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%
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.