can apply their knowledge to pressing needs. Accordingly, our goals in developing this project-based curriculum that engages farmers, professionals, students and faculty from multiple disciplines encompass building community, developing effective curriculum, and effecting institutional change:1. Aid in the development of innovations for small farms2. Build new partnerships between the SOE, CAHNR, farmers, and farm-focused non-profit groups that could lead to future research or community development.3. Develop relationships between agricultural businesses and students that have the potential to lead to transformative career opportunities, products or business development4.Develop online modules and in-class activities to enable multi-disciplinary teams to integrate knowledge on complex agricultural systems and develop professional skills.5. Implement inclusive teaching practices in a project-based learning curriculum6. Broaden the perspective of students to future job prospects that are less traditional in their major course of study. 7. Develop a specialization in agricultural technology for multi-disciplinary engineering students that bridges curriculum from the school of engineering and the college of agriculture.8. Increase the diversity of students that will pursue postsecondary education in food and agricultural sciences.
Project Methods
The project will consist of five major aspects, including recruitment of projects, development of curriculum, development of course structure, evaluation, and outreach.Project recruitment: We have partnered with the New CT Farmer Alliance, CT Resource Conservation and Development Area, and the State Department of Agriculture to recruit projects from farmers through various forms of advertising. In addition, the New CT Farmer Alliance will host a farm-hack event each year to both share the new products generated from the previous year and to aid in recruitment of future projects. The State Department of Agriculture will include advertisements and success stories in their newsletters to producers across the state.Development of Curriculum: The curriculum will focus around skillsets and topics that will be of use to interdisciplinary teams and focus on small farm concerns. The faculty involved in the project will develop online course curriculum in addition to in class exercises that will help develop skills in the areas of teamwork, communication, entrpreneurship. In addition, curriculum will be developed that highlight the unique concerns and issues for small farmers, and the career pathways that engineering or agricultural sciences students may take when leaving university. Curricular materials will be based on best practices from the literature, principles of universal design, and the experience of the individual faculty members.Development of Course structure: The structure of the course and project-based learning curriculum will be developed in conjunction with the School of Engineering Senior Design program, the College of Agriculture, and the farmers involved in the projects. In addition to the project faculty, members of these other groups will be part of an advisory board to review and provide feedback on how this cross-disciplinary project can best function within the typical academic structure.Evaluation: There will be several levels of evaluation, including an advisory board made of of faculty, our partners, administrators from the School of Engineering and College of Agriculture, farmers, and students. Bi-annual meetings will review plans and progress over the course of the project. A professor of education will aid in the evaluation of learning materials and student feedback to improve upon them in subsequent years. An external evaluator will serve to evaluate progress and whether outcomes were met for students, farmers and the overall program through a series of surveys, interviews, and document review. A report will be provided to the PIs to inform any changes in subsequent offerings of the program.Outreach: The curriculum developed will be shared through educational workshops at engineering and agricultural sciences education focused conferences and through a website. Success stories from the projects will be shared through partner organizations and the CT Department of Agriculture in newsletters and on social media.

Progress 01/01/24 to 12/31/24

Outputs
Target Audience:We have several target audiences that we focused on in this first year of the project. Students from multiple engineering disciplines, including mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, computer science and engineering, chemical engineering, and environmental engineering as well as students from the agricultural college, primarily in the mjaors of animal science, crop and soil sciences and plant scienc were targeted for inclusion in the student teams to work on the projects recruited from farmers. In the case of the engineering students, we wanted to give them a unique experiences in designing tools for farmers and show them alternative opportunities for careers. For the agricultural students, we wanted to give them a chance to work on teams helping to design tools that practicing farmers are interested in and help them identify potential career or higher education pathways they could take. Farmers that are small businesses were targeted for recruitment of design projects for students to work with. These farmers are all willing to share their ideas with others and the products that are generated from these student design projects will be shared when completed in order to help other small farm businesses progress. Changes/Problems: Nothing Reported What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?One graduate student worked on this project in the fall academic semester, primarily to help put together the project website to help recruit farmrers, recruit students and eventually share educational materials with others. THe main skill development was web design and communication for a non-scientific audience. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest? Nothing Reported What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?Over the course of the second year of ther project, we plan to complete the following: 1. Recruit a second round of projects from farmers for the next academic year, and recruit a broader range of engineering and agricultural students to work on them. 2. review evaluator feedback from student and farmer surveys in order to make targeted adjusments in our program. 3. Plan and complete a workshop with new farmers that includes sharing the student progress on their projects over the first year, talking to other farmers about their ideas to get feedback, and recruiting new projects for the next round. 4. Revise and finalize the educational materials used based on student performance and feedback from the first year. 5. Recruit alumni or colleagues that can share their experiences in farming or other agricultural services with current students, ideally through brief recorded interveiws that we can share with all future students in the program. 6.

Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals? Small farmers have several challenges that larger scale farmers do not face as pointedly. They are operating at very slim margins, with high labor costs and less industrial support than larger scale farms have. Thus, they tend to be highly innovative to achieve profitability and persistence in their business. In this project, we aim to help those farmers develop tools or ideas they have that need a different skillset than they currently have. As we recruited innovative ideas from farmers, we aimed to cover a broad range of engineering and farming disciplines, in order to recruit undergraduate students from a wide range of disciplines to work on them. In this manner, we would show multiple types of students the possibility of an agricultural focused career. For each of the goals listed above, we have achieved the following: 1. In the first year of this project we recruited 9 farmers to work with student teams. These included: a. two computer science projects, one on a grazing management module for an open source agricultural tracking software, and one on a farmer focused database for new farmers to find and share resources to help get their business started. b. Two chemical engineering projects, one on a dehydrating mechanism for aquaculture waste, and one on a compost heat recovery system to supplement greenhouse heating in a system mean to feed compost to laying hens. c. two mechanical engineering projects, one on a multi-functional compost/mulch spreading mechanism to modify exisitng small scale soil spreader, and one on a mechanical cutting machine to facilitate production of a new behive frame design. d. two multidisciplinary engineering projects, one on a seed thresher for a flower farm that is adaptable to different types of seeds, and one on a solar powered ventilation system for high tunnels in fields far from power sources. e. one electrical engineering project on a seed warming system for production in high tunnels in early season growth. The projects are ongoing and will be finished by May 2026 at the end of the academic year. 2. Faculty advisors and the project team are working with 9 farmers, starting to be more familiar with the needs of those farmers. Future partnerships may stem from these interactions. 3. A total of 44 students are interacting on these projects in the first year. They are only half way through the experience as of this reporting period thus we will see what outcomes are achieved by the end fo the academic year. 4. Online course content was developed for the teams that include an introduction to innovation on small farms, a module on entrepreneurship, and a module on team building to help the teams get started. These will be revised based on student and instructor feedback over the academic year. 5. Universal design for learning was followed when designing the curriculum and assignments for the students. 6. Additional materials and activites related to future job prospects are in development. 7. A specialization in agricutlural technology under the multi-disciplinary engineering major is in development. 8. Statistics on the diverse characteristics fo the students and farmers involved in the project are being gathered by the external evaluator and will be shared in an end of the academic year report.

Publications