Progress 05/15/17 to 05/14/22
Outputs
Target Audience:Land is fundamentally multi-faceted and multi-functional, and so land management draws on a variety of disciplines, skills and knowledges - and yet, as researchers, we often approach our work through the narrow lens of a single chosen discipline, scale or socioecological problem. Ourintegrative workshops train the next generation of integrated land managers through a dedicated one week workshop. These workshopsbrought together a diverse group of faculty, development practitioners and community members to provide students working on any topic an overview of the latest methods, theories and approaches. Ourhands-on immersive workshops featured demonstrations and discussions of global value chains, land tenure and titling, water management, governance and accountability, research rigor, gender, and worker rights applied to cutting-edge questions of sustainability, justice, science and economic development. The target audience for our Designing Integrated Land Management (ILM) graduate student training initiative was early graduate students from across the Cornell University campus with background and interests related to land management. We conducted targeted recruiting forunder-represented students and for a diversity of disciplinary backgrounds. In Year 3 we expanded the target audience beyond Cornell University to include students from Syracuse University and Penn State. A secondary audience included the multiple non-profit organizations with whom interns worked with and whom received the benefits of ILM-based research projects.In total, we trained 94 students across multiple departments and universities and organized 18 internships with non-governmental organizations inIndia, Tajikistan, Malawi, Tanzania, Guatemala, and the United States. Of our 94 trainees, 57 were women and 8 were from otherwise underrepresented groups. Disciplinary backgrounds include architecture, anthropology, food studies, rural sociology, soil science, art, planning, public health, applied economics and management, and many more. In each year of the program we delivered science-based training over a week-long ILM workshop. The workshop was primarily classroom-based. Students received hands-on, interactivelessons on how researchers approached land-based issues through their disciplinary lens. The curriculum, including texts and lecturers, was designed to integrate approaches from across campus to include economic, environmental, social, and agronomic aspects of land management. Each workshop included a field trip to local farms and other sites, led by faculty researchers, to apply and expand classroom lessons. Student interns went on to apply their training to hands-on research-based internships with host nonprofits in the United States and abroad. Student interns providedactionable reports to partner organizations andreportedtheir findings on Cornell campus. Changes/Problems:Recruiting has been a consistent struggle through the course of this program. Typically, we would begin organizing themes and speakers for the workshop along with host organizations for internships in the Fall with the hope of publishing a call for applications before December. This urgency is due to the fact that students often use the summer session for research and are working to attain funding for the research well before the summer. Thus, if students receive an offer in mid to late Spring (particularly for the summer internship research), they may have already arranged summer research plans. We consistently had challenges of meeting this deadline due to the difficulty of organizing both internal and external participants and hosts simultaneously. Thus, we were often delayed in publishing the calls for applications until the Fall semester when many students had arrangements. We consistently recruited broadly from across campus and through targeted venues, such as departmental listservs and university organizations for underrepresented students. A second struggle is that some students complained of a lack of focus for the workshop curriculum. A challenge of taking an integrated, interdisciplinary approach is that the throughline can be difficult to maintain. In Year 3, for example, we had trainings on gender dynamics on the land, diverse impacts of climate change, water cycles, and farm worker struggles. The diversity of approaches, we believe, challenges students' ability to see a clear narrative that connects the themes. While asking presenters to address this may help, we believe providing more narrative structure either verbally or visually throughout the trainings could help with this. Finally, in the last years of the grant, we struggled to operate under the pressures and restrictions of COVID-19. On March 10, 2020, Cornell University announced that it would be moving to all virtual instruction, tightening group events, and discouraging all domestic or foreign travel. We suspended all program plans for the year. The following year, Cornell remained locked down, restricting our ability to conduct another workshop, and students, organizations, and the organizers ourselves remained cautious about conducting in-person research. Over the course of the following year, we communicated internally and externally to examine the potential of continuing either the in-person workshop or the associated research internships and consistently found that both students and host organizations were resistant to in-person events. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?Thisprogramis based on student training and professional development. Our workshops brought together students and faculty from across campus to discuss how theyconduct interdisciplinary work. The workshop lessons included lecture components and practice-based lessons to teach foundational principles and their incorporation into research. Throughout the recruitment of faculty presenters, we emphasized interdisciplinarity and practicality to ensure that lessons would not be based on abstract theoriesbut on actionable practices that can build toward interdisciplinary research. Our student interns gained experience conducting research, analyzing and writing up results, and presenting their results to various audiences (their host organizations, fellow students, and to colleagues in their departments). Beyond the research, this work with partner organizations allowed students to become embedded in non-academic institutions and conduct applied, actionable research. Those who didn't do internships had ample practice with doing research and performing research exercises in the classroom to learn how to utilize classroom lessons. While working with host supervisors and Cornell faculty, interns conducted independent research and analysis. Their work required them to apply research methodologies, write up and analyze empirical data, and engage with host communities and organizations as well as Cornell University faculty and students. Two Year 3 students commended the workshop for "providing the foundation required for future research projects" and "assisting me with my future professional work, and my upcoming academic work in graduate school." How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?There are multiple communities of interest in this program, including host organizations,host communities, and the Cornell University community. Each year, student interns provided written and oral reports of their findings to host organizations, and often to their host communities. This dissemination of results was often a summary of findings, but often also a set of recommendations for improving program development and implementation. Year 3 reports on the Behind the Brands campaign for Oxfam, for example, evaluate: the potential for the program in regions with deep land accessibility issues, the inclusiveness and interdisciplinarity of the standards themselves, and the internal perspectives on the impact of the campaign. These reports proved crucial in guiding the future of the Behind the Brands campaign. Other reports in Years 1 and 2 similarly implemented research practices and themes of Integrated Land Management to tackle thorny issues and problems that host organizations needed to understand. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?
Nothing Reported
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
a. Each year of the program, our ILM workshop delivered a carefully designed curriculum that brought together researchers from disciplines as diverse as atmospheric research and anthropology to demonstrate the potential of various disciplines and the power of integrating them together through land. In Years 2 and 3, in response to student feedback, we deepened this commitment by asking presenters to address their own pathway to their discipline and to incorporate interactive elements into their teaching. Together, this presentation of complementary approaches and hands-on classroom practice delivered a learning experience that prepared students to go beyond their own disciplinary boundaries to think holistically about integrated land management. Our end-of-workshop evaluations demonstrated this impact. A Year 1 student commented that "The workshop made interdisciplinary collaboration seem more possible in my future work." Another Year 1 student wrote that "[The workshop was] great exposure to research happening across campus in an interdisciplinary cohort." Year 2 students were particularly engaged and impressed with the training. Student comments spoke of levels of complexity and impact that they hadn't previously considered: Student A: "This workshop opened up my eyes to more of the process of land management. I was mainly considering the outputs, and perhaps that's how policy looks at land management. I want to consider more of the process which holds many complex negotiations and decisions. I also am leaving with complex understandings of land ownership and access." Student B: "I just feel like my eyes have been open to things I was paying no attention to at all. It's not that I didn't know about them or didn't care, but they were just tucked away out of sight and I'm glad they've been brought into the light because it makes my thoughts about my own research so much richer." A Year 3 student praised the training for moving beyond specialization: "We live in a world of specialization, i.e., people learn to be experts in very specific things.While this is important, I think that this can then lead to specialists' inability to community with those in other disciplines or those with varying levels of education." Student reports further demonstrated the effectiveness of this approach. For example, a Year 3 research report provided an analysis of the impact of Oxfam America's Behind the Brands campaign with recommendations on how to better engage with issues of land rights to strengthen multi-stakeholder initiatives. A Year 2 student working with the New York State Water Management Institutecreated a model for analyzing water quality and algal bloom in the Fall Creek Watershed of Tompkins County, New York. Post-workshop evaluation surveys consistentlyfound improvement in students perceivedability to engagewith the field of land management, familiaritywith cutting-edge theories, and ability to adopt an integrated research approach. Studentsalso strongly felt that they had a stronger network of interdisciplinary colleagues within the field. b. We built leadership skills in graduate students by equipping students with skills and opportunities to conduct research. Our workshops delivered a toolbox of integrated methods and approaches to build student confidence in conducting research. An important aspect of leadership is collaboration - our workshops included ample opportunity for students to work together on case studies and exercises and opportunity to network outside of these formal practices Summer internships with external partners helpedstudents gainexperience with leadership roles in research projects, gaincross-cultural experience working with collaborators abroad, and deepentheir knowledge in their field. For many, this summer research was their first independent research project. c. For the workshops, faculty leaders developed teaching materials on topics as diverse asGIS for development, participatory processes, integrated landscape management, role play simulation on climate and drought, the importance of soil microbiology for land management research and practice, applied economics for land management, farm worker's experience with land management, and much more. d.We improved the awareness and skills of Cornell faculty related to integrated land management in multiple ways including the student workshop and internships, through which participating faculty were able to learn from each other and the expertise of students from across campus as well as a visiting fellows who sat in on some of the workshop sessions. Our workshop demonstrated to student and faculty participants how societal problems could be addressed from multiple methodological and epistemological angles, but also how these different approaches could be integrated together to address problems of land and land use as complex and dynamic wholes. In addition to exploring methodologies of research, students and faculty were introduced to collaborators from across the humanities, social science, and natural sciences. These introductions can encourage future cross-disciplinary collaboration between participants. e. Our interns produced final research reports for our partner nonprofit organizations (Care USA, Oxfam India; Oxfam Tajikistan, Oxfam America, partner organizations; the Keystone Foundation in India; the New York State Water Management Institute; and the Soils, Food, and Healthy Communities Organization in Malawi). A Year 1 student's research findings were being implemented into Oxfam Tajikista's 5-year program plan and two students working with Care USA were commended for bringing value to their Tanzania office. In Year 2, students working with Soils, Food, and Healthy Communities Organization hosted workshops in Malawi to engage organization staff in research, train staff in research methods, and share research results with staff. Their reports shared insights into local food pathways as well as insights about employing integrated land management methods. Interns working with Keystone Foundation in India analyzed monitoring and evaluation systems of local biodiversity to provide detailed recommendations on how these systems can be improved. An intern working with Oxfam India used integrated land management training to research how different demographic groups engaged with conservation and the forest protection laws of India; he provided observations and recommendations in a report given to Oxfam. Year 3 research interns worked with Oxfam America to analyze the Behind the Brands campaign. One student provided a detailed analysis of the impact of the campaign on palm production in Guatemala, and found that ongoing struggles with land tenure challenged the effectiveness of the program. Another student conducted interviews with Oxfam and its partners to evaluate the program internally; she provided detailed analysis and recommendations on how to make the program more holistic by including climate change as a factor and to work more closely with partner organizations.
Publications
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Progress 05/15/20 to 05/14/21
Outputs
Target Audience:Our target audience for Year 4 of our Designing Integrated Land Management (ILM) graduate student training initiativewas mid-career graduate studentsto participate in research internships with already existing organizational partners. After the initial three years of the program we did not have sufficient funds to host a full workshop and internships, but we did have sufficient funding to support a limited amount of research internships. We began our recruitment of graduate students from across Cornell University campus in the fall with the intention to fund four internships, but we suspended our efforts after it became clear that the continuing impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic made in-person internships untenable for both students and partner organizations. Changes/Problems:We began the year with an already amended mission of using funds to support research internships without our usual weeklong workshop. This change was due to a lack of funding to support the full workshop. Although we did not have enough resources to complete a fourth year of the program as a complete package, we planned to use the remaining money to support new research internships at partner organizations. We hoped to fund internships at Oxfam America, Soils, Food, and Healthy Communities, Keystone, and Tompkins County, partners we have already worked with. This would have featured graduate student training, advanced our integrated land management approach, and strengthened/extended durable partnerships that have a future. These new internships were hoped to also be used to develop a co-authored publication that explored ILM from perspective of theory and practice; reflected on the challenges and successes of our program; and plotted a future for integrated land management and university-NGO cooperation. However, with Cornell University campus closed and shifted to virtual instruction and with many of our partner organizations similarly working from home, we did not see a viable way to continue work towards these goals. With attention to both the practicalities of research in the field and to the health and wellbeing of our students and partners, we suspended our recruitment efforts and our program. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?
Nothing Reported
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?
Nothing Reported
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
Due to the suspension of our planned activities, we did not make substantial progress towards our primary project goals during this period. We did work towards our fourth objective, to improve the awareness and skills of Cornell faculty, and our fifth objective, to provide evidence, skills, and future personnel for our external partners, in our initial outreach to Cornell University faculty and to partner organizations as we worked to organize research internships in the Fall. Although ultimately we did not go through with these plans due to the ongoing pandemic, these outreach efforts were productive in maintaining long-term working relationships between faculty and partner organizations as well as keeping program associates aware of integrated land management principles and ideas.
Publications
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Progress 05/15/19 to 05/14/20
Outputs
Target Audience:The target audience for our Designing Integrated Land Management (ILM) graduate student training initiative is early graduate students from across the Cornell University campus with background and interests related to land management. We conducted targeted recruiting for both under-represented students and for a diversity of disciplinary backgrounds. In Year 3 we expanded the target audience beyond Cornell University to include students from Syracuse University and Penn State. A secondary audience included the multiple non-profit organizations with whom interns worked with and received the benefits of ILM-based research projects. In Year 3, we trained 28 graduate students and organized 3 internships. We delivered science-based training over a week-long ILM workshop. The workshop was primarily classroom-based. Students received interactive lessons on how researchers approached land-based issues through their disciplinary lens. The curriculum, including texts and lecturers, was designed to integrate approaches from across campus to include economic, environmental, social, and agronomic aspects of land management. Our fieldtrip to a local dairy farm allowed students to talk with local farmers and farm workers about land management and observe land management in actionto apply and expand classroom lessons. Three student interns went on to apply their training to hands-on research-based internships with Oxfam America. Changes/Problems:Recruiting has been a consistent struggle through the course of this program. Typically, we would begin organizing themes and speakers for the workshop along with host organizations for internships in the Fall with the hope of publishing a call for applications before December. This urgency is due to the fact that students often use the summer session for research and are working to attain funding for the research well before the summer. Thus, if students receive an offer in mid to late Spring (particularly for the summer internship research), they may have already arranged summer research plans. We consistently had challenges of meeting this deadline due to the difficulty of organizing both internal and external participants and hosts simultaneously. Thus, we were often delayed in publishing the calls for applications until the Fall semester when many students had arrangements. We consistently recruited broadly from across campus and through targeted venues, such as departmental listservs and university organizations for underrepresented students. A second struggle is that some students complained of a lack of focus for the workshop curriculum. A challenge of taking an integrated, interdisciplinary approach is that the throughline can be difficult to maintain. In Year 3, for example, we had trainings on gender dynamics on the land, diverse impacts of climate change, water cycles, and farm worker struggles. The diversity of approaches, we believe, challenges students' ability to see a clear narrative that connects the themes. While asking presenters to address this may help, we believe providing more narrative structure either verbally or visually throughout the trainings could help with this. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?The entire project is based on student training and professional development. Our workshops brought together students and faculty from across campus to discuss how they do and can conduct interdisciplinary work. The workshop lessons included lecture components and practice-based lessons to teach foundational principles and their incorporation into research. Throughout the recruitment of faculty trainers, we emphasized interdisciplinarity and practicality to ensure that lessons would not be based on abstract ideas, but on actionable practices that can improve interdisciplinary research. Our student interns gained experience conducting research, analyzing and writing up results, and presenting their results to various audiences (their host organizations, fellow students, and to others in their departments). Beyond the research, this work with partner organizations allowed students to embedded in non-academic institutions and asked them to conduct applied research. Those who didn't do internships had ample practice with doing research and performing research exercises in the classroom to learn how to utilize classroom lessons. While working with host supervisors and Cornell faculty, interns conducted independent research and analysis. Their work required them to apply research methodologies, write up and analyze empirical data, and engage with host communities and organizations as well as Cornell University faculty and students. Two Year 3 students commended the workshop for "providing the foundation required for future research projects" and "assisting me with my future professional work, and my upcoming academic work in graduate school." How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?There are multiple communities of interest in this program, including host organizations,host communities, and the Cornell University community. Each year, student interns provided written and oral reports of their findings to host organizations, and often to their host communities. This dissemination of results was often a summary of findings, but often also a set of recommendations for improving program development and implementation. Year 3 reports on the Behind the Brands campaign for Oxfam, for example, evaluate: the potential for the program in regions with deep land accessibility issues, the inclusiveness and interdisciplinarity of the standards themselves, and the internal perspectives on the impact of the campaign. These reports proved crucial in guiding the future of the Behind the Brands campaign. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?
Nothing Reported
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
a. Our ILM workshop delivered a carefully designed curriculum that brought together researchers from disciplines as diverse as atmospheric research and anthropology to demonstrate the potential of various disciplines and the power of integrating them together through land. A student praised the training for moving beyond specialization: "We live in a world of specialization, i.e., people learn to be experts in very specific things. While this is important, I think that this can then lead to specialists' inability to community with those in other disciplines or those with varying levels of education. In terms of climate change, many of the problems that we deal with are interrelated and require interdisciplinary conversation." Student reports further demonstrated the effectiveness of this approach. For example, a research report provided an analysis of the impact of Oxfam America's Behind the Brands campaign with recommendations on how to better engage with issues of land rights to strengthen multi-stakeholder initiatives. An evaluation survey found that students perceived a higher confidence in engaging with the field of land management, of familiarity with cutting-edge theories, and with using an integrated research approach. They also strongly felt that they had a stronger network of interdisciplinary colleagues. b. We built leadership skills in graduate students by equipping students with skills and opportunities to conduct research with external collaborators through summer internships, where students gained experience with leadership roles in research projects, gained cross-cultural experience working with collaborators abroad, and deepened their knowledge in their field. For many, this summer research was their first independent research project. An important aspect of leadership is collaboration - our workshops included ample opportunity for students to work together on case studies and exercises and opportunity to network outside of these formal practices. c. For the workshops, faculty leaders developed teaching materials on topics of GIS for Development (including tradeoffs in its use and pros/cons of its use), Participatory Processes, Integrated Landscape Management, Role Play Simulation on Climate and Drought, The Importance of Soil Microbiology for Land Management Research and Practice, Applied Economics for Land Management, among other things. d. We improved the awareness and skills of Cornell faculty related to integrated land management in multiple ways including the student workshop and internships, through which participating faculty were able to learn from each other and the expertise of students from across campus as well as a visiting fellows who sat in on some of the workshop sessions. For example, Professor Art Degaetano, during his discussion with workshop participants on the benefits of interdisciplinary collaboration in his own work, mentioned that, "Integrated work raises basic scientific questions that my field doesn't know and brings about new research ideas." This statement resulted in interesting ensuing conversations with attending faculty and students about the opportunities and challenges for integrated collaboration. We built relationships and tools necessary for interdisciplinary collaboration. Our workshop demonstrated to student and faculty participants how societal problems could be addressed from multiple methodological and epistemological angles, but also how these different approaches could be integrated together to address problems of land and land use as complex and dynamic wholes. In addition to exploring methodologies of research, students and faculty were introduced to collaborators from across the humanities, social science, and natural sciences. These introductions can encourage future cross-disciplinary collaboration between participants. e. Our interns produced final research reports for our partner nonprofit organizations. Year 3 research interns worked with Oxfam America to analyze the Behind the Brands campaign. One student provided a detailed analysis of the impact of the campaign on palm production in Guatemala, and found that ongoing struggles with land tenure challenged the effectiveness of the program. Another student conducted interviews with Oxfam and its partners to evaluate the program internally; she provided detailed analysis and recommendations on how to make the program more holistic by including climate change as a factor and to work more closely with partner organizations.
Publications
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Progress 05/15/18 to 05/14/19
Outputs
Target Audience:The target audience for our Designing Integrated Land Management (ILM) graduate student training initiative is early graduate students from across the Cornell campus with background and interests related to land management. In Year 2 of our project, we trained 31 participants (mostly early Cornell grad students) through our week-long research methods workshop, and we provided research and leadership opportunities for 8 participants through summer internships (and had selected a 9th student who declined last-minute to accept another opportunity). The 2018 workshop participants joined us from multiple Cornell schools across campus from a variety of different fields: international agriculture and rural development, horticulture, development sociology, entomology, regional planning, and natural resources. Changes/Problems:We had hoped to recruit summer interns earlier in the academic year in Year 2, since selecting student interns earlier will give them the opportunity to apply for additional campus funds and external travel fellowships to support their summer research-related expenses including airfare, ground transportation, passport/visa/travel vaccine expenses, living expenses, etc. However, because of timeline constraints for internship organizers (both at Cornell and our partner organizations), as in Year 1, we selected interns in late spring. In Year 3, we hope to select students earlier. We also are focusing most intern work on a single program, though at different sites. Working with Oxfam America's Behind the Brands program is expected to give interns more foundation for their research and an even greater sense of contributing in a real way to an initiative. In a post-internship survey, students indicated that they were generally pleased with their internships, but unsatisfied with their working relationships with host organizations. Students enjoyed working directly with communities and organizations, working outside of their home department, and learning about the research process, but many cited unclear goals and roles, and language barriers. In year three we will have a clearer set of goals and roles, as we have negotiated with Oxfam America, and will make language ability a stronger factor in selection criteria. We hope to avoid the need for translators by assigning students with language abilities in the host countries. Finally, we hope to attract greater interest from underrepresented students. We hope to do this by publishing our call for applications in venues of interest including specific student groups, programs, and listservs. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?Our entire project is based on student training and professional development, including our annual weeklong workshop as well as summer research internships with nonprofit organization partners. Whereas our first weeklong workshop focused on giving students an exposure to some basic research tools from fields across campus related to land management, our second workshop brought together students and faculty from across campus to discuss how they do and can conduct interdisciplinary work. Our student interns gained experience conducting research, analyzing and writing up results, and presenting their results to various audiences (their host organizations, fellow students, and to others in their departments). While working with host supervisors and Cornell faculty, interns conducted independent research and analysis. Their work required them to apply research methodologies, write up and analyze empirical data, and engage with host communities and organizations as well as Cornell University faculty and students. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?Our graduate student research interns presented their research results back at the Cornell campus in the fall. Also, two summer interns from the first cohort returned to discuss their research results and the challenges and opportunities that accompany research with nonprofit organization partners at the second year's May weeklong workshop to our new cohort of students. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?For Year 3, we plan to organize a third week-long grad student training workshop and 9 linked grad student internships. We dedicate one week to developing an integrated perspective and toolkit in conjunction with Oxfam America's Behind the Brands campaign. We bring together a diverse group of faculty, development practitioners and community members to provide students working on any topic an overview of the latest methods, theories and approaches. This hands-on immersive workshop will feature demonstrations and discussions of global value chains, land tenure and titling, water management, governance and accountability, research rigor, gender, and worker rights applied to cutting-edge questions of sustainability, justice, science and economic development. In addition to contributions from a broad range of Cornell faculty, there will also be presentations and discussions with Oxfam America representatives. Participants in the week-long workshop will be organized into small discussion groups to emphasize active learning and provide feedback on participants' written work. Time will be budgeted in the schedule for writing and discussion. Depending on the type of their enrollment each participant will produce either a research plan for a summer internship (for those enrolled as summer interns), an essay to analyze the supply chain for a specific company or commodity (for those enrolled for credit), or a short essay to apply the lessons of the week to their own work (for those taking the course not for credit). This workshop will be co-led by Cornell University faculty and Oxfam. Faculty from Penn State University and Duke University will also be deeply involved.
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
Through our Cornell graduate student training initiative on "Designing Integrated Land Management," in Year 1, we had attempted to expose student workshop participants to a suite of new research methods as they prepared for careers related to themes of land management. Participants in our first year's ILM workshop let us know that while the workshop equipped them with insights and skills outside their field, the workshop should have be more collaborative and integrative. As a result, we designed the Year 2 workshop (May 21-25, 2018) as a much more integrative and collaborative experience. Instead of presenting a series of separate methods modules, faculty presenters at the second workshop discussed their own research in relation to land management, how it fits into their field, why it is important, and in what ways it is and/or could be interdisciplinary -- and then engaged the students in a discussion or activity related to their work and land management. In our Year 2 group, many students had told us that they want to do more integrated work but weren't sure how to do so. We asked faculty to discuss with the group during their research and in general how much they work with people in other fields, and what would be the pros and cons of trying to do so? What advice would they have for students who wish to do integrated work? For example, a plant science professor discussed her background, life trajectory, and research and how it relates to managing land to reduce invasive weeds, and how plant-microbial community assemblages can enhance ecosystem services on the theme of "Applying Biodiversity and Ecosystem Function Theory to Turfgrass Management." Several times during the workshop, students discussed the workshop topics in small groups in relation to each other and to their own professional and personal life interests with the goal to maximize opportunities for the ILM participants to consider ways to integrate and apply the workshop learnings to be useful to them in their future careers. In this second year of our project, we organized and led a week-long workshop on Designing Integrative Land Management that trained 31 grad students and organized summer research internships related to land management for 8 grad students. The workshop consisted of a week of 2-3 hour sessions led by Cornell faculty and multiple guest speakers, including two former interns from Year 1 of our project. One of the most popular sessions was led by an Indian nonprofit organization partner who is organizing one of our summer internships. As with Year 1, a major highlight for students at the workshop was meeting colleagues outside their own departments. The students again expressed excitement about this workshop as a chance to engage with others interested in interdisciplinary work spanning departmental boundaries. Similar to after Year 1, several students expressed sadness that the workshop was over and hoped to have opportunities in the coming year to meet up as a group again and/or engage in related interdisciplinary events. We built leadership skills in graduate students by equipping students with skills and opportunities to conduct research with external collaborators through summer internships, where students gained experience with leadership roles in research projects, gained cross-cultural experience working with collaborators abroad, and deepened their knowledge in their field. We held an evening workshop back in the fall for returned interns to present their results to other Cornell students and discuss lessons learned. For the workshop, faculty leaders developed teaching materials on topics of GIS for Development (including tradeoffs in its use and pros/cons of its use), Participatory Processes, Integrated Landscape Management, Role Play Simulation on Climate and Drought, The Importance of Soil Microbiology for Land Management Research and Practice, and Applied Economics for Land Management. We improved the awareness and skills of Cornell faculty related to integrated land management in multiple ways including the student workshop and internships, through which participating faculty were able to learn from each other and the expertise of students from across campus as well as a couple of visiting fellows who sat in on some of the workshop sessions. For example, Professor Art Degaetano, during his discussion with workshop participants on the benefits of interdisciplinary collaboration in his own work, mentioned that, "Integrated work raises basic scientific questions that my field doesn't know and brings about new research ideas." This statement resulted in interesting ensuing conversations with attending faculty and students about the opportunities and challenges for integrated collaboration. We built relationships and tools necessary for interdisciplinary collaboration. Our workshop demonstrated to student and faculty participants how societal problems could be addressed from multiple methodological and epistemological angles, but also how these different approaches could be integrated together to address problems of land and land use as complex and dynamic wholes. In addition to exploring methodologies of research, students and faculty were introduced to collaborators from across the humanities, social science, and natural sciences. These introductions can encourage future cross-disciplinary collaboration between participants. Our interns produced final research reports for our partner nonprofit organizations (Oxfam India partner organizations; the Keystone Foundation in India; the New York State Water Management Institute; and the Soils, Food, and Healthy Communities Organization in Malawi). Students working with Soils, Food, and Healthy Communities Organization hosted workshops in Malawi to engage organization staff in research, train staff in research methods, and share research results with staff. Their reports shared insights into local food pathways as well as insights about employing integrated land management methods. An intern working with the New York State Water Management Institute analyzed integrated water use research methods used in Seattle and created a model for analyzing water quality and algal bloom in the Fall Creek Watershed of Tompkins County, New York. Interns working with Keystone Foundation in India analyzed monitoring and evaluation systems of local biodiversity to provide detailed recommendations on how these systems can be improved. An intern working with Oxfam India used integrated land management training to research how different demographic groups engaged with conservation and the forest protection laws of India; he provided observations and recommendations in a report given to Oxfam.
Publications
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Progress 05/15/17 to 05/14/18
Outputs
Target Audience:The target audience for our Designing Integrated Land Management (ILM) graduate student training initiative is early graduate students from across the Cornell campus with background and interests related to land management. In Year 1 of our project, we trained 25 participants (mostly early Cornell grad students) through our week-long research methods workshop, and we provided research and leadership opportunities for 7 participants through summer internships. The 2017 workshop participants joined us from multiple Cornell schools across campus and came from 14 different programs: Integrated Plant Sciences; Public Affairs; City and Regional Planning; Art, Architecture, and Planning; Applied Economics and Management; Biological and Environmental Engineering; Natural Resources; Nutritional Sciences; Development Sociology; International Agriculture and Rural Development; Anthropology; Ecology and Evolutionary Biology; Earth and Atmospheric Sciences; and Public Health. Changes/Problems:Firstly, because we received final confirmation that our USDA HEC grant was funded in late spring of 2017, we recruited student participants for our weeklong workshop and summer internships quite late in the spring. We were able to recruit 25 students to join our workshop out of the intended 30, and we successfully filled 7 internships despite advertising more because our project started so late in Spring 2017. It was stressful for both Cornell and partner organizations to do everything last-minute. In future years of our program, we plan to recruit students for the workshop and summer research internship opportunities over the winter. Selecting student interns earlier will give them the opportunity to apply for additional campus funds and external travel fellowships to support their summer research-related expenses including airfare, ground transportation, passport/visa/travel vaccine expenses, living expenses, etc. It would work best to start discussing summer research internship ideas with partner organizations in the prior fall, since it can take some organizations a couple of months to pull together an internship opportunity. Secondly, participants of the first ILM workshop claimed that while the workshop equipped them with insights and skills outside their field, the workshop should be more collaborative and integrative. As a result, we have designed the Year 2 workshop (May 21-25, 2018) as a much more integrative and collaborative experience. Instead of presenting a series of separate methods modules, faculty presenters at the second workshop will discuss their own research in relation to land management, how it fits into their field, why it is important, and in what ways it is and/or could be interdisciplinary -- and then engage the students in a discussion or activity of some sort related to their work and land management. For example, a plant science professor will discuss her research and how it relates to managing land to reduce invasive weeds, and how plant-microbial community assemblages can enhance ecosystem services on the theme of "Applying Biodiversity and Ecosystem Function Theory to Turfgrass Management." At the end of each day of the workshop, students will discuss the workshop topics in small groups in relation to each other and to their own professional and personal life interests with the goal to maximize opportunities for the ILM participants to consider ways to integrate and apply the workshop learnings to be useful to them in their future careers. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?Our entire project is based on student training and professional development, including our annual weeklong workshop(and curriculum resources designed based on workshop modules) as well assummer research internships with nonprofit organization partners. This first year's workshop focused on giving students an exposure to some basic research tools from fields across campus related to land management. Our student interns gained experience conducting research, analyzing and writing up results, and presenting their results to various audiences (their host organizations, fellow students, and some students also presented through their departments). One of the students was hired to create the curriculum resources developed from the workshop, giving her the opportunity to talk more with faculty and go through multiple document revisions with different parties before finalizing the materials. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?Our graduate student research interns presented their research results back at the Cornell campus in Fall 2018. Also, two summer interns from the first cohort will be returning to discuss their research results and the challenges and opportunities that accompanyresearch with nonprofit organization partners at the second year's May weeklong workshop to our new cohort of students. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?For the next reporting period, we have organized a second week-long graduate student training workshop (May 21-25, 2018) and a new set ofsummer graduate student research internships with nonprofit community organization partners (domestic and international). The Year 1 workshop was led by one faculty member. TheYear 2 workshopwill be co-led by three faculty members from different disciplines to foster discussions about interdisciplinary and integrated land management.
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
a) To expose students to a suite of new research methods as they prepare for careers related to themes of land management, through our Cornell graduate student training initiative on "Designing Integrated Land Management," we organized and led a week-long workshop (May 11-17, 2017) on Integrative Land Management that trained 25 grad students and organized summer research internships related to land management for 7 grad students. The workshop consisted of a week of 2-3 hour sessions led by Cornell faculty, visiting faculty, and guest speakers from some of our collaboration nonprofit organization partners. The sessions introduced students to qualitative and/or quantitative research methods that could be used to study integrated land management. During the debrief meeting held at the end of the weeklong workshop to learn what students liked most and would change for future similar events, several students expressed how they were thrilled by the opportunity to meet each other and network with grad students from different departments across campus. At Cornell, they said, students often stick to events and interact with other grad students within their own department, which can lead to feelings of isolation. While at some universities it is common for graduate students to interact across fields and attend events at a variety of departments, that is apparently less true at Cornell. The students expressed excitement about this workshop as a chance to engage with others interested in interdisciplinary work spanning departmental boundaries. Several students expressed sadness that the workshop was over and hoped to have opportunities in the coming year to meet up as a group again and/or engage in related interdisciplinary events. Notable participant evaluation quotes: [The workshop was] "great exposure to research happening across campus in an interdisciplinary cohort." "The workshop made interdisciplinary collaboration seem more possible in my future work." "I didn't want this workshop to ever end!" b) We built leadership skills in graduate students by equipping students with skills and opportunities to conduct research with external collaborators. Participants in the week-long workshop learned about different types of interviewing methods, practiced them on each other in the workshop, and then some participants got to design and conduct interviews in the field during summer internships. Through the internships, students gained experience with leadership roles in research projects, gained cross-cultural experience working with collaborators abroad, and deepened their knowledge in their field. We held a 1-credit Fall 2017 seminar course for interns to process and analyze data, finalize their research reports, present their results to other Cornell students, and continue training in land management theory and skill. This seminar was opened to all week-long workshop participants after that workshop group expressed interest in continuing to meet and learn together after the workshop ended. c) We enlisted a graduate student to prepare 10 new course learning resources for use in Cornell courses related to the workshop theme of integrated land management. These resources stemmed from the main workshop week modules and summarized key points as well as added reference lists to point readers towards additional relevant information. A website is being created to host these learning aids. d) We improved the awareness and skills of Cornell faculty related to integrated land management in multiple ways including the student workshop and internships and also through a related conference open to the entire campus and local community. In the middle of the May weeklong workshop, we organized the related "Farm to Plate Conference 2017: Uniting for a Just and Sustainable Food System." The conference engaged academics (faculty and students) from Cornell and elsewhere, local farmers, and interested community members to discuss many themes related to the question of what makes a food system both sustainable and just. The conference focused on issues of racial and social justice in local farming systems, and it included paper sessions, skill-building sessions, keynote speakers, and breakout discussions aimed to produce lasting results from the conference discussions. e) Our interns produced final research reports for our partner nonprofit organizations (CARE USA/Tanzania; Oxfam Tajikistan; The Nature Conservancy; and the Soils, Food, and Healthy Communities Organization in Malawi). Our CARE USA partner who organized a 2-student team internship with CARE Tanzania said that, "What the interns did in TZ this summer was really valuable to the country office, the interns, and for CARE USA." The Cornell program evaluation expert who mentored the team said that she enjoyed getting to know the students well over the course of the summer and thought that the students turned out a very professional joint report. As a result of her involvement with these interns, she was delighted to get one of them as an excellent TA this past pall and also got two spin-off projects from the summer internship work: a community-engaged student research project with one of the interns, and a related project with CARE USA. Oxfam Tajikistan staff mentioned that they appreciated the opportunity to engage with a Cornell intern for the summer and said that they planned to incorporate the intern's work into a learning document being produced about their 5-year program.
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