Progress 07/01/06 to 06/30/10
Outputs
Over the four years of the project, the goals as stated in the project proposal were met. First, collaborative research was conducted between Can Tho University in Vietnam and UC Davis. Seven UC Davis faculty and staff were involved in the research process. On the Vietnamese side, seven faculty were directly involved in the research and over 50 Vietnamese families netted benefits to their livelihood through the sale of higher priced safely produced vegetables. The safe vegetable production research project ended in 2009 with a seminar at CTU where research findings were presented. The second goal of the project was to foster economic competitiveness by helping Californians learn about vegetable crops and production methods emerging in Viet Nam. In January 2010, seven faculty and extension personnel and three farmers traveled to Vietnam to benchmark vegetable production, meet with Vietnamese agricultural universities, attend the US Embassy Conference on Education, and meet with Ministry of Education and Training (MOET) leaders. The UC Davis faculty and farmers made presentations a four universities (Hanoi University of Agriculture (HUA), Can Tho University (CTU), Thai Nguyen University (TNU) and Nong Lam University (NLU). Over 1,000 students and faculty attended the presentations, UC Davis faculty met with MOET leaders about Vietnam funded Advanced Programs. The Vietnamese universities arranged field visits to vegetable farms and the UC Davis participants met with local authorities, farmers, and vegetable wholesalers. The visit to Vietnam by UC Davis faculty and farmers allowed us to make more connections and showed us firsthand how vegetables are grown in Vietnam. We were disappointed, however, that more farmers did not attend. CARD leadership personally ask 10 different farmers to attend, but many were too busy to take two weeks off from their farming businesses. The final objective of the project was re-energizing and bringing more relevance to UC Davis curricula. In 2009, 10 students and four faculty went on a two week study tour of Vietnam. We visited CTU and NLU and met with over 250 Vietnamese students. UC Davis students gave seminars on US agriculture and education, all students were Agricultural Education majors. In addition, UC Davis students visited six vegetable farms and also explored five aquaculture production sites in the Mekong Delta. A CTU faculty member led these field trips. No project funds were used to support student travel, because we used funds from UC Davis fellowships. The four faculty and staff included two agricultural education professors, one environmental science education professor, and the outreach coordinator for the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences. In sum, the four year project helped expose UC Davis faculty and students and California to Vietnamese agriculture and universities. The overarching goal of the project was to internationalize the UC Davis curriculum. In the Agricultural Education program this was certainly achieved, but further, the ISE funding allowed UC Davis to make a tremendous number of connections with university faculty and the MOET in Vietnam. PRODUCTS: Research reports were written on environmental quality of the farm sites, the effects of using composted soil, and the self life of leafy vegetables. These were internal project use. Grant proposal for a $500,000 USAID Horticulture Collaborative Research Support Program. OUTCOMES: An offshoot of the ISE project has been the cooperative agreements for UC Davis to train faculty from NLU, TNU, and HUA in three separate projects funded by MOET in Food Safety, Plant Protection, and Environmental Science and Management. Without ISE funding and the project with Can Tho University, UC Davis would not have been on the radar of MOET and the training programs would have been established. Thus far UC Davis has trained over 45 lecturers from Vietnam in curriculum development and teaching practices. DISSEMINATION ACTIVITIES: In both 2009 and 2010 PI Trexler was invited to talk about the CARD project and other UC Davis Vietnamese efforts at the US Embassy Conference on American Support for Vietnamese Education. Approximately 400 educators from the USA and Vietnam attended the conferences. Further, PI Trexler was invited by the Vietnamese Ministry of Education and Training to speak at the Meet Vietnam Education Forum in San Francisco, CA. The title of the talk was A Success Story of Education Cooperation: An American Perspective. Like in 2007, the students who went on the Vietnamese Study tour in 2009 wrote articles for the California Agriculture Teachers' Association Golden Slate magazine. These articles reached approximately 2,000 readers. Students highlighted their experiences and how working with Vietnamese people impacted them on a personal and professional level. FUTURE INITIATIVES: In May 2010, PI Trexler and two of the faculty who traveled to Vietnam in January 2010, submitted a $500,000 grant pre-proposal to USAID to expand the safe vegetable production aspect of the ISE grant to Hanoi University of Agriculture and Nong Lam University in Ho Chi Minh City. Another aspect of this grant was to build research capacity among faculty at these two institutions. In June 2010, USAID's Horticultural Collaborative Research Support Program, after peer evaluation of the pre-proposal, asked for a full grant to be submitted. We are now awaiting a decision on the full proposal.
Impacts
CARD's activities resulted in the following impacts: 1) faculty and staff are better able to work in science and education within an international context. 2) research collaborations with CTU faculty were conducted and now there are new research projects that have emerged among UC Davis and Can Tho, 3) students' understanding of global agriculture and emerging markets was enhanced, and 4) California farmers have greater understanding of Vietnamese production practices, and 5) three Advanced Program curriculum and faculty development partnerships were started, which were never envisioned in the project proposal.
Publications
- No publications reported this period
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Progress 01/01/08 to 12/31/08
Outputs
In terms of project goals, we have made tangible progress in goals 1 and 3, which are found in the Outcomes section of this report. As noted in previous reports, the joint research aspect of this project has yielded an excellent mechanism for collaboration between UC Davis and Can Tho University. In fact, as a result of our efforts, we now have a Fulbright scholar studying at UC Davis on problems related to soil salinity and another VEF scholar (the project coordinator of this project from CTU) studying organic vegetable production. Both of these professors are further enhancing the understanding of international agriculture at UC Davis and further enhancing our future collaborations. Our Dean of the College of Agriculture and Environmental Science has been to Vietnam three times now to visit the project and to also work with VEF. He always speaks highly of this project when discussing international collaboration. In terms of goal three, after drawbacks discussed with the Study-Abroad office at UC Davis, we figured out sustainable mechanisms to bring undergraduate and graduate students to Vietnam as an on-going part of our curriculum. Goal two has not yet been met, nor begun because the PI was living in Vietnam for the 2007-08 academic year. PRODUCTS: Thus far the only tangible product has been summary reports of research in Vietnam. These reports and other insights will be translated into research papers later during the project cycle. However, it must be understood that this project was more about internationalizing the UC Davis curriculum and experiences of faculty, staff, and students. On this accord, we have been very successful. OUTCOMES: Based on the goals below, the following outcomes have been met this year: 1.Conduct collaborative research and extension programs focused on post harvest vegetable handling and community development. (CTU and UC Davis faculty. Research was carried out in three four main areas; A. Economic feasibility of clean vegetable production, B. Environmental site analysis for vegetable production, C. Effectiveness of using organic fertilizers, and D. Storage of green leafy vegetables. In addition, two workshops were carried out for communes on goal setting for vegetable production. 2. Foster economic competitiveness by helping Californians learn about specialty vegetable crops and production methods emerging in Viet Nam. (CA farmers, farm advisors, and agriculture industry representatives) This goal has not yet been a focus of the project, because PI Trexler was in Vietnam for all 2007-08 academic year on a Fulbright Fellowship. California farmers can only make room for a oversees trip during the rainy season in California and upon Trexler's return to UC Davis there was not enough time to organize a trip for these stakeholders. 3. Re-energize and bring more relevance to UC Davis curricula by integrating a service-learning component in a new Study-Abroad program. (Undergraduate and graduate students) This maybe the area that has been most fruitful for curriculum relevance. Students and several faculty travel to the research site and other places in Vietnam and gain a deeper grasp of a developing country's culture and agricultural production and distribution system. It is particularly important to note that students were funded by non-project funds that are reoccurring. We plan a trip with students again next year. The students spent a total of 132 hours each in study activities in Vietnam. DISSEMINATION ACTIVITIES: Dissemination activities primarily came through write ups by UC Davis students who went on the study tour to the Mekong delta. Students wrote articles for the California Agriculture Teachers Association publication, the "Golden Slate" and also through the UC Davis School of Education newsletter which goes out to over 2,000 past graduates. In addition, upon return to UC Davis after his one-year, Fulbright Scholar Fellowship, PI Trexler, presented 4 seminars for various groups on the UC Davis campus. FUTURE INITIATIVES: In January of 2009, we will take students (7) and faculty (4)to Vietnam for a study tour. We plan on meeting with cooperators at Can Tho University and observe the clean vegetable production research and extension project. In June we plan to travel to Vietnam to work with collaborators on the final write up of research findings and write papers for submission to international journals. We will seek a one year no-cost extension to carry out the CA farmer, farm advisors, and ag industry study tour of vegetable production, and to carry out an additional student student tour to the Mekong Delta.
Impacts
The impacts for this year came in two primary areas. Collaborative research and extension programs and bringing more relevance to UC Davis curricula. In terms of research, UC Davis and Can Tho University faculty have made progress on the joint research project. We had to move the site of the research to another commune because of a lack of organization on the part of the farmers. We believe that this lack of organization is one of the areas that needs to be addressed in future research. Most of the Vietnamese collaborators are natural scientists and they do not have the skills to foster community organization activities. This is particularly true in Vietnam where the government once forced collective farms. The second impact came in terms of the student visit to Vietnam. This activity was far more positive. Students, agricultural education, were influenced on a visceral level by their experience. They had ever been in a country where so little English is spoken, nor had they been in places where the standard of living was so low. This experience will impact their teaching in high schools for years to come.
Publications
- Trexler, C.J. (2008). Credit-Hour system: History, definitions and structure). Educational Review, Ministry of Education and Training, Hanoi, Vietnam.
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Progress 01/01/07 to 12/31/07
Outputs
Our goal is internationalize UC Davis' curriculum & research and enhance the competitiveness of California's vegetable industry. The objectives of our project are: 1) Conduct collaborative research and extension programs 2) Foster economic competitiveness by helping Californians learn about specialty vegetable crops and production methods emerging in Vietnam. (VN) and 3) Re-energize and bring more relevance to UC Davis curricula by integrating a service-learning component in a new Study-Abroad program. We made significant progress toward this goal by working on objectives 1 and 3. Because PI Trexler was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship in Vietnam for 2007-08, objective two (2) is currently on hold. However, the award helped the project move forward because PI Trexler travels to CTU on a regular basis. It is noteworthy that UC Davis' Dean of the College of Agricultural and Environmental Science (CAES) has traveled to CTU twice during the last reporting period when he
reviewed VNse agricultural universities for the Vietnam Education Foundation. We are making great strides internationalizing the curriculum because of administrative support. In terms of Objective 1, we've conducted collaborative research with CTU. Research was conducted on clean vegetable production (we decided that fruit production was too much to) and post harvest handling. The focus was on environmental testing of soil and water, organic fertilizers, development of markets, and post harvest handling. We held collaborative workshops for VNese farmers on these same topics. Unexpectedly, our CTU counter parts decided (Oct 2007) to work with a new cooperative of farmers, rather than the ones we began the project with because the farmers lacked of local authority support. We held six (6) one-day workshops for farmers, local authorities, extension agents, and supermarket produce buyers. We had planned one-week workshops, but one-day workshops appear to work better. We follow up with
regular assistance to farmers. Another difficulty has been a lack of understanding about the social science aspect of the project. As is often the case, natural scientists (mainly those involved) do not consider marketing and technology transfer. With regard to Objective three (3), we have run into trouble with the UC's turfism with regard to Study Abroad (SA). We planned to run a joint program between UC Davis and UC Riverside, but the SA office at UC Davis was more concerned about who got to count the contact hours than about student learning, so we have modified our plans for students, these are discussed in the Future Initiatives section.
PRODUCTS: A number of products have been developed. A power point presentation was developed by CTU collaborators to share the results of the collaborative research with English speaking audiences. This was used in Mark Van Horn (a UC Davis lecturer who traveled to VN to present on composting for the project). Six regional workshops were organized by CTU and UC Davis faculty. PI Trexler attended three of these and shared his insights about the project with VNese farmers, extension specialists, and others. A systematic follow-up program was developed to continue supporting collaborative research in VN. Farmers are visited on a weekly basis to help with the on-going farm based research.
OUTCOMES: PI Trexler was awarded a US Department of State Fulbright Fellowship for 2007-08, 10 month lectureship in VN. The senior program officer told him that the SERD grant was a contributing factor to him being selected. Van Horn has also updated his course syllabus in Organic farming to include materials, insights, and photos from his trip to Vietnam during 2007. PI Trexler and Co-PI Mitcham have also included VNese contexts in their courses in Agricultural Education and Post Harvest vegetable handling respectively. Dean Van Alfen of UC Davis' CAES was selected by the VEF to evaluate VNese Colleges of Agriculture, in part, because of UC Davis' SERD grant. He was told that UC Davis is one of the most active in VN. Vietnamese collaborator, Chau Minh Khoi, assistant coordinator for the CARD project was nominated for a VEF visiting Scholar award by his administration. He hopes to work at UC Davis for six months in 2008 in organic agriculrture research.
DISSEMINATION ACTIVITIES: PI Trexler made presentations about the project at the US Department of State sponsored Fubright Orientation program in August 2007. Further, Fulbright Fellows visited CTU in November 2007 and met project collaborators and toured the VN community research site. In addition, Trexler also made presentations about the project at Nong Lam (Agriculture and Foresty) University in Ho CHi Minh City, VN in September 2007. In addition, Trexler's students at Nong Lam University visited the field site in October 2007. This helped these VNese students see that the USDA was investing in a collaborative project in VN.
FUTURE INITIATIVES: PI Trexler plans to invite more social scientists from UC Davis to lend their expertise. In February 2008, two faculty members will travel to CTU to meet with the Biotechnology Research and Development Institute. One is a Co-PI on this project and is the Associate Dean for International Programs in CAES. The other is a faculty member in Food Science. He will present a seminar. Considering the difficulties with the UC SA office, seven students and one lecturer from UC Davis will travel to VN and stay for two weeks in March 2008. They will attend the 1st Mekong Food Science conference and present a poster on a Food Safety curriculum we jointly developed by Cornell. This will be the first time these students have traveled abroad and their first time presenting a poster. Additionally, students will meet and work with the farmers in the Vinh Long commune on a small service-learning project. Further, a CES specialist in Post Harvest will also come to CTU for the first
time during March 2008. She will present at the conference.
Impacts
UC Davis has a extremely strong on-going relationship with universities in VN. One of these is the SERD project at CTU. But an unexpected consequence of our involvement in VN (facilitated by this project) has been the development of projects at the two other leading agricultural universities (Nong Lam University in HCMC and the University of Agriculture in Hanoi). The VNese Ministry of Education and Training (MOET) has selected UC Davis for two five year programs to help update and modernized undergraduate curricula in 1) Plant Protection (UAH) and 2) Food Science and Technology (NLU). This involves adaption of UC Davis curricula to a VNEse context, three (3) month Vnese faculty stays at UC Davis, and three (3) weeks UC Davis mentorships at the VNese universities. UC Davis' Dean VanAlfen has been told by VNese officials that the SERD funded project laid the ground work for these additional projects that certainly internationalize the UC Davis faculty.
Publications
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Progress 07/01/06 to 12/31/06
Outputs
Below is a progress report for this period, organized by project goals. Of note, PI Cary Trexler may be awarded a Fulbright fellowship in Vietnam (VN) during the 2007-08 academic year. His application was selected by USA peer review process and has been forwarded to the VNese government and the US Embassy there. This may potentially slow down attainment of grant goals, but in the long-term, will enhance the project and help to further internationalize UC Davis' connections in VN. 1. Conduct collaborative research and extension programs focused on post harvest fruit and vegetable handling and community development. The following activities were accomplished: Professors Jim Hill and Cary Trexler traveled to VN in August 2006 to plan project cooperative research and evaluate needs for post-harvest research and extension. In September 2006, Beth Mitcham met with Can Tho University (CTU) faculty to design and begin collaborative post-harvest research. The faculty from each
institution agreed that the focus should be narrowed to only included efforts to support clean vegetable production. The narrowing of focus was based on current VNese governmental efforts to reduce pesticide residues. Also, there is a increasingly profitable market for clean vegetables in VN and the Can Tho City region more specifically. Dr. Tam of Nong Lam University, our external evaluator, submitted a context evaluation at the beginning of the project. A team of CTU faculty submitted plans for: environmental, production, socio-economic, and post-harvest research projects. UC Davis faculty were identified as collaborators. In sum, we met all objectives in a timely fashion. 2. Foster economic competitiveness by helping Californians learn about specialty fruit and vegetable crops and production methods emerging in Viet Nam. The following activities were accomplished: When in Can Tho, Vietnam, Prof. Trexler discussed the farmer and UCCE personnel visits with Dr. Guong, CARD country
coordinator. We discussed possible sites for visitations and logistics. Our next step is to create a brochure for the program and to begin developing a website. 3. Re-energize and bring more relevance to UC Davis curricula by integrating a service-learning component in a new Study-Abroad program. This goal has been the greatest challenge for us thus far. Professor Trexler met with the UC Davis Study Abroad program directors in May 2006. At first they were interested in idea of taking students to VN. After they heard the plan involved a co-taught program with a UC Riverside professor, as outlined in our proposal, the administrators were concerned about cross-campus matters such as, which campus would get credit for the students, how the instructors would get paid, and other logistical matters that had more to do, in Professor Trexler's opinion, with turfism, than what would be best for students. Professors Hill and Trexler have scheduled meetings with administrators higher up the UC
Davis institutional ladder to put political pressure on the entire process. CTU is ready to assist with arrangements for the Study Abroad program, but it will need to be postponed.
PRODUCTS: See box 42
OUTCOMES: See box 42
DISSEMINATION ACTIVITIES: See box 42
FUTURE INITIATIVES: See box 42
Impacts
See box 42
Publications
- No publications reported this period
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