Performing Department
(N/A)
Non Technical Summary
The goal of this project is to create an IPM-centric engaged scholarship experience to immerse students in basic and applied research with direct applications to crop protection and sustainability of natural systems.This program will provide experiential learning in Applied Research and IPM for Dryland Systems (ARIDS) at Colorado State University.Students will participate in engaged scholarship activities designed to expose them to outreach and Extension and will interact with diverse stakeholders outside of academia. This unique experience will address critical challenges in 1) retaining students from 4-year institutions and community colleges in STEM fields, and 2) responding to current and future workforce and industry needs. First, undergraduate students are increasingly voicing their desire to see the connection between classroom instruction and real-world challenges we face as a global community. They are highly aware of the increasing toll of climate change and environmental cost of crop and food production and have a strong motivation to act. By coupling applied research in IPM with engagement with end-users (e.g., farmers, landscapers, crop consultants) the students will advance their critical thinking skills, gain knowledge of concepts and theory central to developing hypotheses and experimental design, and develop competence in applying their skills to the real world as professionals. This program will also support a graduate student to serve as a mentor for the undergraduates, building a sense of community with a senior student closer in age and from a similar generation. Close interactions with a peer in graduate school will also allow the Summer Scholars to learn about post-baccalaureate education, which has been shown to promote undergraduate student likelihood to enter graduate school.Further, because we will build partnerships with community colleges in rural areas, we will facilitate participation of students from historically marginalized backgrounds who are less likely to have opportunities to participate in research during their undergraduate degrees. These proficiencies will prepare students for careers that support food production and crop protection and contribute to a skillful workforce. This goal and its impacts address the NIFA foundational area, "Plant health and production and plant products".
Animal Health Component
90%
Research Effort Categories
Basic
10%
Applied
90%
Developmental
0%
Goals / Objectives
The goal of this project is to create an IPM-centric engaged scholarship experience to immerse students in applied research focused on crop protection and sustainability of natural systems. This is an integrated project consisting ofapplied research objective(60% of time) focused broadly on addressing pest problems associated with cropping and natural systems in arid environments. Oureducational objective(30% of time) is focused on creating a summer engaged scholarship program for nine summer scholars. Theextension objective(10% of time) will allow the students to create stakeholder-focused deliverables from their applied research project and be designed to help the students develop communication skills tailored to their audience. Students will engage in applied research, attend workshops to develop their professional and soft skills, and become familiar with diverse careers in agriculture. The goal of the project is to support nine scholars each year with a minimum of six students recruited from community colleges each year. The impacts of the program include:Improved knowledge of research design and methodology:Formulate hypotheses and use appropriate experimental design.Gain discipline-specific research skills.Be familiar with basic statistical methods.Create visual data representations.Improved communication skills:Proficiency in communicating research results to diverse audiences.Create audience-specific deliverables.Improve their soft skills and advance their professional development:Gain critical skills in problem-solving and troubleshooting.Become familiar with post-baccalaureate education.Have a better understanding of land-grant university mission and careers in agriculture.
Project Methods
Student recruitment.Students will be recruited at the start of the fall semester each year of the project. Recruiting efforts will focus on students from underrepresented minorities and from two-year institutions. The collaborating community colleges, Aims Community College in Fort Lupton, Colorado and Pueblo Community College in Mancos, Colorado, will engage in recruiting activities and help in distributing application resources. We will also collaborate with Cornell University to recruit the Summer Scholars and have the support of College of Agricultural Sciences at CSU for our recruitment efforts as well. The program will also be advertised at the national meetings of the professional societies that the faculty mentors are associated with: American Phytopathological Society, Entomological Society of America, and American Society of Agronomy, Crop Science Society of America and Soil Science Society of America, and Society for Advancement of Chicanos/Hispanics and Native Americans in Science. All materials promoting the program will be made available in English and Spanish.Student application and selection process.Applications will be submitted via email to the Project Director. All Mentor bios and research foci along with short description of potential projects will be made available on a website. Students will be selected based on their written statements on their career goals and importance of their personal experiences in their interest in research, statement on importance of diversity, equity and inclusion, and research experience. Lack of prior research experience will be weighted higher in student selection process to identify Summer Scholars who may have lacked opportunities to engage in research owing to their background and personal obstacles. Each applicant will be asked to rank their prospective mentors and projects in their application materials.Student retention.Our retention efforts will focus on building a sense of community and inclusion and cohort-building exercises. The first day of the program will be focused on orientation and group activities designed for the students to get to know each other in the context of their own comfort level and interact with their Graduate Student Mentor and all Faculty Mentors. To further increase retention rates, the Summer Scholars and Mentors will engage in weekly Friday lunches and workshops to discuss the positive and challenging aspects of their week. We will also organize field trips to local research farms and natural areas to ensure the students are involved in diverse and interesting activities outside of their main research projects. Lastly, an email list of all participants will be created each year to communicate with program alumni and create a connection between participants across the cohorts. Each year, one alum or alumna from a previous cohort will be invited to return and meet with Summer Scholars to share their experience and impact of the program.Student activities:The goal of this project is to facilitate development of two key skills and competencies critical to student success in agricultural research: 1) Ability to conduct independent research and familiarity with experimental design and statistical tools; and 2) Development of professional skills and ability to communicate research outcomes to diverse groups of stakeholders. Students will engage in research and extension activities with their faculty mentor in diverse disciplines: entomology, plant pathology, weed science, molecular biology, and data science. Poster and presentations summarizing the research will be presented at the end of each summer program.Student-faculty interaction and student-student communication:This will be facilitated through complete integration of Summer Scholars in their Mentor's research group: the Mentors will be asked that the students are included in their laboratory meetings, and that the Mentors hold weekly meetings with the Scholars they are mentoring. The Mentors will also be encouraged to participate in the weekly lunches and connect with all the Scholars through informal, unstructured interactions.Mentoring plan:Summer Scholars will be mentored by their faculty mentors and their respective lab members: post-doctoral researchers and graduate students. Further, the Graduate Student Mentor, who will attend weekly lunch meetings and workshops will serve as an additional mentor to the student. This opportunity for peer-to-peer mentoring has been shown to enhance student experiences and research self-efficacy.Evaluation:The program will be evaluated by an external evaluator.The evaluation will include student learning outcomes along with associated outcome measures. Outcome measures were chosen to include a mix of quantitative and qualitative data for both formative and summative purposes and are briefly described below. To address the limitation of self-reported assessment data, triangulation will be used to develop a comprehensive understanding of each outcome and strengthen validity through the convergence of multiple data sources. Additionally, the participatory evaluation approach addresses the potential pitfalls of response bias by engaging both internal and external stakeholders in collecting mixed methods assessment data. Simultaneously, it builds the evaluation capacity of program team members, including the Graduate Student Mentor who will facilitate mid-program interviews and post-program focus groups with support from the external evaluator.Components of the evaluation will include student pre- and post-surveys, student self-reflections, mid-program interviews, focus groups, follow-up surveys, and tracking student graduation rates and post-graduation career and education choices. Faculty mentors will evaluate student deliverables as part of the process as well.