Source: UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS submitted to
BUG TO SCHOOL: INSPIRING NEW GENERATIONS OF FARMERS AND LOCAL FOOD CONSUMERS THROUGH SERVICE LEARNING AND COLLABORATIVE RESEARCH IN SCHOOL GARDENS
Sponsoring Institution
National Institute of Food and Agriculture
Project Status
ACTIVE
Funding Source
AFRI COMPETITIVE GRANT
Reporting Frequency
Annual
Accession No.
1031852
Grant No.
2022-68018-41926
Cumulative Award Amt.
$673,005.95
Proposal No.
2023-11877
Multistate No.
(N/A)
Project Start Date
Dec 1, 2023
Project End Date
Apr 30, 2027
Grant Year
2024
Program Code
[A7401]- Research and Extension Experiences for Undergraduates
Recipient Organization
UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS
2001 S. Lincoln Ave.
URBANA,IL 61801
Performing Department
(N/A)
Non Technical Summary
Food security depends on increasing the number of farmers who thrive economically while producing healthy food locally and sustainably. At the same time, land grant universities are experiencing record low numbers of students in agriculture-related majors. This trend creates a vacuum of consumer demand for local foods that producers cannot match. To attract a new generation of agricultural professionals, we propose an integrative research and extension program that pairs undergraduate students with secondary schools in their home communities. The 5-year "Bug-to-School" program will ignite curiosity and close the knowledge gap in agriculture-related STEM disciplines. At its core, the project will establish a research network of over 40 school gardens to collaboratively examine how biodiversity shapes insect food webs and crop growth. A team of four university faculty working remotely with twenty local 4-H extension educators and secondary school teachers will collaboratively mentor twenty undergraduates from diverse backgrounds in a 8-week summer internship (1:1 mentor student ratio). Interns will perform experiments in school gardens across the Illinois and beyond and develop skills in scientific literacy, trophic ecology, and vegetable production by growing food while collecting, analyzing, and synthesizing data. Simultaneously, the interns will serve their home communities by developing garden-based curricula, lending logistical support, and providing technical assistance to collaborating classrooms.
Animal Health Component
70%
Research Effort Categories
Basic
30%
Applied
70%
Developmental
0%
Classification

Knowledge Area (KA)Subject of Investigation (SOI)Field of Science (FOS)Percent
2111499107050%
1021499302050%
Knowledge Area
211 - Insects, Mites, and Other Arthropods Affecting Plants; 102 - Soil, Plant, Water, Nutrient Relationships;

Subject Of Investigation
1499 - Vegetables, general/other;

Field Of Science
1070 - Ecology; 3020 - Education;
Goals / Objectives
Our long-term goals are to cultivate a generation of producers and consumers of locally grown, healthy produce, and to empower historically excluded students in agriculture-related STEM disciplines through collaborative garden-based research in their home communities. To achieve this, we proposed the following objectives:1) Establish a multi-state collaborative school garden research network in middle/high schools across Illinois and beyond;2) Recruit 12 undergraduates per year from diverse backgrounds to facilitate school garden research within their home communities;3) Ignite curiosity in sustainable crop production, pest management, and insect food webs during an in-person, hands-on intensive 'bootcamp';4) Improve scientific literacy and analytical skills of both undergraduates and school-age students with large-scale collaborative, experiments.5) Empower undergraduates with skills in leadership, mentorship, resourcefulness, and communication through service-learning and collaborative curriculum development
Project Methods
Objective 1: Establish a school garden research network. Through sampling of soils, pests, beneficial insects, and flowering plants surrounding zucchini crops in school gardens, our REEU students will examine a variety of research questions that will enable them to better-predict unique patterns of pest pressure in agroecosystems, and work to calibrate management of biodiversity to combat it. Dr. Blubaugh and the project manager will work through communication channels of the Illinois Farm to School network to continue recruiting teachers and 4-H extension educators who are excited to join our network.Objective 2: Recruit 14 undergraduates from diverse backgrounds annually to facilitate school garden experiments in their home communities. REEU students will be selected for the Bug2School program in a rigorous application process by including all members of our team and advisory committee. Applicants will submit application letters responding to prompts about their interests in sustainable agriculture, research, and outreach, and the roles they would like to play in facilitating school garden programs. They will also submit a resume and one letter of recommendation from an academic mentor. Application deadlines will be in late-February every year, with 14 participants identified by mid-March. If students withdraw from the program before the start date, students from a waitlist will be added to the team of fellows. In the event that 14 viable candidates cannot be identified in the first year, funding will rollover to the second year of the program to expand its reach as the Bug2School program grows. Admitted students will all receive necessary training and background checks necessary for working with minors in schools.Objective 3) Ignite curiosity in sustainable crop production, pest management, and insect food webs during an in-person, hands-on intensive 'bootcamp';Beginning in June 2024, we will host the cohort of Bug2School fellows at UIUC for five days of in-person team-building and rigorous training in crop production, insect ecology, experimental design and execution.?Objective 4) Improve scientific literacy and analytical skills of both undergraduates and school-age students with large-scale collaborative, experiments.Experiment protocol: In late-May 2024, our REEU students will bring 12 zucchini starts (Cucurbita pepo var. cylinrdica) back to each of their partnering school gardens, for simultaneous transplanting across all sites. We chose zucchini as our first model crop because it experiences considerable insect pressure in our region (Fair and Braman 2017)--while this is a challenging model for optimizing food production, it is an excellent model for examining multi-trophic interactions. Each school garden experiment will be planted in two 4 x 8ft raised beds. After planting, students will collect soil samples and randomly select, flag, and apply experimental treatments of their choice to six of the twelve seedlings. Experimental treatments could include various organic soil amendments (e.g. vermicompost, biochar, poultry litter), or herbivore repellants, which will be determined collaboratively between teachers, REEU students, and faculty mentors. Students will then perform weekly insect surveys at each school garden for the duration of their 10-week fellowships, entering and sharing their data with the group in real-time. Plants and insects will be identified by students using portable usb microscopes with help from extension educators and shared photos. Throughout the summer, the cohort will gather for weekly zoom meetings to discuss experiments and complete professional development activities (e.g. articulating research experience on a resume, excel skills training, preparing for graduate school, career opportunities in extension and sustainable agriculture).Analysis: During the last two weeks of their fellowships, students will learn to visualize data using Excel and R, and perform simple analyses to test our hypotheses about soil amendments and plant diversity variables. Students will then learn to interpret statistical output and explain results for non-experts. Before the end of their fellowships, students will prepare a formal scientific paper (with Introduction, Methods, Results, Discussion sections).Synthesis: Students will discuss together what each consider to be the most important patterns revealed in our study, how they align with the original hypotheses, and what they might recommend for farmers and gardeners based on their findings. Students will work in small groups to create either a poster presentation, a recorded video presentation, or a 15-minute oral presentation of the project to be presented at UIUC's summer undergraduate research symposium. Students will be encouraged to present their work again in various undergraduate research symposia on their home campuses, and students interested in making conference presentations can apply for funding the following academic year.Objective 5) Empower undergraduates with skills in leadership, mentorship, resourcefulness, and communication through service-learning and collaborative curriculum development. PD Blubaugh and co-PD Leman, will assist in recruiting local master gardener volunteers and 4-H educators who can provide supplementary mentorship for Bug2School fellows and assist teachers with maintenance of school gardens during the school year once Bug2School fellows return to college. Each Friday during their fellowships, students will gather via Zoom for a series of professional development activities, to discuss guided reflection prompts, and to present on their progress with various small projects associated with their larger research and extension program. Examples of such projects are detailed below.Insect movies: Students will each choose an insect in the zucchini food web and prepare a dramatic three-minute "real facts" video profile (sensu Ze Frank), describing the feeding habits of each insect (trophic level, diet breadth, mouthparts), how likely students might be to encounter the insect on their plants, how to find and identify it, and any interesting facts about its biology. After feedback and revisions, videos of different herbivores, predators, and pollinators will be compiled, published online, and provided as supplementary material about insect food webs and identification of common cucumber insects.Display boxes: Students will also assemble small display boxes using insects collected during their surveys for use in school garden curriculum later in the fall. They will curate the 20 most common garden insect pests and beneficial insects, and prepare information catalogs to accompany them that include interesting information about each insects' diet and life history.

Progress 12/01/23 to 11/30/24

Outputs
Target Audience:Our target audience includes undergraduate researchers, university faculty, school-age students, teachers, 4H educators, and non-profit leaders facilitating farm-to-school activities in Illinois and beyond. Changes/Problems:1) Funding availability delayed our recruitment efforts in 2024, so we did a 'soft rollout' of our undergraduate program in Illinois. We hope to recruit more students in 2025, and expand the network of participating gardens to 10 sites. 2) Because sustained activities in the fall and spring semesters are so critical to amplifying our impact during the school year, we plan to recruit 10 students instead of 14 as originally planned, which will enable us to extend fellowships for an enthusiastic subset of Bug2School students into the 2025-2026 school year. 3) Co-PD Colby Gregg moved to a new institution in 2024, and Co-PDs Leman and Blubaugh will assume theirresponsibilities for advising students in teaching/outreach activities, as well as in evaluating student progress. 4) Project Advisor Megan Garfinkel is on maternity leave in 2024-2025, limiting our ability to mentor students at Chicago State University this year. We will focus recruitment efforts more locally near the Champaign-Urbana area in 2025, expand to the Chicago areain 2026. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?During 2024-2025, we mentored four REEU fellows, who received one-on-one training in urban farming, research methods, science communication, and collaborative event coordination with community partners. The students assessed needs of community partners and then addressed them in various service projects completed in Summer 2024. For example, they built 14 new raised garden beds for use in school and community gardens. They worked alongside community members to weed and mulch pathways. They learned to install and troubleshoot a drip-irrigation system at Prosperity Gardens, a large urban farm associated with an alternative high school in Champaign Illinois. Students also built and repaired three picnic tables under a pavilion at Randolph St. Community gardens for use in community gatherings and in a high school job training program. One of the REEU fellows, Kylie Fuoss, remained engaged for the duration of the 2024-2025 academic year to deploy the curricular resources we created in local classrooms. We also engaged over 200 school age-students and 10 teachers in workshops, training, and curricular activities. Kylie created a symposium presentation on behalf of the cohort that were presented at the Entomological Society of America, and in undergraduate research symposia. Kylie also led a manuscript based on our experimental results that is in final stages of preparation for submission to Agricultural and Forest Entomology. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?During 2024, our products have been showcased to the entomological community (a pool of potential research mentors for our school garden research network) and the service-learning scholarship community in three presentations. Our program and results have been highlighted in two department seminars. Curricular tools have been demonstrated in eight different classroom activities. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?Objective 1: Establish a school garden research network. To improve accessibility to the public, we will expand our garden network to include several community gardens in the Urbana-Champaign area, in partnership with Solidarity Gardens, a community gardening non-profit focused on improving garden access among low-income residents. Objective 2: Recruit 14 undergraduates from diverse backgrounds annually to facilitate school garden experiments in their home communities. Applications are currently open for the 2025 Bug2School cohort. To enable sustained activity during the school year, we will re-enroll the most enthusiastic Bug2School Fellows for an additional fellowship during the fall and spring semesters so that they can assist teachers with class experiments in school gardens. We are focusing recruitment efforts at community colleges and universities in Urbana Champaign, Bloomington-Normal, and Decatur Illinois. Objective 3) Ignite curiosity in sustainable crop production, pest management, and insect food webs during an in-person, hands-on intensive 'bootcamp'; Beginning in June 2024, we will host the cohort of Bug2School fellows at UIUC for five days of in-person team-building and rigorous training in crop production, insect ecology, experimental design and execution. PD Blubaugh and Co-PDs McCoy and Leman will guide the students in the scientific method, as well as in best-practices for engaging with students, teachers, and community members. Objective 4) Improve scientific literacy and analytical skills of both undergraduates and school-age students with large-scale collaborative, experiments. In 2025, we selected a research question inspired by several community partners curious about strategically managing edible 'weeds' as ground cover. We will sow common purslane seeds as groundcovers into experimental beds, and compare these to crop monocultures, measuring responses of pests, beneficial insects, and crop productivity. Throughout the 8-week fellowship, students will spend mornings in school and community gardens tending plants, doing service projects, collecting data, reading journal articles and writing independently. During afternoons, we will gather in-person to discuss papers, complete data analysis activities, group reflections, and gather peer-feedback and mentor feedback on writing, presentations, and curricular materials. Each student will meet individually weekly with a mentor as they develop an individualized capstone project (either a scientific paper or curricular resource). We are finalizing a manuscript co-authored by the 2024 Bug2School cohort, and will submit a paper to Agricultural and Forest Entomology early in 2025. Results and educational resources from the 2025 cohort will be presented in an invited symposium talk on urban agriculture at the Entomological Society of America. Objective 5) Empower undergraduates with skills in leadership, mentorship, resourcefulness, and communication through service-learning and collaborative curriculum development. In addition to leading summer school activities and 4H camp activities in the school gardens, REEU students will post a sign in community gardens and maintain regular weekly "garden office hours" for any community members curious about their research, seeking assistance with service projects, or needing guidance on gardening. We will collaborate with Master Gardeners and the C-U Herb Society Membership to improve access to expert guidance and maintain an active presence in gardens throughout the summer. In 2025, we are collaborating with Solidarity Gardens to establish a weekly 'veggie exchange' for teachers, students, community gardeners, and neighbors to collaboratively augment their grocery budgets through shared garden prosperity. We plan to lead informal educational activities at each veggie exchange, and donate leftover produce local food banks.

Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals? Objective 1) Establish a school garden research network in Illinois. By collaborating with C-U Farm-to-School, we recruited seven school gardens and community gardens to participate in our survey network. Teachers and students in our school garden research network were invited to participate and updated regularly on our progress and our results through virtual and in-person workshops. Later during the 2024-2025 school year, our team of interns and staff led garden-based field activities (a 'Bug Bingo' scavenger hunt developed by REEU fellows) at four collaborating schools. Objective 2) Recruit 14 undergraduates from diverse backgrounds annually to facilitate school garden experiments in their home communities. Due to funding delays, we couldn't begin the recruitment process until late in spring 2024, but we assembled an inaugural cohort of three Bug2@School research fellows. The 2024 Bug2School cohort was recruited from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, as well as Parkland community college. One of the students, Kylie Fuoss, extended her research fellowship through the 2024-2025 school year to implement our curricular resources with collaborating schools, lead preparation of a manuscript, and present our results at an academic conference on behalf of the team. Objective 3) Ignite curiosity in sustainable crop production, pest management, and insect food webs during an in-person, hands-on intensive 'bootcamp'; We had a successful in-person Bug2School Orientation in Urbana, IL from Jun3 3-7th, 2024, where REEU students did team building, fellowship, and training for their research & outreach projects through the following activities: Established mutually agreed on expectations for interns and mentors Pre-assessments of competence and self efficacy Read/discussed scientific papers together Articulated/rationalized hypotheses together about our experimental treatments Studied the life history of the most common insects in our study system Practiced identification and curation of common garden insects using lab specimens Collected, and identified insects at field sites, and practiced visual insect surveys Discussed experimental design, the considered integrity of an experimental control, and practiced/troubleshooted experimental treatment protocol Collaboratively prepared data collection protocols and data sheets Completed a service project weeding garden beds with urban farmers/community gardeners at Prosperity Gardens in Champaign Illinois Met with collaborating teachers and community partners to learn/discuss the greatest barriers facing school garden programs, and greatest needs to address during internships Objective 4) Improve scientific literacy and analytical skills of both undergraduates and school-age students with large-scale collaborative, experiments. REEU students successfully completed experiments at 7 sites in Urbana and Champaign, IL. Each student was responsible for 2-3 sites, depending on their available transportation. At each site, REEU students manipulated vermicompost (worm castings) treatments in one of two experimental garden beds, grew/maintained zucchini plants for 8 weeks, completed bi-weekly surveys of pests and beneficial insects, and entered data in a shared google sheet. REEU students met in-person as a cohort each afternoon to share exciting discoveries, insect photos, troubleshoot protocol, and collaborate on outreach projects. During the last two weeks, REEU students (with help from PD Blubaugh) learned to organize, visualize, and analyze their data. We compared our results to the original hypotheses developed together during orientation, and each presented results as posters in an undergraduate research symposium for community partners and the rest of the Bug2School team. Our first Bug2School cohort (from summer 2022) published their manuscript in the Journal of Applied Ecology in 2024. For the second year's experiment, we crowd-sourced a research question from our collaborating teachers: Does vermicompost mitigate drought stress and pest pressure? Our team measured herbivore pest and predatory insect responses to experimental vermicompost treatments, and completed complementary greenhouse and lab experiments to examine how water stress and vermicompost interactively shape plant protection. We found that vermicompost increased pest resistance in both the field and greenhouse, and improved plant growth by 25%, and partially buffered plants from water stress. Vermicompost-treated plant volatiles repelled cucumber beetles, the most damaging pest in our system, but only under water stress conditions. This suggests that vermicompost not only improves water retention and plant growth, but also works alleviates pest pressure, particularly in drought conditions that are common in urban gardens. Evaluation: When comparing the REEU students' pre- and post-assessments in scientific literacy and analytical skills, we learned that our program vastly increased students' confidence and competence at identifying insects common in garden food webs, increased their understanding of experimental design, and improved their ability to interpret and communicate results. During the first cohort (in 2022), analytical skills (data analysis) were more difficult for us to develop during the short internship. However, we improved on these challenges with the 2024 Bug2School cohort by incorporating data visualization & analysis exercises throughout the 8-week fellowship, instead of backloading at the end once data collection was complete. In their final reflections, students were particularly proud of how they confronted and overcame anxiety around quantitative and technological skills. Objective 5) Empower undergraduates with skills in leadership, mentorship, resourcefulness, and communication through service-learning and collaborative curriculum development Along with training in research skills, our REEU interns developed four exciting garden-based multi-media content for use in school garden curriculum (with both in-person and virtual activities) with guidance from their teacher collaborators, and co PD Amy Leman.In the pre/post evaluation surveys, students noted strong improvements in their confidence in communicating about plant/insect identification as well as about interpretation of experimental results. REEU students collaborated to create a 'Bug2School' lab manual with accessible instructions that will enable teachers and school-age students to replicate our vermicompost experiment in their own school gardens. The lab manual includes original content as well as links to relevant lesson plans aligned with Next Generation Science Standards, with options for multiple age ranges of students. REEU students created a 'TikTok' game that encourages students to learn and interpret various feeding behaviors of pests and beneficial insects through dance. REEU students adapted and augmented the Kid's Garden Insect Guide created by 2022 Bug2School cohort so that it would assist teachers and school age student with identification and life history information about the 'usual suspect' insects that are most common in school gardens in Illinois. To help teachers and students learn the insect identification skills necessary to distinguish common herbivorous insects and predatory insects, the REEU students created insect display collections, along with fact sheets featuring insect macro photography, and short humorous YouTube videos illustrating the feeding habits of common taxa. The garden insect guide and youtube play list were published on our new website (Bug2School.org), and were circulated widely among teachers through the CU-Farm-to-School program.

Publications

  • Type: Peer Reviewed Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2024 Citation: Blubaugh, C. K., Chesnut, R., & Hagan, K. L. (2024). Organic compost belowground and floral diversity aboveground interactively shape beneficial insects in urban gardens. Journal of Applied Ecology, 61(6), 1334-1345.
  • Type: Websites Status: Published Year Published: 2023 Citation: Blubaugh, C.K., Bug 2 School: Collaborative insect ecology research in school gardens (Accessed 2/25/2024 gardensbug2school.org)