Progress 09/01/23 to 08/31/24
Outputs
Target Audience:The Center for Urban Agriculture and Sustainability (CUAS) is an academic center established at the University of Houston - Downtown (UHD) in 2015, initially funded by a USDA NIFA grant. This report details Year 5 of UHD's latest initiative, Support Undergraduate Sustainable Technology and Agricultural Instructional Needs (SUSTAIN). This is a no-cost extension year allowing us to run the program a bonus year using funds not spent during the pandemic. Dr. Lisa Morano, Professor of Biology and Microbiology and CUAS Director, leads the program. Her expertise lies in environmental microbiology and agroecology. Dr. Vassilios Tzouanas, Co-PI of the program, is a Professor and Chair of the Department of Computer Science and Engineering Technology, with a focus on integrating renewable energy into engineered systems. Together, Morano and Tzouanas have developed impactful learning experiences for the SUSTAIN Scholars program at UHD. They also enlisted Dr. Bill Flores, a Professor of Political Science from the UHD Social Science Department, to contribute his knowledge on social justice issues affecting Hispanic populations, such as immigration, healthcare, environmental justice, and higher education. Dr. Flores' role includes incorporating social science perspectives into the program and aiding in student recruitment beyond the College of Science and Technology (CST). The SUSTAIN program primarily targets undergraduates at UHD, welcoming students from any major and making its events accessible to the entire UHD community. This year-long initiative provides experiential learning and mentoring, which are central components of the program. UHD is one of four universities in the University of Houston system, situated in downtown Houston--the fourth-largest city in the U.S. and recognized as the most diverse city in America in terms of ethnicity, culture, and economics. Although UHD offers Master's Degrees, it primarily serves over 14,000 undergraduate students. It is designated as both a Minority Serving Institution (MSI) and a Hispanic Serving Institution (HSI). As of 2023, UHD's student demographics include 57% Hispanic, 18% Black, 11% White, 8% Asian, with the remainder comprising International, multi-racial, Pacific Islander, and American Indian students. Most UHD freshmen are first-generation college students and Pell Grant eligible. Programs at UHD, which are open to all students, naturally support populations underrepresented in food, agriculture, natural, and human sciences (FANH). Additionally, the SUSTAIN program targets students from the nearby Westside High School, a partner in this grant. Westside High School's student body is 32% African American and 44% Hispanic, with 55% at risk of dropping out. The UHD SUSTAIN program focuses on curriculum development and creating experiential learning opportunities for both UHD students and Westside High School students. Past and current USDA NIFA funding has supported curriculum enhancements. Previously, the CUAS developed a Minor in Sustainability and introduced new courses such as Renewable Energy Systems (SUST 3301), Fundamentals of Sustainability (SUST 3302), Seminar in Sustainability (SUST 4301), and Capstone in Sustainability (SUST 4302). A key objective of the current program was to make these courses available online to improve accessibility for all UHD students. The pandemic expedited this transition to online learning. Another goal was to launch an Urban Agriculture course. Although plans to offer this course through a continuing education partnership with Texas AgriLife Extension were thwarted by a lack of funding, a new continuing education director at UHD has indicated she wants to make this course a reality in our new Continuing Education offerings. Additionally, PI Morano and Co-PI Tzouanas are working on a graduate certificate in Sustainabiltiy which grew directly out of the undergraduate offerings created with USDA NIFA funding. The current program has emphasized experiential learning for UHD students through the development of the SUSTAIN Scholars. This year, six students were selected for the program (instead of typical 8) using funds from this no-cost extension year. The program includes two courses: SUST 3301 (Renewable Energy Systems) taught by Dr. Tzouanas in the latter part of the summer before the program year, followed by SUST 3302 (Fundamentals of Sustainability) with Dr. Morano in the fall. Throughout the fall, SUSTAIN Scholars meet weekly with Dr. Morano, Dr. Tzouanas, and CUAS staff member Ms. Adriana Penabad. These meetings cover professional development topics such as metacognition, discovering one's passion and career path, crafting a strong resume or CV, and enhancing writing skills. By the end of the fall semester, scholars form two teams and select a project focused on solving a problem in urban agriculture or sustainability using solar power. In the spring, the students work on their projects on Fridays and engage in weekly discussions on climate change solutions using the book Drawdown. At the end of the program, during the first half of the summer, SUSTAIN Scholars complete a 6-week internship with a local company, agency, or non-profit to gain practical experience in a field related to their major and FANH careers. Additionally, this year's students present their project results both on campus and at a national conferences so they could explore any potential interests in graduate school. This year, experiential learning efforts extended beyond the students in the SUSTAIN Scholars program to include other students as well. We hosted local Westside High School students for two significant events at UHD. In fall we held a plant science day that hosted 40 Westside High School students and in spring we hosted another 40 students for a more general science day. Details of these events will be covered in the Accomplishments section. Additionally, the CUAS office runs several experiential learning programs available to all UHD students. Although these programs were not initially included in our project proposal, they have emerged from the initial USDA NIFA funding support of the CUAS. Current CUAS-supported programs include the UHD Garden Group Team, the UHD Plastics Team, the UHD Texas Stream Team group, the SustainaGators program, and interns at the Houston Independent School District (HISD) educational farm. The CUAS also organizes seminars focused on careers in sustainability and urban agriculture and other specialized events open to both UHD and the broader Houston community, which will be detailed further in the Accomplishments section. Changes/Problems:Due to our no-cost extension year, we have impacted more students than originally expected with this program. We created additional seminars and learning opportunities that focus on FANH careers, beyond the original scope of this grant. After a setback with the pandemic, we got our high school program going and plan to keep that collaboration going. We were also able to send more SUSTAIN students to an academic meeting the last couple of years because early in the program travel was blocked due to the pandemic. The only major problem is that we didn't develop the Urban Agriculture course or the certificate or Masters program during the time of this program. There were no grant funds associated with this goal and so we will continue to work on these two goals over the next year or two. The paperwork for both a certificate and a Masters degree are both underway but such approval processes take a long time. It is likely they will both come to pass, but not during the time-period of this program. The additional course of Urban Agriculture was at one point going to be a special topics course and then a collaborative course with local Texas AgriLife Extension. It now appears it will be a course offered as part of our continuing education program as we have a new Director of Continuing Education at the university who is very excited in seeing an Urban Agriculture program. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?Two components of training and professions development are part of the SUSTAIN Scholars program. In addition to the two courses the Scholars take in the year-long program, students meet weekly with the mentors and sometimes guest speakers. The guest speakers are typically during the fall semester and cover topics of professional development (following your passion and profession, metacognition, writing up a good resume/CV). One of our associated faculty with the program (Dr. Flores) lead the discussion on following your passion and profession. He talked about his own career path in community work and told the students about his time long ago working with César Chávez and Dolores Huerta and the labor movement of the United Farm Workers in California. This last year we also had a number of CUAS sponsored presentations related to FANH careers. The Scholars were required to attend and they were open to all UHD students. These are described below. A second important professional development component of SUSTAIN Scholars program is the 6-week internship at the end of year. All 6 of our students were placed with our various community partners that overlapped with their areas of interest within FANH careers. We had two students at the City of Houston Green Building Center and one student each at Microbes Biosciences, Inc. (agricultural biotech), one worked for Houston Independent School District on a new sustainability initiative, one worked with Texas Parks and Wildlife, one worked for a community board and one worked for a local artist making art out of recycled plastic. These internships give students the ultimate professional development and training experience. CUAS continued training activities and professional development initiatives. As mentioned previously in this report, we held two in-person events that Westside high school students were able to attend. In fall and spring we hosted 40 high school students to each event so 80 high school students total were impacted. We hosted a number of events helping UHD students interested in FANH careers. SUSTAIN Scholars were required to attend as part of their weekly activities, but these opportunities were opened up to the entire UHD student body. In this way the professional development impacted many more than the 6 SUSTAIN Scholars. We didn't include such events below specifically in our grant proposal, but they have grown out of the synergistically out of community connections. Lunch and Learn seminars below required where students to sign-up early so they can get a free lunch purchased by a our community collaborator, OHBA - Organic Horticultural Business Alliance. 'Citizens Environmental Coalition Greater Houston Environmental Summit,' September 29, 2023, October 12, 2023, Fondren Commons, University of Houston-Downtown (about 150 people and 10 UHD students attended). 'Lunch and Learn: Discover her journey to becoming President and CEO of Houston Wilderness!' by Deborah January-Bevers, Thursday, October 12, 2023, Fondren Commons, University of Houston-Downtown (about 30 UHD students attended). 'Lunch and Learn: Science/Research Based Horticulture - A Career as an AgriLife Extension Horticulturist,' by Skip Richter, Tuesday, February 27, 2024, Fondren Commons, University of Houston-Downtown (about 30 UHD students attended). 'The New Go-Zero Challenge Recycling Ambassador Program,' CUAS recruited volunteers to educate and separate trash at Houston's Earth Day at Discovery Green, April 20, 2024 (100 volunteers recruited). 'President's Lecture Series on Sustainability,' April 23,2024, Fondren Commons, University of Houston-Downtown (about 80 UHD faculty, staff and students attended). How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?Information about CUAS opportunities and successes is shared in several ways. We maintain a permanent presence on the UHD CUAS website, which is updated by the college webmaster every 1-2 months. To communicate happenings more quickly, we utilize social media platforms. A student worker manages posts about upcoming events and opportunities on Facebook and Instagram. Additionally, we have found a way to reach all UHD students through "gator blasts" sent via a communications liaison, informing them about important events and opportunities, such as the community education events, seminars, and applications to our experiential learning programs. Students in the SUSTAIN Scholars program present their project work at the UHD Student Research Conference (SRC), an academic event attended by many graduate programs and some companies. This serves as an excellent opportunity for our students to showcase their work to a broader academic audience. Furthermore, we had six students who presented work at the 2023 SACNAS meeting, providing another platform for sharing their research. All 6 students of the 2023-2024 SUSTAIN cohort were sent to the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) in Portland, Oregon and served as student presenters. The CUAS has established numerous community partners including the local non-profits of White Oak Bayou Association, Urban Harvest and Organic Horticultural Business Alliance (OHBA). The principal investigator, Morano, has given presentations at a large spring OHBA event and was the Keynote speaker at the December 2023, Women in Agriculture conference, co-sponsored with Urban Harvest. These partnerships have become essential means of promoting our CUAS activities related to research, teaching, and community outreach, while also fostering connections with local businesses and the larger Houston community. These relationships lead to internships and job opportunities for our students and facilitate applied research projects conducted by UHD students (such as the Morano lab's current work testing beneficial microbes from a local agricultural biotechnology program). Morano (PI) and Tzouanas (co-PI) also published an article together this year as a conference paper from the ASEE meeting published above. This review of the highlights of this program and its student projects will be a permanent record and method of dissemination. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?
Nothing Reported
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
The primary goal of this proposal is to attract and support undergraduate students from underrepresented groups in pursuing careers or graduate programs in FANH. For the past year's SUSTAIN Scholars Program, the CUAS selected 6 students, aligning with our grant objectives. Although this was a no-cost extension year, which limited our funding and prevented us from admitting 8 students, 67% of the selected cohort (4 out of 6) identified as racially or ethnically underrepresented in the sciences (including Black or African American, Alaska Native, Native American, Native Hawaiian, Pacific Islander, and/or Hispanic). Additionally, 67% of the SUSTAIN students were first-generation college students. This year, we aimed to foster cross-disciplinary collaboration, and the SUSTAIN cohort was diverse in terms of academic backgrounds: 50% from the College of Science and Technology (CST), 17% from the College of Business, 17% from the College of Humanities and Social Science, and 17% from the College of Public Service. The external evaluator assessed the impact of the SUSTAIN program on students' interest in FANH careers or graduate studies through pre-, mid-, and post-tests. By the program's conclusion, 67% of SUSTAIN participants intended to pursue FANH careers, compared to 38% of control students enrolled only in sustainability curricula. In terms of soft skill development across 11 areas (such as teamwork, professional training, resume preparation, internships), control students declared having had significant guidance on all items mostly in the 60-70% range. In contrast, SUSTAIN students declared 100% significant guidance in 9 categories and were only below that mark in two areas. SUSTAIN students excelled in preparing academic papers, crafting resumes, engaging in effective mentoring relationships, and finding internships aligned with their interests. The evaluator also observed notable gains in specific content knowledge related to renewable energy, sustainability interactions, and agricultural systems. Student confidence in defining critical knowledge increased to 100% in all content areas from initial levels ranging from 50% to 83%. The 2023-2024 academic year successfully fostered collaboration with Westside High School. In fall 2023, we hosted 40 high school students from Westside for a day of Plant Science studies featuring hands-on activities with faculty. In spring 2024, another group of 40 students participated in a more general-themed Science Day, also involving hands-on activities. Such high school activities can foster FANH career interest earlier in the pipeline. The second objective of this program is to enhance post-secondary education in FANH fields by expanding the curriculum and incorporating more inclusive course delivery methods. One major goal was to transition courses to an online format to increase student accessibility, which was expedited by the pandemic. We successfully continued SUST 3302 in an online format, with students reporting that in-class discussions significantly aid their exam performance and other assessments. SUST 4301 and 4302 remain online as well. As part of this CUAS program we planned two additional academic initiatives: introducing a new SUST course in Urban Agriculture and developing a related certificate program. Our new Director of Continuing Education will help integrate Urban Agriculture into the Continuing Education program, and we have begun the paperwork for a graduate certificate in Sustainability. Our university now allows for the creation of graduate certificates without a corresponding master's degree, opening new possibilities. Another CUAS goal for the 2023-2024 academic year was to continue offering informal curricula on sustainability and urban agriculture to UHD students. Through these initiatives, we have exposed many students to influential speakers and career opportunities. Notable events included the Women in Agriculture event, co-sponsored with the non-profit Urban Harvest, which attracted 171 community members and students. We also involved 100 students in Earth Day at Houston's Discovery Green to help achieve a Zero-Waste event. The CUAS co-sponsored the President's Lecture Series on Sustainability, attended by approximately 80 faculty, staff, and students, and hosted two guest speakers (Lunch and Learns): the CEO of Houston Wilderness and a local horticulturist. Additionally, the CUAS supports training for 10 UHD students annually in the Texas Master Naturalist program, a valuable professional development opportunity for those pursuing FANH careers. The final objective of this programto provide opportunity and access to FANH career in the public and private sector through the addition of the summer internship component of the SUSTAIN experiential learning program. SUSTAIN Scholars are required to participate in the program for a full year. Following an academic year of coursework, mentoring, and a group project, the SUSTAIN students undertake a 6-week summer internship. After two rounds of interviews, students choose their preferred internship locations. Feedback from these internships has been positive from both students and supervisors. The external evaluator found that all students (100%) secured internships aligned with their career interests by the end of the program. According to the Internship Supervisor Survey, 80% (4/5) of supervisors strongly agreed and 20% (1/5) agreed that the interns met their performance expectations. Additionally, 80% (4/5) of supervisors strongly agreed and 20% (1/5) agreed that the interns demonstrated appropriate professionalism and made the most of the opportunities provided by the internship. Key Outcomes We have significantly enhanced the SUSTAIN Scholars' knowledge in areas such as sustainability, renewable energy, and urban agriculture, as well as their professional skills. Notably, there has been a rise in the percentage of minority students interested in pursuing FANH careers, now reaching 67% in this cohort. These students also experienced a nearly universal improvement in soft-skill areas, with their proficiency approaching 100% across 9 areas. Additionally, we've launched new CUAS events and seminars that have successfully attracted more UHD students to explore FANH careers. Feedback from these seminars has been overwhelmingly positive, with attendees finding them valuable and expressing interest in returning. In terms of conditions, we've seen an increase in the number of minority undergraduate students entering FANH fields, who are now better prepared thanks to professional development and internship opportunities. We've also expanded the range of majors among program participants and provided more formal learning opportunities for all UHD students beyond this program. Moreover, UHD has strengthened its community partnerships and established a pipeline from local high schools to the university.
Publications
- Type:
Conference Papers and Presentations
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2024
Citation:
Tzouanas, Vassilios and Morano, Lisa. 2024. A student experiential learning program: An interdisciplinary approach to sustainability. American Society for Engineering Education 2024 Annual Conference & Exposition, Oregon Convention Center, Portland, Oregon, June 23-26, 2024, paper ID# 42779.
- Type:
Conference Papers and Presentations
Status:
Accepted
Year Published:
2024
Citation:
Eric Alvarez, Amanda Dragon, Cristina Hernandez, Alma Lopez, Brendan Posterick, Jesus Villalobos (student presenters), Vassilios Tzouanas and Lisa Morano (mentors). A Student Experiential Learning Program An Interdisciplinary Approach to Sustainability. American Society for Engineering Education 2024 American Society Engineering Education, 2024 Annual Conference and Exposition. Oregon Convention Center, Portland, Oregon, June 23-26, 2024. (poster presentation)
- Type:
Conference Papers and Presentations
Status:
Accepted
Year Published:
2023
Citation:
Facundo, Danielle. Influence of rhizobacteria and mycorrhizal symbiosis on cucumber plants. 2023 SACNAS NDISTEM Conference, Portland, Oregon, October 26-28, 2023. (poster presentation)
- Type:
Conference Papers and Presentations
Status:
Accepted
Year Published:
2023
Citation:
Hernandez, Kathy. The use of plant growth promoting rhizobacteria (PGPR) and Arbuscular Mycorrhizal Fungi (AMF) combinations to promote growth in Cucumis sativas (Corinto). 2023 SACNAS NDISTEM Conference, Portland, Oregon, October 26-28, 2023. (poster presentation)
- Type:
Conference Papers and Presentations
Status:
Accepted
Year Published:
2023
Citation:
Garcia Salazar, Maria and Bonilla, Rosario. Reducing the Greenhouse effect by Designing and implementing a solar thermal collector. 2023 SACNAS NDISTEM Conference, Portland, OR, October 26-28, 2023. (poster presentation)
- Type:
Conference Papers and Presentations
Status:
Accepted
Year Published:
2023
Citation:
Martinez, Evelyn and Calderon, Misael. SUSTAIN: Indoor hydroponic vertical garden. 2023 SACNAS NDISTEM Conference, Portland, OR, October 26-28, 2023. (poster presentation, won best poster, Environmental)
- Type:
Conference Papers and Presentations
Status:
Accepted
Year Published:
2024
Citation:
Amanda Dragon, Eric Alvarez, and Brendan Posterick. Mentors: L. Morano, A. Penabad and V. Tzouanas. SUSTAIN Scholar Program 2024: Harness free, unlimited power from the sun Develop unique, versatile, portable solar cooker. University of Houston Downtown 23rd Annual Student Research Conference. April 19, 2024. (poster presentation)
- Type:
Conference Papers and Presentations
Status:
Accepted
Year Published:
2024
Citation:
Armin Golastanehrad and Lianet Chacon Garrido. Mentor: L. Morano. Advancing Agricultural Sustainability: Impact of Plant Growth Promoting Rhizobacteria and Mycorrhizal Fungi on Tomato Yield and Germination. University of Houston Downtown 23rd Annual Student Research Conference. April 19, 2024. (poster presentation)
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Progress 09/01/19 to 08/22/24
Outputs
Target Audience:The Center for Urban Agriculture and Sustainability (CUAS) is an academic center founded at the University of Houston - Downtown (UHD) in 2015, with initial funding from a USDA NIFA grant. In 2019 USDA NIFA we were awarded funding for our newest program, Support Undergraduate Sustainable Technology and Agricultural Instructional Needs (SUSTAIN). The program was spearheaded by PI, Dr. Lisa Morano, Professor of Biology and Microbiology and CUAS Director along with the program Co-PI, Vassilios Tzouanas, Professor and Chair of the Department of Computer Science and Engineering Technology. Together, Morano and Tzouanas have created valuable learning opportunities for the SUSTAIN Scholars program at UHD combining their expertise in agroecology and renewable energy. The SUSTAIN program also enlisted the help of Dr. Bill Flores, a Professor of Political Science from the UHD Social Science Department, to offer insights on social justice issues affecting Hispanic communities, including immigration, healthcare, environmental justice, and higher education. Dr. Flores contributed over the five years of the grant by incorporating social science perspectives into the program particularly during mentoring discussions in the first semester. The SUSTAIN program's main focus is on undergraduates at UHD, welcoming students from any major. This year-long SUSTAIN Scholars program provides experiential learning and mentoring, which are central components of the program. UHD is one of four universities in the University of Houston system. UHD is unique in that it is situated in downtown Houston and serves as a medium-sized, undergraduate teaching university. Houston is the fourth-largest city in the U.S. and recognized as the most diverse city in America in terms of ethnicity, culture, and economics and UHD students reflect that diversity. Although UHD offers Master's Degrees, it primarily serves over 14,000 undergraduate students and it has the official designations as both a Minority Serving Institution (MSI) and a Hispanic Serving Institution (HSI). As of 2023, UHD's student demographics are 57% Hispanic, 18% Black, 11% White, 8% Asian, with the remainder of students categorized as International, multi-racial, Pacific Islander, and American Indian students. Over the last five years of the funded program, the demographic percentages have changed slightly with the percentage of Hispanic students increasing slightly over time. The vast majority of UHD freshmen are first-generation college students and Pell Grant eligible. The SUSTAIN Scholars Program and other SUSTAIN initiatives described in this report are open to all UHD students. As such, the USDA NIFA goal of supporting diverse populations of students that are underrepresented in food, agriculture, natural, and human sciences (FANH) is easily met when the program is run at UHD. Additionally, the SUSTAIN program included some pipeline activities with nearby Westside High School, a partner in this grant. Westside High School's student body is 32% African American and 44% Hispanic, with 55% at risk of dropping out. The UHD SUSTAIN program focused on curriculum development and creating experiential learning opportunities for UHD students through the year-long SUSTAIN Scholars Program. SUSTAIN also supported an experiential learning collaboration with Westside High School students where students were brought to the university campus for a day of learning. Although a focus of the program was experiential learning, we did have some curriculum goals. Past and current USDA NIFA funding has supported curriculum enhancements. Previously, the CUAS developed a Minor in Sustainability and introduced new courses such as Renewable Energy Systems (SUST 3301), Fundamentals of Sustainability (SUST 3302), Seminar in Sustainability (SUST 4301), and Capstone in Sustainability (SUST 4302). A key objective of the current program was to make these courses available online to improve accessibility for all UHD students. The pandemic expedited this transition to online learning. Another goal was to launch a course in Urban Agriculture and to develop some certificate in sustainability and/or urban agriculture. Although plans to offer the Urban Agriculture course have gone through many different concepts, it looks like the course will be moved new Continuing Education offerings since UHD has just hired a new Director of Continuing Education and she is interested in the class. Additionally, PI Morano and Co-PI Tzouanas are working on a graduate certificate in Sustainabiltiy which grew directly out of the undergraduate offerings created with USDA NIFA funding. Morano also helped design a new Masters degrees in Biology and the program is under consideration at the Provost's Council level. The main component of the SUSTAIN program was the SUSTAIN Scholars program which emphasized experiential learning for UHD students through the development of the SUSTAIN Scholars. For each of the first four years, the program hosted 8-10 students each year. In the last year, the no-cost extension year, 6 students were enrolled the program using funds not used during the first few years on supplies and travel. The SUSTAIN Scholars students enroll in two courses: SUST 3301 (Renewable Energy Systems) taught by Dr. Tzouanas and SUST 3302 (Fundamentals of Sustainability) with Dr. Morano. The timing of each course varied from year to year depending on the teaching schedules of Morano and Tzouanas. Throughout the fall and spring semester, SUSTAIN Scholars met weekly with Dr. Morano, Dr. Tzouanas, and CUAS staff. These meetings were an opportunity for year-long mentoring. Topics of discussion included topics such as metacognition, career paths, recognizing and working around imposter syndrome, crafting a strong resume or CV, and enhancing writing skills. By the end of the fall semester, scholars formed two teams and selected a project focused on solving a problem in urban agriculture or sustainability using solar power. In the spring, the students worked on their projects and engaged in weekly discussions on climate change solutions using the book Drawdown. At the end of the program, during the first half of the summer, SUSTAIN Scholars completed a 6-week internship with a local company, agency, or non-profit to gain practical experience in a field related to their major and FANH careers. Experiential learning efforts extended beyond the students in the SUSTAIN Scholars. We hosted local Westside High School students for the fall and spring semesters (40 students per event) although this was not possible at the start of the program due to the pandemic. Additionally, the CUAS office created additional experiential learning programs for UHD students. Although these programs were not included in our project proposal, they emerged from USDA NIFA funding. Current CUAS-supported programs include the UHD Garden Group Team, the UHD Plastics Team, the UHD Texas Stream Team group, the SustainAGators program, and interns at the Houston Independent School District (HISD) educational farm. These programs come with a small stipend ($500) for selected students that participate all semester. Funds come from the CUAS budget or donations, but the idea of these programs grew from the experience we had creating the SUSTAIN Scholars. The CUAS also organizes seminars focused on careers in sustainability and urban agriculture (at least one per semester) and other specialized events open to both UHD and the broader Houston community (accomplishments section). Changes/Problems:The pandemic created a setback of our travel plans and our collaboration with the local high school. We did get both going in the last couple of years of the program.The only other major issue with this successful program is that we didn't develop the Urban Agriculture course as outlined in our original proposal. We also mentioned a possible certificate or Masters program during the time of this program. The paperwork for both a certificate and a Masters degree are both underway but such approval processes take a long time. It is likely they will both come to pass, but they could not be completed during the time-period of this program. The course of Urban Agriculture was at one point going to be a special topics course and then was suggested to be created as a collaborative course with local Texas AgriLife Extension. Due to change of personnel, that AgriLife collaboration dissolved and we had many conversations with leadership about the best place for the Urban Agriculture course. It now appears it will be a course offered as part of our continuing education program as we have a new Director of Continuing Education at the university who is very excited in seeing an Urban Agriculture program. There were no grant funds specifically associated with the goal of creating this particular course and so we will continue to work on the course over the next year or two. The certificate and Masters degree are both underway. Other curriculum goals such as moving courses to an online format were met early due to the pandemic. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?Two components of training and professions development are part of the SUSTAIN Scholars program. In addition to the two courses the Scholars take in the year-long program, students meet weekly with the mentors and sometimes guest speakers. The guest speakers are typically during the fall semester and cover topics of professional development (following your passion and profession, metacognition, writing up a good resume/CV). One of our associated faculty with the program (Dr. Flores) leads a discussion on following your passion and profession. He talks about his own career path in community work and tells the story of his work with César Chávez and Dolores Huerta and the labor movement of the United Farm Workers in California. We have professionals come form the UHD Career Center to discuss details of how to write a quality resume and CV. One of our faculty, Dr. Visbal, discusses imposter syndrome and how to address it. Dr. Johnson discusses metacognition and how we can change our thinking to chart a path toward success. We also have many Friday discussions about topics in sustainability and how we can make our energy and food systems more sustainable. Whenever, there is a guest speaker coming to discuss sustainability or urban agriculture topics, the SUSTAIN Scholar students are also required to attend so as to expand their professional development. A second important professional development component of SUSTAIN Scholars program is the 6-week internship at the end of year. All students of each cohort were placed with our various community partners that overlapped with their areas of interest within FANH careers. Over the years we have had students at the City of Houston Green Building Center, at Microbes Biosciences, Inc. (agricultural biotech), Houston Independent School District, Texas Parks and Wildlife, local non-profits around food and the energy companies (in the renewable energy sector). These internships give students the ultimate professional development and training experience. CUAS events also have elements of training activities and professional development initiatives and these were typically related to FANH careers. The Lunch and Learn series are speakers talking about careers related to plant science and sustainability. We now host at least one per semester. As mentioned previously in this report, we held two in-person events that Westside high school students by the end of the program which is impacting 80 students per year. The high schools students engage in hands-on garden and lab exercises all day. We plan to keep those high school events going. Originally, we built training and professional development activities to support the SUSTAIN Scholars, but many of the seminars and events have now been opened up to the entire UHD community. Therefore, the SUSTAIN program has grown from just a program that supports a handful of students to a series of programs and events that support all students at UHD. The long-term ripple of these programs will continue to educate students about and potentially move them into FANH careers. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?Information about CUAS opportunities and successes was shared in several ways. We maintained a permanent presence on the UHD CUAS website, which can be updated by the college webmaster every 1-2 months. To communicate happenings more quickly, we utilized social media platforms. In the last couple of months, a student worker has helped managed posts about upcoming events and opportunities on Facebook and Instagram. Additionally, we have found a way to reach all UHD students through "gator blasts" sent via a communications liaison, informing them about important events and opportunities, such as the community education events, seminars, and applications to our experiential learning programs. Students in the SUSTAIN Scholars program present their project work at the UHD Student Research Conference (SRC), an academic event attended by many graduate programs and some companies. This serves as an excellent opportunity for our students to showcase their work to a broader academic audience. Furthermore, we had students present at off-campus regional and national meetings after the pandemic was over. These meetings include groups such as the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) and the Society for the Advancement of Chicanos/Hispanics and Native Americans in Science (SACNAS). The CUAS has established numerous community partners including the local non-profits of White Oak Bayou Association, Urban Harvest and Organic Horticultural Business Alliance (OHBA). The principal investigator, Morano, has given presentations at OHBA events, the Women in Agriculture conference, and events sponsored by the Houston Citizens Environmental Coalition. These partnerships have become essential means of promoting our CUAS activities related to research, teaching, and community outreach, while also fostering connections with local businesses and the larger Houston community. These relationships lead to internships and job opportunities for our students and facilitate applied research projects conducted by UHD students (such as the Morano lab's current work testing beneficial microbes from a local agricultural biotechnology program). Morano (PI) and Tzouanas (co-PI) also published articles as a result of this program focused on the impact of experiential learning programs across the fields of engineering technology and sustainability. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?
Nothing Reported
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
The primary goal of this proposal is to attract and support undergraduate students from underrepresented groups in pursuing careers or graduate programs in FANH. We proposed to enroll 8 students each year of the 4-years of funding in the UHD SUSTAIN Scholars Program, impacting a total of 32 students in this year-long experiential learning program. In some years we were able to admit more than 8, using funds from the CUAS budget. We were also able to run a slightly smaller bonus cohort in our no-cost extension year. The result was a total of 43 students engaged in the program, 11 students beyond our original goal. Of the 43 students, 31 (72%) identified as racially or ethnically underrepresented in the sciences (including Black or African American, Alaska Native, Native American, Native Hawaiian, Pacific Islander, and/or Hispanic). Additionally, 65% of the SUSTAIN students were first-generation college students. At the start of the program virtually all the students were from one college, the College of Science and Technology (CST), by the last year we had met our goal of diversifying and had students from all the Colleges at UHD (Business, Humanities and Social Science and Public Service). The external evaluator assessed the impact of the SUSTAIN program on students' interest in FANH careers through pre-, mid-, and post-tests. By the program's conclusion, an average of 76% of SUSTAIN participants intended to pursue FANH careers, compared to 36% of control students enrolled only in sustainability curricula. It is interesting to note that at the start of the program and start of control courses the percentages were very low so that both the program and the course changed interests, but the program to a greater degree. In terms of soft skill development across 11 areas (such as teamwork, professional training, resume preparation, internships), control students declared having had significant guidance on all items mostly in the 60-70% range. In contrast, SUSTAIN students typically declared 100% significant guidance the majority of areas surveyed. SUSTAIN students typically scored higher in the areas of preparing academic papers, crafting resumes, engaging in effective mentoring relationships, and finding internships aligned with their interests compared to control students. Another experiential learning component of the program was to engage local high school students in a day of learning at UHD. During the first year of our collaboration with the Houston Independent School District (HISD) was not complete then we were burdened by the pandemic and blocking of all student travel for a couple of years. In the two years we were able to bring groups of students over for a day of learning at UHD. These days involved a day of hands-on learning in the garden and multiple lab rotations and approximately 40 high school students attended during these fall and spring semesters or 80 students per year. The second objective of this program is to enhance post-secondary education in FANH fields by expanding the curriculum and incorporating more inclusive course delivery methods. One major goal was to transition courses to an online format to increase student accessibility, which was expedited by the pandemic. We received faculty training and move courses SUST 3301, SUST 3302, SUST 4301 and 4302 all online during the pandemic. As part of this CUAS program we planned two additional academic initiatives: introducing a new SUST course in Urban Agriculture and developing a related certificate program. This course outline was developed and the idea of where and when to offer it was changed several times. This year, our new Director of Continuing Education has said she would like to integrate Urban Agriculture into the new Continuing Education program. The PI and co-PI, Morano and Tzouanas, have begun the paperwork for a graduate certificate in Sustainability. Morano has also helped develop a new MS degree in the Biological Sciences with Instrumentation and this program is currently waiting for approval. In addition to building formal curricula on sustainability and urban agriculture the CUAS has created informal curriculum in the form of event and additional experiential learning events. Events have focused influential speakers and career opportunities, typically one per semester. Typically once per year we have also hosted large community events such as the Women in Agriculture event, co-sponsored with the non-profit Urban Harvest in 2023, which attracted 171 community members and students. We have built experiential learning programs in recycling, gardening and working at local urban gardens. These programs typically engage 10-15 students per semester. Additionally, the CUAS supports training for 10 UHD students annually in the Texas Master Naturalist program, a valuable professional development opportunity for those pursuing FANH careers. The final objective of this programto provide opportunity and access to FANH career in the public and private sector through the addition of the summer internship component of the SUSTAIN experiential learning program. SUSTAIN Scholars are required to participate in the program for a full year. Following an academic year of coursework, mentoring, and a group project, the SUSTAIN students undertake a 6-week summer internship. After two rounds of interviews, students choose their preferred internship locations. Feedback from these internships has been positive from both students and supervisors. The external evaluator routinely found that all students (100%) secured internships aligned with their career interests by the end of the program. According to the Internship Supervisor Survey, most supervisors strongly agreed or agreed that the interns met their performance expectations. Additionally, supervisors strongly agreed or agreed that the interns demonstrated appropriate professionalism and made the most of the opportunities provided by the internship. Key Outcomes The SUSTAIN program has significantly enhanced the SUSTAIN Scholars' knowledge in areas such as sustainability, renewable energy, and urban agriculture, as well as their professional skills. A total of 43 students engaged in the program which is 11 over our 4 year goal. These students also experienced a nearly universal improvement in soft-skill areas, with their proficiency approaching 100% across all areas. Additionally, we've launched new CUAS events and seminars that have successfully attracted more UHD students to explore FANH careers. Feedback from these seminars has been overwhelmingly positive, with attendees finding them valuable and expressing interest in attending additional such events. In terms of conditions, we've seen an increase in the number of minority undergraduate students entering FANH fields, who are now better prepared thanks to professional development and internship opportunities. UHD is a MSI and HSI institution and this is reflected in the fact that 76% of our SUSTAIN Scholars were from populations underrepresented in FANH careers. We've also expanded the range of majors among program participants and provided more formal learning opportunities for all UHD students beyond this program. Moreover, UHD has strengthened its community partnerships and established a pipeline from local high schools to the university.
Publications
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Progress 09/01/22 to 08/31/23
Outputs
Target Audience:The Center for Urban Agricultural and Sustainability (CUAS) is an academic center formed at the University of Houston - Downtown (UHD). The CUAS was established back in 2015 as part of a previous USDA NIFA grant. This report covers Year 4 of UHD's newest program titled, Support Undergraduate Sustainable Technology and Agricultural Instructional Needs (SUSTAIN). The PI of this program is Dr. Lisa Morano, Professor of Biology and Microbiology and the Director for the CUAS. Her research expertise is in environmental microbiology and agroecology. The Co-PI of this program is Dr. Vassilios Tzouanas. He serves as a Professor and the Chair of the Department of Computer Science and Engineering Technology. One of his areas of research expertise is in the incorporation of renewable energy into engineered systems. Morano and Tzouanas have worked together as part of this program to create high-impact learning experiences for the SUSTAIN Scholars program at UHD. Morano and Tzouanas also included a faculty from the UHD Social Science Department, Dr. Bill Flores in this SUSTAIN grant. Dr. Bill Flores is a Professor of Political Science with expertise in equality for Hispanic populations in the areas of immigration, health care, environmental justice and higher education. His role in the program is to bring social science elements to our program discussions and assist in recruiting students for the program outside of the College of Science and Technology (CST). The primary target populations of the SUSTAIN program are undergraduates at UHD. SUSTAIN Scholars come from any majors at UHD and any CUAS events are open to the UHD community. The SUSTAIN Scholars program is a year-long experiential learning and mentoring program which is a main component of this program. UHD is part of the University of Houston system that is made up of four separate universities. As the name states, UHD is located in the middle of downtown Houston. Houston is the fourth largest city in the US and has been ranked as the most diverse city in America based on the factors of ethnicity, culture, and economics. UHD offers Master's Degree but it is mostly an undergraduate teaching institution with over 14,000 students. UHD is certified as both a Minority Serving Institution (MSI) and a Hispanic Serving Institution (HSI). The demographics of UHD for 2022 are that the school is 55% Hispanic, 19% Black, 12% White, 9% Asian and remaining percentages of International, two or more races, Pacific Islander and American Indian. The majority of UHD Freshman are both the first in their families to attend college and Pell Grant eligible. Any program established at UHD and open to all students will automatically support populations underrepresented in food, agriculture, natural and human sciences (FANH). One additional target population impacted by this program are students at the nearby Westside High School which is a partner on this SUSTAIN grant program. The demographics of the Westside population are 32% African American and 44% Hispanic. In addition, the school has a student population that is 55% at risk of dropping-out of high school. Efforts of the UHD SUSTAIN grants program fall into categories of curriculum development and the experiential learning opportunities for UHD students and Westside High School. Efforts in curriculum have been supported by both past and current USDA NIFA funding. In a previous funding cycle, the CUAS created a Minor is Sustainability and added new courses including Renewable Energy Systems (SUST 3301), Fundamentals of Sustainability (SUST 3302), Seminar in Sustainability (SUST 4301) and Capstone in Sustainability (SUST 4302). One of our goals of this current funding program was to figure out how to offer these courses online to increase access to the minor by all UHD students. Due to the pressures of the pandemic, we did offer all courses online earlier than expected. Another curriculum goal was to create an Urban Agriculture course. Last year we planned to teach this as a continuing education course in collaboration with Texas AgriLife Extension. However, funding behind that collaboration was not secured. Therefore, the plan is to teach Urban Agriculture as a Special Topics course in spring of 2024. The Natural Sciences Department (where both the Sustainability Minor and the PI Morano are both housed) is also working on a new Master's Degree where the curriculum developed by the CUAS will be proposed as starting point for one new option area of graduate education. Efforts in experiential learning for UHD students has been a focus of this current program through the development of the SUSTAIN Scholars. As mentioned previously we select 8 students from UHD (any majors can apply). The program starts with students taking two courses, SUST 3301 (Renewable Energy Systems) with Dr. Tzouanas in the second half of summer before the program year. In the fall the students take SUST 3302 (Fundamentals of Sustainability) with Morano. All SUSTAIN scholars meet weekly with Morano, Tzouanas and the CUAS Staff (Ms. Adriana Penabad) starting in the fall. During the fall meetings the topics of conversation include professional development topics such as metacognition, how to find your passion and career path, writing-up a quality resume or CV and how to improve one's writing. At the end of the fall semester the SUSTAIN scholars decide on a project they want to pursue in two teams. The project requires students to build something that solves a problem in urban agriculture and/or sustainability and that runs completely on solar power. In the spring semester students work on their projects on Fridays and the group has weekly discussions about the ways to address climate change using the book Drawdown. In the first half the summer (at the end of the program) SUSTAIN scholars are placed in a 6-week internship with a local company, agency or non-profit to get real world experience in a career that fits their major and FANH careers. Students are also encouraged to apply for an academic meeting based on their group project results to determine if graduate school might be of interest to them. Efforts in experiential learning this year also included students outside of the 8 in the SUSTAIN Scholars program. This year we hosted local Westside high school students to UHD for a food summit event at UHD (fall) and an Urban Agriculture Science Day (spring). Previous years of this program the learning had to be a series of Zoom interactions because of the pandemic and the local Houston Independent School District (HISD) freezing student travel. The fall summit had 45 students attending and the spring had 40 students from our collaborating Westside Hight School. Details of these events will be discussed later in Accomplishments. The CUAS office also runs additional experiential learning programs open to all UHD students. Although, not directly listed in our project proposal these have grown out of the USDA NIFA funding of the Center. The CUAS now supports UHD student programs including the UHD Garden Group Team (stipend for weekly work in the garden) and the UHD Plastics Team (stipend for helping to sort and educate about plastic recycling). The CUAS has also started sponsoring two new internships - one with the local POST garden (a garden on top of the nearby recommissioned old Houston Post Office) and one with Houston Independent School District (HISD) on their new educational farm. The CUAS also offers seminars and other specialty events opened to either UHD or the greater Houston community. These will also be further described in the accomplishments section. Changes/Problems:During the 2021-2022 year there were some remaining issues due to the pandemic including a soft opening at the university, limited Friday meetings with SUSTAIN scholars and remaining travel bans from our collaborating high school. In the 2022-2023 all those restrictions finally ended. We were able to run the UHD SUSTAIN program with no restrictions and were finally able to bring collaborating high school students to UHD. In this way, the 2022-2023 year was a year when we were not burdened with previous problems. With our requested no-cost extension we plan to run another cohort of students through SUSTAIN and offer two more in-person events with high school students at UHD. In this way we will be above our projected goals with UHD SUSTAIN students and back on track to meet our annual goals of impacting high school students. Another challenge we have had over the first three years of the grant was not being able to send students to academic meetings. This was a combination of lack of ability to travel early on because of the pandemic and the sluggish re-establishment of quality projects that were worthy of an abstract (due to students doing some projects at home). The 2022-2023 year had strong student projects and 4 student abstracts have been submitted for consideration to the SACNAS conference. We will try to send as many students as possible to meetings in the 2023-2024 year, but we will have travel funds left over. For that reason, we plan to move some of those unspent travel funds to other categories to run our projects in this program for another year (our no-cost extension year). Our final challenge has been to meet some of our curriculum goals set out in the proposal. We were able to create online versions of the entire current curriculum for the SUSTAIN minor as planned during the pandemic. We also had goals of a new course (Urban Agriculture) and the development of some undergraduate certificate in Sustainability or Urban Agriculture. During the pandemic all new curriculum and movement on certificates were stalled. The university has also had a series of leadership changes over the last several years including both the President and Provost leaving, interim versions of both and now new leaders in both positions. It looks like the procedures for establishment of new certificates will be allowed year, but it is unclear whether the certificate will get all the way through the approval process this year. Both the relevant Chair and Dean where the certificate will be housed are enthusiastic about the idea and so we are confident it will be approved eventually. As mentioned previously there are also plans for a new MS degree in Natural Science and strong interest in an Environmental and/or Sustainability area of focus - a positive and unexpected outcome the previously established SUST courses which were part of a previous USDA NIFA grant. This last year it was decided the proposed Urban Agriculture course should be community education due to strong interest from Texas AgriLife extension to teach it collaboratively. Due to staff movement out of the local Texas AgriLife office and failure to secure funding for that collaboration, we have decided to move Urban Agriculture back into the UHD curriculum within the SUST prefix. The plan is to offer that course in spring of 2024. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?Two components of training and professions development are part of the SUSTAIN Scholars program. In addition to the two courses the Scholars take in the year-long program, students meet weekly with the mentors and sometimes guest speakers. The guest speakers are typically during the fall semester and cover topics of professional development (following your passion and profession, metacognition, writing up a good resume/CV). One of our associated faculty with the program (Dr. Flores) lead the discussion on following your passion and profession. He talked about his own career path in community work and told the students about his time long ago working with César Chávez and Dolores Huerta and the labor movement of the United Farm Workers in California. This last year we also had a number of CUAS sponsored presentations related to FANH careers. The Scholars were required to attend and they were open to all UHD students. These are described below. A second important professional development component of SUSTAIN Scholars program is the 6-week internship at the end of year. All 8 of our students were placed with our various community partners that overlapped with their areas of interest within FANH careers. We had two students at the City of Houston Green Building Center and one student each at Microbes Biosciences, Inc. (agricultural biotech), Bayou Land Conservancy, Buffalo Bayou Park, Westchase District (business district and neighborhood office looking at sustainable landscape and agriculture), Asakura Robinson (urban planning and landscape architecture). These internships give students the ultimate professional development and training experience. As mentioned previously in this report, this was the first year we were able to hold two in-person events that high school students were able to attend. In fall of 2022 we hosted The Future of Urban Food Systems Summit which had 45 high school students attend. This event had a number of great presentations from regional experts. In spring 2023 we had our first Urban Agriculture Science Day at UHD with 40 students from Westside High School. In addition to hands-on science activities we had presentations from people at UHD discussing how to apply to UHD and the scholarship opportunities available. Training activities and professional development has been a big focus of the CUAS this year. We hosted a number of events helping UHD students interested in FANH careers. SUSTAIN Scholars were required to attend as part of their weekly activities, but these opportunities were opened up to the entire UHD student body. In this way the professional development impacted many more than the 8 SUSTAIN Scholars. We didn't include such events below specifically in our grant proposal, but they have grown out of the synergistically out of community connections. In September of 2022, we collaborated with the organization The Path to the Plate, Texas A&M AgriLife Extension and Harris County, Texas to put on a conference titled, "The Future of Urban Food Systems Summit." Topics included: Gardening for Health by Dr. Joe Novak, Faculty Lecturer at Rice University, Certified Organic - What is it and its value? by Bob Whitney, Regents Fellow & Extension Organic Program Specialist at Texas A&M AgriLife Center Enhancing the Purpose of Food by Dr. Patrick Stover, Institute Director, Institute for Advancing Health Through Agriculture, Texas A&M. Innovation in Agriculture Panel with Cath Conlon - Blackwood Educational Land Institute/CEO and Founder of the Skyfarm at Post Houston and Michelle Crawford - owner of a sustainable cattle farm. A total of 115 people were in attendance of the conference, 45 high school students from Houston Independent School District (HISD), 42 students form UHD and 28 from the general public. Diversity at the event was very high with many young people represented. Survey comments were very positive with respect to the quality of speakers and usefulness of information. We also offered a number of educational seminars for UHD students that had brought new topics to UHD and often career opportunities were considered as part of the presentation. Once per semester, we also offered a Lunch and Learn seminar where students that sign-up early can get a free lunch purchased by a new Houston collaborator, OHBA - Organic Horticultural Business Alliance. Matthew Abernathy, Outreach Coordinator for Galveston Bay Estuary. "What is the Galveston Bay Estuary Program?" UHD Center for Urban Agriculture and Sustainability Event, November 4, 2022. (17 UHD students attended) Brad Phillips, Master Arborist, founder ArborTrue Labs. "Brad Phillips Master Arborist Lunch and Learn" UHD Center for Urban Agriculture and Sustainability Event, November 18, 2022. (19 UHD students attended) Tyrelle Haney, Park Ranger - National Wildlife Refuge System, and Nancy Brown, Public Outreach Specialist - National Wildlife Refuge System. "Careers in Wildlife Conservation." UHD Center for Urban Agriculture and Sustainability Event, February 2, 2023. (39 UHD students attended) Ivy Lawrence-Walls, owner Ivy Leaf Farms. "Agri-Unity: Building an Urban Food System Lunch and Learn." UHD Center for Urban Agriculture and Sustainability Event, February 16, 2023. (20 UHD students attended) "Discussion with Leaders in Sustainability: Professionals Associated with Gulf Coast Green Conference would like a chance to talk with students!" UHD Center for Urban Agriculture and Sustainability Event, April 28, 2023. (8 UHD students attended) How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?Information about CUAS opportunities and successes are disseminated in a number of ways. We post more permanent information on the UHD CUAS website since that website can only be updated by the college webmaster every 1-2 months. How we get happenings out faster is through social media. The CUAS has a student worker that posts coming events and opportunities via social (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram). We have also discovered a way to send messages out to all UHD students through a communications liaison via a "gator blast." We send these blasts out when we want UHD students to know about important coming events opportunities (ie. Food Summit, Seminars or SUSTAIN Scholars application). Students in the SUSTAIN Scholars program are encouraged to present their project work at the on-campus academic meeting called the UHD Student Research Conference (SRC). The majority of the graduate programs in the area attend the event as do some companies. This is a great way to introduce our students and their work to the larger academic community. We also have 6 students with abstracts for consideration at the 2023 SACNAS meeting which will be a great way to share their academic work. Last year we became collaborators with local Houston non-profit Organic Horticultural Business Alliance (OHBA). This relationship has grown tremendously this year. The PI, Morano, has given presentations at their two major events, both which have had over 200 people and at each event we had 4-6 UHD student volunteers. This collaboration has become a valuable way to communicate about what we are doing at the CUAS with respect to research, teaching and community outreach and to connect with horticultural-related businesses in the Houston area. These industry connections lead to internships and jobs for students and also applied research projects that can be done by UHD students. (The Morano lab is now testing beneficial microbes made by a local agricultural biotechnology program.) The Future of Urban Food Systems Summit (fall 2022) was also a great way to connect nearly 90 high school and university students with those in agriculture both locally and at Texas A&M University, the premier agricultural university in Texas. Talking to Texas A&M faculty that came to the summit was a valuable opportunity for UHD students considering FANH careers. The Future of Urban Food Systems Summit was also open to the public which means it contributed to improved understanding of agricultural science of those that attended. The PI, Morano, was asked to write an article for Texas Gardener Magazine about mycorrhizal fungi, one of her areas of research. This type of work also helps translate applied agricultural science into a friendly communication that the public reads. The Houston Chronicle also requested to do a video story on the CUAS which served as a great translation of the mission of the center. The video can be found at link the below (2 minutes). https://www.houstonchronicle.com/food-culture/article/uhd-center-food-cultivation-students-18183243.php What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?This is the fourth year of our grant, but we are currently submitting a no-cost extension request to finalize some grant goals that were not yet met. Due to the pandemic, the first couple of years of this grant were not as productive as we had hopped. We were a bit behind in meeting some of our intended goals. With the additional year to spend some remaining funds we will be able to meet our remaining goals. In the fourth year of the program, 2022-2023, we were able to have 8 students in the SUSTAIN Scholars program. In 2023-2024 academic year we plan to engage 8 additional UHD students in SUSTAIN which will exceed the original number projected by the grant and help cement the program as an annual CUAS activity. The 2022-2023 student projects were much stronger than those in previous years which were heavily restricted over zoom. A total of 4 SUSTAIN Scholars students have submitted abstracts to SACNAS for October 2023. We are hoping to get some additional student travel in either spring 2024 or summer 2024. Getting more students to meetings is a goal of this year that was not possible previous years. This was the first year we were able to run the program with virtually no negative impacts from the pandemic, particularly from the aspect of working with high school students. This was because the local school district (HISD) had a student field trip ban that was lifted for fall of 2022. This was the first year we were able to move our high school collaboration from zoom meetings into an in-person day of learning. A diversity of HISD high school students came to our fall food summit and then in spring we had our first Urban Agriculture Science Day collaboration with Westside High School. During fall of 2023 and spring of 2024 we plan to host Westside High School students for an Urban Agriculture Day of Science in each semester. With these additional two in-person days, we hope to create a permanent event and improve the pipeline between Westside High School and UHD. The proposed Urban Agriculture as a new SUST curriculum is planned as a special topics course for the spring of 2024. The idea to move it as a collaborative community education course with Texas AgriLife fell through. We will continue working on an area of focus with sustainability and/or urban agriculture in the new MS degree conversations coming from the Natural Sciences department. We will continue to engage in CUAS seminars, presentations and educational opportunities through OHBA and Texas Master Naturalists. Although not explicitly a goal of the grant they strongly support the professional development opportunities for SUSTAIN Scholars and all UHD students. In summary, for this next academic year we will continue with all the program components. We will have 8 additional SUSTAIN scholars which brings us over our original goal. We will have two collaborative events with Westside high school - fall of 2023 and spring of 2024. We will continue to pursue our innovative curriculum ideas and bringing professional development activities to not only the SUSTAIN Scholars but all UHD students. There is a lot going on in the CUAS this year. The USDA-NIFA funded SUSTAIN program is a valuable part of that.
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
The first objective of this proposal isto attract and support undergraduate students from underrepresented groups to pursue careers or graduate programs in FANH. The CUAS selected 8 students for this last year's SUSTAIN Scholars Program (per our grant goals). One student was added late and so for some report data we have 7 and for some we have 8. For this cohort 86% (6/7) were self-reporting as a race/ethnicity nationally underrepresented in the sciences (ie. Black or African American/Alaska Native/Native American/Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander and/or Hispanic). In addition, 87% (6/7) of the SUSTAIN students reported as first-generation college students. Another goal of this program was to create cross-disciplinary teams. This year we had a diversity of majors in SUSTAIN with 57% (4/7) from the College of Science and Technology (CST), 14% (1/7) from the College of Business and 29% (2/7) from the College of Humanities and Social Science. The external evaluator also evaluated the impact of the SUSTAIN program on the interest of SUSTAIN students to pursue FANH careers or graduate school using pre, mid and post-tests. The evaluator found that at the end of the program 100% (7/7) of SUSTAIN participants planned to pursue FANH careers compared to 55% (6/11) of control students that were only enrolled in sustainability curriculum. There was no significant difference between SUSTAIN participants and curriculum only students in the number interested in pursuing FANH graduate programs (1/7 SUSTAIN, 2/11 curriculum only). Comparing development of soft skills in 11 areas (team work, professional training, resume, internships, etc.) ranged from 55 to 100% for curriculum students (depending on question) to all 100% for SUSTAIN (except for one question about exploring graduate degrees in my field of interest. That was 55% for control students and 75% for SUSTAIN. The external evaluator was also able to collect data on positive increases in specific content knowledge related to renewable energy, complex interactions of sustainability and connections to agricultural systems. Student perception of confidence in defining critical knowledge went to 100% in all content areas. The 2022-2023 was the first year we created successful in-person interactive experiences with our collaborating Westside High School. In fall of 2022 we invited high school students from Westside and from across the HISD school district to attend The Future of Urban Food Systems Summit. We had 45 high school students. In spring of 2023 our collaborating teacher brought 40 students from Westside Hight School to UHD for an Urban Agriculture Science Day. The day included an introductory lecture and three rotations of hands-on activities that included experiments with garden plates, agricultural microbiology and agricultural botany. The second objective of this program is toenhance the quality of post-secondary education in FANH fields through expansion of curriculum and inclusion of more inclusive course delivery modes. One of the goals was to move these courses to an online format to increase access for students. This was accomplished early due to the pandemic. In the 2021-2022 year we moved SUST 3301 and 3302 to the hybrid format. This seems to have been a win-win because students only need to come to class once per week, but they also report that the in-class discussions over difficult topics really help them with exams and other assessments. SUST 4301 and 4302 have remained online. We articulated two additional academic plans for the proposed program. One was to offer a new SUST course in Urban Agriculture and the other was to develop some kind of certificate with an urban agriculture related focus. Last year, it was decided that the Urban Agriculture course should be taught as community education in collaboration with Texas AgriLife Extension as the extension agents declared there was a great deal of interest. This collaboration was supposed to part of a larger program which dissolved due to lack of funding and the movement of some agents. Therefore, we have decided to run Urban Agriculture in spring 2024 as a special topics course. Back in 2019 there was interest in undergraduate certificates, but this was put on hold during the pandemic and the school is still working on the guidelines for certificates. The Natural Sciences (NS) department, which houses the SUST prefix, has also been working on a new Master's Degree and is looking at creating an option with a focus in this area. One goal of the CUAS for the 2022-2023 academic year bringing informal curriculum to UHD students in the areas of sustainability and urban agriculture. Through these efforts we have exposed a great number of UHD students to important speakers and career opportunities and have impacted many students. We had 115 students (combined high school and UHD) at a fall food conference on campus. We also had 5 events with guest speakers at UHD. One additional item the CUAS supports is bringing UHD students into the training for the local chapter of the Texas Master Naturalist program which is a valuable professional development activity valuable for students pursuing FANH careers. The final objective of this programto provide opportunity and access to FANH career in the public and private sector through the addition of the summer internship component of the SUSTAIN experiential learning program. SUSTAIN Scholars are required to be engaged in the program for an entire year. After completing an academic year with coursework, mentoring and a group project the SUSTAIN students spend 6-weeks in a summer internship. After these two interviews the students selected their preferred location to intern. Feedback from the internships was positive both from the perspective of the students and the supervisors. The external evaluator was able to determine that the students were able to find an internship that matched their career interest (100% at the end of the program). An Internship Supervisor Survey stated that the interns performed to their satisfaction with 57% (4/7) strongly agreed and 43% (3/7) agreed. Supervisors also stated that the interns exhibited an appropriate level of professionalism at 100% (7/7) strong agree and that the interns took advantage of opportunities provided by the internship at 100% (7/7). Key Outcomes We have changed the knowledge that the SUSTAIN Scholars from UHD had about sustainability, renewable energy and urban agriculture. We have also improved knowledge about professional skills. In terms of change in actions we have increased the number of minority students interested in not only pursuing FANH careers to 100% for the students in this cohort. These same students saw almost a universal increase to 100% for 11 areas of soft-skills and 100% stating the program gave them confidence to complete their degree and pursue their FANH profession. We have also initiated the new CUAS events and seminars which are bringing more UHD students in to learn about FANH careers and those leaving the seminars report them valuable and that they would come again. The changes in conditions include an increase in number of minority undergraduate students pursuing FANH careers and that those students have had professional development and internships making them better prepared for those careers. Another change in conditions is an expansion of the majors of students in the program and more opportunities for all UHD students to engage in in formal learning opportunities (outside this program). UHD has also had a change in conditions that we have a greater number of collaborations with our community partners and we have created a pipeline from the local high school to UHD.
Publications
- Type:
Conference Papers and Presentations
Status:
Accepted
Year Published:
2023
Citation:
Evelyn Martinez, Misael Calderon, Ginger Jeudy and Rene Hill. SUSTAIN: Indoor Hydroponic Vertical Garden. University of Houston Downtown 22nd Annual Student Research Conference. April 14, 2023. (poster) (All four students are participants the UHD SUSTAIN program.)
- Type:
Conference Papers and Presentations
Status:
Accepted
Year Published:
2023
Citation:
" Ella Wasel, Justin Matthews, Ashley Bonilla, Irene Byju. Investigating the Effect of Plant Growth Promoting Rhizobacteria (PGPR) and Mycorrhizal Fungi on the growth of cucumber, Cucumis sativus. University of Houston Downtown 22nd Annual Student Research Conference. April 14, 2023. (poster)
- Type:
Conference Papers and Presentations
Status:
Accepted
Year Published:
2023
Citation:
" Allegra Williams, Brandy Deason, Rosario Bonilla, and Maria Garcia. Addressing Climate Change Through Innovation: Solar Thermal Collector. University of Houston Downtown 22nd Annual Student Research Conference. April 14, 2023. (poster) (All four students are participants the UHD SUSTAIN program.)
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Progress 09/01/21 to 08/31/22
Outputs
Target Audience:This is Year 3 of the University of Houston-Downtown (UHD) program titled Support Undergraduate Sustainable Technology and Agricultural Instructional Needs (SUSTAIN). The program is offered through the Center for Urban Agricultural and Sustainability (CUAS) which was created under funding from a previous NIFA-USDA funding opportunity back in 2015. Since 2015 the CUAS has become valuable not only to the College of Science and Technology (CST) where it is housed and for the entire UHD campus. The CUAS supports not only the students in this USDA-NIFA funded SUSTAIN program but many other programs that came out of relationships with the community. Those relationships and additional programs were a direct result of the initial and continued funding of the CUAS by USDA-NIFA and they will be summarized throughout this proposal. The PI of this program is Dr. Lisa Morano who is a Professor of Biology and Microbiology and the Director for the CUAS. Her research expertise is in plant ecology, environmental science and agroecology. The Co-PI of this program is Dr. Vassilios Tzouanas. He serves as a Professor and the Chair of the Department of Computer Science and Engineering Technology. One of his areas of research expertise is the incorporation of renewable energy into systems. Morano and Tzouanas have brought their respective areas of expertise to build a high-impact learning experience for the SUSTAIN Scholars program at UHD. Morano and Tzouanas have also collaborated with a faculty from the UHD Social Science Department, Dr. Bill Flores, for this funded program. Dr. Bill Flores is a Professor of Political Science with expertise in equality for Hispanic populations in the areas of immigration, health care, environmental health and higher education. His role in the program is to bring social science elements to our program discussions throughout the year and help us to recruit students from the social science into our program. Target populations of the SUSTAIN program include undergraduates at UHD who engage in several different educational opportunities sponsored by the CUAS. UHD is the Downtown University in the heart of Houston and in 2021 it was ranked the most diverse city in America (houstoniamag.com). UHD is a Masters Serving institution but it is mostly an undergraduate teaching institution with 15,000 students. UHD is both a Minority Serving Institution (MSI) and a Hispanic Serving Institution (HSI). UHD is 56% Hispanic and 21% African American such that the minoritized individuals of these two groups makes up over 77% of UHD's population (UHD fact book). In addition, the vast majority of our incoming Freshman are both the first in their families to attend college and they are Pell Grant eligible. Any program that is open to the students at UHD supports targets students that are likely to be of minority populations, first in their families to attend college and from families that are economically-disadvantaged. UHD is easily accessible by both the public train and the public bus system. UHD prides itself on being a leader in high-impact practices. Classes are capped with small enrollments and students are encouraged to engage in undergraduate research or community engagement. The main focus of this grant program is experiential learning program called the SUSTAIN Scholars program where students work in teams on sustainability focused projects that solve a problem in urban agriculture. The goal of the SUSTAIN Scholars program was to expand on UHD's legacy of high impact practices by giving students a year-long experiential learning experience with mentored activities that encourage them to consider graduate school and expose them to the career opportunities in food, agriculture, natural and human sciences (FANH). By serving the students of Houston's central urban university this program serves a target population that is already educationally, economically and socially disadvantaged. For the SUSTAIN Scholars program we select 8 UHD students for a year-long, mentored program. SUSTAIN Scholars engage in formal classroom teaching and team projects that address a real-world problem in urban agriculture or urban sustainability using solar power. This program also includes a summer internship where each UHD SUSTAIN student works with a local company, agency or non-profit to gain more real-world experience. SUSTAIN Scholars also interact a few hours with local high school students in the Houston Independent School District. Efforts of the UHD SUSTAIN program fall into several of the categories. These include development of curriculum and experiential learning opportunities for UHD students which include innovative mentoring program, team projects, community internships and interactions with students at a local high school. Past efforts (in previous funding) created new curriculum as part of a new Minor in Sustainability at UHD. These courses included: Renewable Energy Systems (SUST 3301), Fundamentals of Sustainability (SUST 3302), Seminar in Sustainability (SUST 4301) and Capstone in Sustainability (SUST 4302). One of the goals of this SUSTAIN program was to move all of these to the online format over the course of 4 years. Due to the pandemic all four of these courses were taught online. However, for this last year we moved two of the courses (SUST 3301 and SUST 3302) into the hybrid format. The hybrid format allows student flexibility but also improves opportunities for hands-on activities and interactions with our students that we realize our invaluable for their success (more about this later). Another curriculum goal of this program was to develop an Urban Agriculture course at UHD within the four years. Instead of developing this as another SUST elective at UHD this year, it has been suggested that we develop this course as a continuing education course offered by UHD, but in collaboration of Texas AgriLife Extension. This course would then be available to both UHD students and the larger Houston community. The plan is to offer Urban Ag as continuation first and if those logistics don't work out this year to offer as a special topics in sustainability. Efforts in experiential learning, innovative mentoring and internships are all demonstrated in the UHD SUSTAIN Scholars Program. Students engage in a year-long mentoring program where they are supported by three faculty (mentioned above) and the CUAS Staff (Mr. Juan Martinez). Students learn professional development and soft skills, work together in teams to build a piece of equipment that solves a problem in urban agriculture. SUSTAIN Scholars engage in the program from September through May and then are placed in a summer internship in the areas with a company, non-profit or government agency. The internship is in the area of sustainability and/or urban agriculture and aligns in some way with the student's major. UHD SUSTAIN Scholars also mentor high school students at a local high school who are in a high school Urban Agriculture course. The SUSTAIN scholars are not only getting a mentored experience they are in-turn mentoring high school students so they are serving an outreach role and improving the pipeline of students considering FANH careers or graduate school. Students of any major at UHD are also welcome to engage in any of the activities sponsored by the CUAS. USDA-NIFA funding from our previous program and this one has led to 6 years of continuous funding which allowed us to argue for a staff position and a small budget for the office to run additional programs. The CUAS office now runs additional student experiential learning programs (Eco-Reps Program, Garden Group students, Green Initiative Grants). These do not use USDA-NIFA funds, but they would never have been possible if we hadn't had the USDA-NIFA funds to create the CUAS in the first place. Changes/Problems:As mentioned above COVID continued to be a challenge for us in the 2021-2022 year. There were soft openings of the university where we stayed on line and limited course caps. It was advised that our weekly SUSTAIN Scholars program stay online until spring of 2022. We were able to do many of our guest speakers and professional topics discussions, but students were not able to start building their projects until late spring. These projects had to address an urban sustainability or agriculture issue using solar power. The projects were behind and had to be completed in summer of 2022 rather than spring 2022 so students had to work on both before and after their internships. For the next cohort, weekly meeting will be in person and courses will be moved earlier in the program so students will have more knowledge early and more time later to work on their programs. The pandemic reduced our interest in the program this last year. Our goal is to have 8 per year and although we had 10 or more in the first two years we started with 8 and finished with only 7 this year. The lingering pandemic last winter also reduced our pool for the 2022-2023 pandemic as well. Our goal for 2023 is to start recruiting in winter of 2023 to see if we can get back up to our 10-12 numbers of SUSTAIN Scholars we had the first couple of years. Another problem we had the last couple of years was the lack of travel opportunities for our students. Our students did engage in great team projects and two teams produced posters for our UHD Student Research Conference in April 2022. However, we would like the opportunity to send students to academic meetings this next year. We have plenty of travel funds in this grant and such experiences can be life-changing for the students. As mentioned above we have not yet worked on the Undergraduate Certificate for Sustainability and Urban Agriculture. After initial green light on such certificate at the time when this grant proposal was written, such certificates have been frozen due to change in leadership of both President and Provost. We now have a new President (one year) and a new Provost (one month). We are optimistic the undergraduate certificates mechanism will be moved forward. We also plan to offer an urban agriculture course, but there is strong interest in us offering the course first as a continuing education course this spring. From there, it could be offered as an academic course, but the continuing education course may remain as there appears to be strong interest in such a course in the Houston community. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?Training and professional development are two areas of focus for the SUSTAIN Scholar Program. Students in the year-long program must enroll in two courses one in the fall (Renewable Energy Systems, SUST 3301) and one in the spring (Foundations in Sustainability, SUST 3302). Training also includes weekly meetings for an entire year with the program mentors including the PI (Dr. Morano), Co-PI (Dr. Tzouanas) and the Sustainability Coordinator (Mr. Martinez). Professional training also was a focus of the 6-week internship that each SUSTAIN student was engaged in for half of the summer. These internships with were various community partners (Booker Washington High School agriculture program, City of Houston Green Building Center, Green Mountain Energy, etc.). The purpose of these internships was to give students professional experience in the real world and to help them become more confident and have more connections to future careers career opportunities in food, agriculture, natural and human sciences (FANH). There is obviously overlap between the professional development training offered through our program and the required course components. Both required courses of the program and the SUSTAIN program itself have small enrollments (<20 students) so there is a big focus on a group project in the building up student soft skills of communication and working in a group. The program weekly Zoom meetings were always a time for the large group to check in and see how everyone was doing. Some group meetings we discussed professional development topics and brought in guest speakers (over Zoom). We had a speaker talk with students about the importance of metacognition and a speaker from the UHD Career Center discuss resumes/CVs and how to make career connections before you graduate. One of our associated faculty with the program (Dr. Flores) talked to the students about following a path as it unfolds in front of you. He talked about the importance of engaging your passion and community work and told of his experiences working with César Chávez and Dolores Huerta and the labor movement of the United Farm Workers in California. Through our new collaboration with the Organic Horticultural Business Alliance (OHBA) we also started an agricultural jobs presentation once per semester called Lunch and Learn. Last spring OHBA member, Mr. Carmello Orellana, gave a presentation on the story of his life from landscape worker to manager of Landscape Art and the professional job in irrigation and landscaping. SUSTAIN participants were in attendance, but it was open to the whole school. For the fall 2022 semester we have a Lunch and Learn topic on careers as an arborist. In addition to the activities above one of the important areas of professional development for the SUSTAIN Scholars work in groups to each build something that solved a campus need in sustainability or urban agriculture using renewable power. The mentors of the program met with each group of 3-4 to discuss the planning and development of each project. This year's projects included a circulating water vertical garden system that can run on solar power and passive solar water heater that takes no power to generate hot water. In these small groups we often discussed group dynamics and how to delegate and how to keep the project moving forward. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?Information about CUAS opportunities and successes are disseminated in a number of ways. First, highlights of programs and initiatives are displayed on the UHD CUAS website. The website is maintained by a college webmaster and is just updated every 1-2 months. However, CUAS does participate in social media and the CUAS staff, Mr. Juan Martinez, posts all our happenings multiple times per week on social media (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram). Applications for the SUSTAIN Scholars and other CUAS programs are emailed to the entire student body through their UHD email. The SUSTAIN Scholar program and the activities of the CUAS has increased collaboration with community partners in the Houston area. This last winter, the grant PI (Morano) became a board member on the local Houston non-profit Organic Horticultural Business Alliance (OHBA) and has given presentations at two OHBA events that had 200 attendees at them. This means the CUAS at UHD is now connected to the businesses in OHBA which include compost, fertilizer, irrigation and urban farmers. This information flow will be invaluable for UHD students interested in local careers in agriculture fields. After three years of pandemic the CUAS will be collaborating on bringing the Houston Food Conference back this September 2022. This food conference is a collaboration between UHD's CUAS and local Texas AgriLife Cooperative Extension. The conference will be in September 2022 and registration is open. Bringing 200 people to UHD will be a valuable way to create new collaborations and showcase the exciting activities of CUAS, funded in part with USDA-NIFA funds. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?In the third year of the program, we were able to continue the high school collaboration with the SUSTAIN Scholars, but it continued on Zoom. For the 2021-2022 SUSTAIN Scholars cohort COVID was still a huge issue and the Houston Independent School District (HISD) School District had not yet lifted the ban on travel. That was just lifted in late spring. Therefore, for the 2021-2022 UHD students did Zoom a couple of times with local HISD students engaged in a science course in Urban Agriculture, but our students and the high school students didn't get to interact in person. A goal of the collaboration between UHD and HISD was to bring the high school students to UHD for a day of experiments and discussions. This is finally planned for this October of 2022. A bus load of HISD students (40-60) will come to UHD and engage with UHD SUSTAIN Scholars in planting and soil microbiology activities. In addition, we have offered 13 spots to the September Houston Food Conference to HISD (10 students, 3 high school teachers). This will also increase our pipeline between a local high school and UHD. One of the program goals was to eventually move all the SUST courses online to improve access. Due to the pandemic we were immediately forced to move all four courses online so that goal was met. As mentioned above, we have moved two of the courses back to hybrid. These are two courses that have hands-on activities and lengthy ethics discussion. We think this modification of the original grant goal has been an important success in learning what is best for student flexibility and student success. As mentioned previously there are currently discussions going on as to whether we should offer the proposed Urban Agriculture course as a new academic course at UHD or as a continuing education course at UHD. One idea is to potentially teach the course as a continuing education course in spring of 2023 and then based on interest also make it an academic course the following year. This decision will need to be made by October of 2022. The Urban Agriculture course will likely be taught as either a continuing education course or a special topics academic course in spring of 2023. Texas AgriLife Cooperative extension officers for the area are very interested in the possibility of the continuing education course which they would collaborate on with us. Our third cohort of the UHD SUSTAIN Scholars was overall successful with 7 students successfully completing the program. However, much of the 2021-2022 program was online including weekly meetings in fall and winter. This year we are moving to all in-person meetings which will likely increase the effectiveness of building teams and increasing social skills. Last year the SUSTAIN Scholars teams couldn't start building their projects until spring when COVID had died down. We are hoping that teams will engage in their projects earlier so as not to drag out into the summer and overlap with their internship time. We have moved both the required courses students need to take earlier into the year so they have more knowledge about renewable energy and sustainable ag as early as possible. In summary, for this next cohort we will continue with all the components but they will be earlier and more in person. We have planned face-to-face collaborations with the local high school which will be at UHD. We are planning an Urban Food Conference and many other student programs (not directly tied to this grant) that will further increase our collaborations with the local community in the areas of food, agriculture, natural and human resources. We will continue to pursue the offering of an Urban Agriculture course (either as academic or continuing education) and pursue the undergraduate certificate as soon as the school finishes the curriculum pathway to do so. There is a lot going on in the CUAS this year. The USDA-NIFA program is a valuable part of that.
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
The first objective of this proposal isto attract and support undergraduate students from underrepresented groups to pursue careers or graduate programs in FANH in the United States. This first objective is a major focus of the SUSTAIN program of the CUAS. Given the diversity of students at UHD (77% Hispanic and Black), the creation of any experiential learning program that focuses on preparing students for careers in FANH would likely also increase the diversity of students pursuing those careers. In addition, such opportunities are typically not an option for students attending urban universities. The CUAS selected 8 students for this last year's SUSTAIN Scholars Program (per our grant goals). One student was not able to complete the program due to health issues. Since we had over 8 students in each of the first two years, we are still well over our long-term goal of putting 32 students through the program over 4 years. The 8 students in the 2021-2022 cohort that completed the program represented a diverse student population. Of these 8 students 5 (63%) were self-reporting as a race/ethnicity nationally underrepresented in the sciences (ie. Black or African American/Alaska Native/Native American/Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander and/or Hispanic). In addition, 5/8 (63%) of the SUSTAIN students reported as first-generation college students. Another goal of this program was to create cross-disciplinary teams and this cohort was the most successful on record in this regard. We had two students from Natural Sciences, 2 from Engineering Technology, 2 from Social Science and 2 from the College of Business. These data suggest that the SUSTAIN Scholar program does attract and support students from diverse backgrounds. The external evaluator also evaluated the impact of the SUSTAIN program on the interest of SUSTAIN students to pursue FANH careers or graduate school using pre, mid and post-tests. The evaluator found that at the end of the program 71% (5/7) of SUSTAIN participants planned to pursue FANH careers compared to 40% of control students that were only enrolled in sustainability curriculum. A much more exciting discovery was that the percentage of SUSTAIN participants that decided over the course of the program to pursue a MS or Ph.D. in the area of FANH rose from 25% at the start of the program to 57% at the end. Control students in courses only showed an increase from 12.5% to 20% increase in interest in a graduate career in FANH. Open ended questions on the survey indicated that the mentoring in the SUSTAIN program greatly improved their confidence and self-efficacy about pursuing graduate programs in FANH. The external evaluator was also able to collect data on positive increases in specific content knowledge related to renewable energy, complex interactions of sustainability and connections to agricultural systems. Student perception of confidence in defining critical knowledge went to 100% in all content areas. There were increases in student confidence about soft skills and other important professional skills which also increase to 100% in all areas. SUSTAIN participants also reported positive experiences interacting with high school students over Zoom. The second objective of this program is toenhance the quality of post-secondary education in FANH fields through expansion of curriculum and inclusion of more inclusive course delivery modes. To meet this objective, we have a handful of goals to meet over the four years of the program. One of these was to slowly move the SUST courses into an online format to make the courses and the associated Minor is Sustainability more assessable. The pandemic greatly accelerated this part of the program. All of the SUST courses were offered online in the 2020-2021 academic year. The instructors of the courses have been trained in online best practices (as all UHD faculty were) and two of the four classes so far have adopted best practices and been approved as permanent online offerings. After teaching all of these courses online it was determined that two of the courses might be better in the hybrid format. The course Renewable Energy Sources (SUST 3301) includes hands-on lessons in hooking up solar power and Fundamentals of Sustainability (SUST 3302) includes important ethical discussions. Both these activities are much more conducive to live classrooms. In the 2021-2022 academic year both these classes were taught hybrid this appears to be working great as it gives increased flexibility to the students and important face-to-face time for pedagogical activities. Two other plans related to this objective are to teach a new SUST course in Urban Agriculture. We are currently in conversations about teaching an Urban Agriculture course as part of UHD's community education program rather than an elective academic course. According to Texas AgriLife extension officers there is a huge need for such a course in the Houston area. Teaching this course first as continuation would also allow for curriculum and gauge interest in the development of the addition of such a course as part of our academic collection. The current plan is to teach the Urban Ag course as either continuation education or as a special topics academic course at UHD in spring of 2023. Another plan for the four years of this program was to establish a proposal to offer a undergraduate Certificate in Urban Agriculture and Sustainability. UHD has graduate certificates, but guidelines for undergraduate certificates have not yet been finalized due to turn-over in both our President and Provost positions. We are hopeful that such guidelines will be finalized and a proposed certificate can be developed. The Chair of the Natural Sciences and the Dean of the College of Sciences and Technology (CST) are both in favor of offering such an academic certificate. The final objective of this programto provide opportunity and access to FANH career in the public and private sector through the addition of the summer internship component of the SUSTAIN experiential learning program. One aspect of this program was to give students an internship component in the summer at the end of the academic year aspect of the program. This was designed as a 6-week summer internship so that students could still take a course or two the other summer session as needed. Student feedback from the internship was positive and likely played a role in the increase in interest in FANH careers seen in the previous section. The external evaluator was able to determine that the students were able to find an internship that matched their career interest.An Internship Supervisor Survey was deployed to assess the internship component of the SUSTAIN program, and among other topics, supervisors were asked to rate aspects of the experience. There were only 6 internship supervisors because one supervisor took two students. Below are how the supervisors felt about how the students performed. The surveys stated that the interns performed to their satisfaction with 83% (5/6) strongly agreed and 17% (1/7) agreed.
Publications
- Type:
Journal Articles
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2021
Citation:
Adams, J., Morano, L.D., Tzouanas, V., Hasan, H. 2021. Classical soil gardens versus outdoor hydroponic gardens utilizing energy and water capture technologies to combat climate change. Journal of Emergency Management. 19(5):505-511. DOI:10.5055/jem.0586.
- Type:
Conference Papers and Presentations
Status:
Other
Year Published:
2021
Citation:
Christina Sterna and Jose Guzman. Construction of a Sustainable Greenhouse. Conference on Food Sustainability and Security, Hosted by the Energy and Sustainability group of the UH Honors College. November 12, 2021. (poster) (Students are participants the UHD SUSTAIN program.)
- Type:
Conference Papers and Presentations
Status:
Other
Year Published:
2021
Citation:
Riley Hardwick and Irvin Solano-Teran. Combating Climate Change in the Energy Sector: Development of an Affordable, Solar-Powered, Mobile-Device Charging System, UHD 21st Annual Student Research Conference. April 22, 2022 (poster presentation).
- Type:
Conference Papers and Presentations
Status:
Other
Year Published:
2021
Citation:
Elizabeth Rosa and Julio Aleman. Solar Powered Water Filtration. UHD 21st Annual Student Research Conference. April 22, 2022 (poster presentation).
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Progress 09/01/20 to 08/31/21
Outputs
Target Audience:This is Year 2 of the University of Houston-Downtown (UHD) program titled Support Undergraduate Sustainable Technology and Agricultural Instructional Needs (SUSTAIN). The program is offered through the Center for Urban Agricultural and Sustainability (CUAS) which was created under funding from a previous NIFA-USDA funding opportunity back in 2015. Since that time the CUAS has grown into a vibrant center at UHD. The CUAS coordinates a number of student programs and learning opportunities which will be highlighted in this report. The PI of this NIFA USDA-funded program, Dr. Lisa Morano, is Professor of Biology and Microbiology and the Director of the CUAS and a faculty member with a background in environmental science and agroecology. The Co-PI of this program, Dr. Vassilios Tzouanas, is Professor of Engineering Technology with an engineering focus in renewable energy. Morano and Tzouanas have brought their respective areas of expertise to build a high-impact learning experience for the SUSTAIN Scholars program which is a central focus of the SUSTAIN program. We also have a collaborating faculty from the Social Science Department, Dr. Bill Flores, who has brought social science elements to our discussions about policy and human behavior. Target populations of the SUSTAIN program include undergraduates at UHD who engage in several different educational opportunities sponsored by the CUAS. Undergraduates of any major at UHD are also welcome to take the sustainability (SUST prefix) curriculum at UHD. One intense experiential learning program sponsored by the CUAS is the SUSTAIN Scholars program where students work in teams on sustainability focused projects that solve a problem in urban agriculture. The SUSTAIN Scholars program selects 10-12 UHD students and engages them in formal classroom teaching and team projects where students work collaboratively to solve real-world problems. This program also includes a summer internship where each UHD SUSTAIN student works with a local company, agency or non-profit to gain more real-world experience. SUSTAIN Scholars also mentor local high school students in the Houston Independent School District. Although the CUAS targets programs for UHD students the programs students are involved in impact the entire UHD campus and the larger Houston community. Houston has been labeled the most diverse cities in America. In April of 2021 Houston surpassed New York and Los Angeles in overall diversity (houstoniamag.com). Such titles are based on ever-changing details, but it is certain that Houston is diverse and UHD serves the center of this fast-growing urban center. UHD, itself, is one of the most diverse four-year universities in the US. UHD is both a Hispanic Serving Institution (HSI) and a Minority Serving Institution (MSI). The student population demographics at UHD are 55% Hispanic and 21% black (UHD Fact book). UHD is part of the University of Houston system, but each campus is its own institution with its own leadership and mission. A majority of UHD students are the first in their families to attend college and because UHD is in the middle of Downtown Houston it serves numerous Houston communities. UHD is easily accessible by both the public train and the public bus system. UHD prides itself on being a leader in high-impact practices. Classes are capped with small enrollments and students are encouraged to engage in undergraduate research or community engagement. The goal of the SUSTAIN Scholars program was to expand on UHD's legacy of high impact practices by giving students a year-long experiential learning experience with mentored activities that encourage them to consider graduate school and expose them to the career opportunities in food, agriculture, natural and human sciences (FANH). By serving the students of Houston's central urban university this program serves a target population that is already educationally, economically and socially disadvantaged. Efforts of the UHD SUSTAIN program fall into several of the categories. These include development of new curriculum, formal classroom instruction, experiential learning opportunities, internships for UHD students and innovative mentoring program between UHD students and students at a local high school. Past efforts had created new curriculum as part of a new Minor in Sustainability. These courses include: Renewable Energy Systems (SUST 3301), Fundamentals of Sustainability (SUST 3302), Seminar in Sustainability (SUST 4301) and Capstone in Sustainability (SUST 4302). One of the goals of this SUSTAIN program was to move all of these to the online format over the course of 4 years. One of the upsides of the COVID19 pandemic is that this goal was already met in year two of our program. Due to the tremendous efforts of UHD's Center for Teaching and Learning Excellence Center we were trained in the pedagogy and technology to make this happen. Over the next few months we will be working with the curriculum approval streams (Departmental and University Curriculum Committees) to be able to keep these courses as permanent online offerings. Another goal was to create a new sustainability-focused course (SUST 4XXX) titled Urban Agriculture. Development of that course will be a focus of the 2021-2022 year. Efforts in experiential learning, innovative mentoring and internships are all demonstrated in the UHD SUSTAIN Scholars Program. Students engage in a year-long mentoring program where they are supported by three faculty (mentioned above) and the CUAS Staff (Mr. Juan Martinez). Students learn professional development and soft skills, work together in teams to build a piece of equipment that solves a problem in urban agriculture. UHD SUSTAIN Scholars also mentored high school students at a local high school taking a high school Urban Agriculture course. The SUSTAIN scholars are not only getting a mentored experience they are in turn mentoring high schools students so they are serving an outreach role and improving the pipeline of students considering FANH careers or graduate school. Changes/Problems:A major problem of last fall and winter was that the pandemic prevented us from running our mentoring program in person, so we moved it online as did the university with all of its courses. This worked better than expected and students appreciated a weekly mentoring opportunity to discuss their worries and fears. Despite last fall and spring being virtual strong relationships were created within the SUSTAIN Scholar cohort. Another major change was that the building of the systems by the SUSTAIN Scholars to solve a problem in urban agriculture or sustainability could not happen in spring. The building of those projects was moved to the summer after students had the opportunity to get vaccinated. Virtually all students were also able to do in-person internships as planned in summer 2021. One student didn't feel comfortable doing an in-person internship so he was given a virtual project of making an app that will interface with sensors in the small greenhouse one group is making. Another student couldn't join an external internship due to health-related family issue and so was given a project working on a website and QR code signage for the UHD Sustainability Garden. If the pandemic has taught it us anything it has been how to be flexible and resourceful to accomplish our goals and continue to create great opportunities for our students. Another change from what was proposed was that we hoped to be teaching the new course in Urban Agriculture (SUST 4XXX) this year. The pandemic created a lot of chaos and the focus on the curriculum committees was to move courses to online with some quality and not on building new curriculum. Therefore, the new course will be planned for 2022. However, as stated above, we are ahead in our four-year goal of moving all courses to the online platform. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?Training and professional development are two areas of focus for the SUSTAIN Scholar Program. The goal of the NIFA USDA funded program was to offer the SUSTAIN Scholar program to 8 undergraduates per year. Due to the addition of CUAS funds we were able to extend this program of training and professional development to a total of 11 students this year. There are numerous aspects of training built into the SUSTAIN Scholar program. Students in the year-long program must enroll in two courses one in the fall (Renewable Energy Systems, SUST 3301) and one in the spring (Foundations in Sustainability, SUST 3302). Training also includes weekly meetings for an entire year with the program mentors including the PI (Dr. Morano), Co-PI (Dr. Tzouanas) and the Sustainability Coordinator (Mr. Martinez). Professional training also was a focus of the 6-week internship that each SUSTAIN student was engaged in for half of the summer. These internships with were various community partners (companies, City of Houston, non-profits, Texas Parks and Wildlife, etc.). The purpose of these internships was to give students professional experience in the real world and to help them become more confident and have more connections to future careers career opportunities in food, agriculture, natural and human sciences (FANH). There is obviously overlap between the training offered through our program and professional development. Both required courses of the program are applied and have small enrollments (<20 students) so there is a big focus on a group project in the building up student soft skills of communication and working in a group. The program weekly Zoom meetings were always a time for the large group to check in and see how everyone was doing. This was particularly important during the winter of 2020 when the pandemic was raging and vaccines were not yet available. The program mentors tried to make the program a safe place for students to discuss their fears and get inspiration about moving forward. Some group meetings we discussed professional development topics and brought in guest speakers (over Zoom). We had a speaker talk with students about the importance of metacognition and a speaker from the UHD Career Center discuss resumes/CVs and how to make career connections before you graduate. One of our associated faculty with the program (Dr. Flores) talked to the students about following a path as it unfolds in front of you. He talked eloquently about his time working with César Chávez and Dolores Huerta and the labor movement of the United Farm Workers in California. Professional development also happened on a scaler smaller than the large group. The large group was either the entire course (SUST 3301, 3302) or the group meetings of 14 (11 SUSTAIN and 3 mentors). The SUSTAIN Scholars were split into three groups to each build something that solved a campus need in sustainability or urban agriculture using renewable power. The mentors of the program met with each group of 3-4 to discuss the planning and development of each project. This year's projects include a solar-powered phone recharging center at a student eating area, a solar-powered water purification system and a small greenhouse for the sustainability garden with a solar powered cooling system. In these small groups we often discussed group dynamics and how to delegate and how to keep the project moving forward. Each student also worked on an internship project (discussed above). As part of these experiences students learned from their mentors how to complete a project in a professional setting. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?Information about CUAS opportunities and successes are disseminated in a number of ways. The CUAS does participate in social media (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram). Applications for the SUSTAIN Scholars and other CUAS programs are emailed to the entire student body through their UHD email. Faculty that teach courses are have research programs that are related to sustainability, plant biology or any other related topics are also sent announcements to share with their students. Last summer a SUSTAIN Scholar who worked with a local Texas Parks and Wildlife biologist presented his research at the state-wide Texas Master Naturalist meeting so the work of the CUAS and SUSTAIN Scholars program was highlighted at that meeting. This spring the PI was also asked to give a keynote address (virtually) at an International Sustainability Conference hosted by Bialystok University of Technology in Poland. They were particularly interested in how to build curriculum and experiential learning in urban agriculture. The SUSTAIN Scholar program and the activities of the CUAS has increased collaboration with community partners in the Houston area. Our collaboration with the high school where they are teaching an Urban Agriculture course has led to the PI of this program joining the Steering Committee at the High School where urban agriculture and food production will become a new tract for students. The summer internships of SUSTAIN Scholars has led to greater visibility about the CUAS at UHD. This has led to the desire by two new non-profits wanting to create MOUs with us. One non-profit is Urban Harvest which is the group the oversees all the community gardens in the Houston area. Another is OHBA Organic Educators which is a non-profit focused on organic education in the area. These collaborations would not have likely happened without the USDA NIFA support to originally build the CUAS (last funded program) and the funding of the SUSTAIN Scholars program (current funded program). Lastly, UHD has recently hired an new university president and he appears very excited by the USDA NIFA funded initiatives coming from the CUAS and stated that he is interested in seeing that becoming an important focus of the university in the future. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?In the second year of the program, we were able to start the high school collaboration. Students form UHD SUSTAIN were able to Zoom with high school students every couple of weeks while the high school students were in their urban agriculture course. We have learned a lot and have plans to improve and streamline this collaboration this year. An original plan was to bring the high school students to UHD for a day of touring and learning. That has not happened due to the pandemic. It is possible it may be safe to include this component this spring. One of the program goals was to eventually move all the SUST courses online to improve access. Due to the pandemic we are actually ahead of schedule on this and all courses have been moved online. One of the goals for this year is to create the new university course in Urban Agriculture (SUST 4XXX). The plan is to develop the curriculum for the courses this year and offer it next fall. The course will include projects that course participants will have to complete in a backyard or local community garden. We are currently selecting the students for the third cohort and the pandemic will likely keep our program in a more online format for fall. We have found that the interest in the program is down slightly this summer compared to the last couple of years. This may be in part due to the pandemic. Cases are currently very bad in Texas and students may be hesitant to add an extracurricular activity to their plate. Even with this situation we are confident we will have at least our 8 proposed program students minimum, but we are unsure whether we will have any bonus students. Our plan is to keep our fall meetings virtual and then move to in person meetings in spring if the cases of COVID19 come down in the Houston region. Like this last year students will plan their project in teams online and when it is safe to do so get together and build their systems in the engineering lab.
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
Impact Statement The SUSTAIN program has had numerous positive impacts in its second year. The year-long experiential learning program for UHD SUSTAIN Scholars has increased the diversity of students interested in careers in food, agriculture, natural resources and human sciences (FANH) in the US. These 11 SUSTAIN students increased their knowledge about sustainability, renewable energy and urban agriculture through curriculum, mentoring and hands-on group projects. The students were mentored in professional development skills and participated in a 6-week summer internship/project to make them more competitive for a FANH career. These same students also virtually mentored local high school students in an Urban Agriculture course therefore improving their own skills and strengthening a pipeline of students from high school to a local university. This SUSTAIN program also planned some curriculum improvements. All four sustainability courses (SUST prefix) have moved online ahead of schedule. Major Activities, Data Collected and Summary Statistics The first objective of this proposal (as stated above) isto attract and support undergraduate students from underrepresented groups to pursue careers or graduate programs in FANH in the United States. This first objective is a major focus of the SUSTAIN program of the CUAS. Given the diversity of students at UHD (77% Hispanic and Black), the creation of any experiential learning program that focuses on preparing students for careers in food, agriculture, natural resources and human sciences (FANH) would likely also increase the diversity of students pursuing those careers. In addition, such opportunities are typically not an option for students attending urban universities so offering such opportunities at UHD also increases options for students in urban centers. The urban centers is not only where a large number of minority students live, but it is where the US population is growing the fastest. The CUAS was able to use some funds to expand the impact of the SUSTAIN Scholars Program. Instead of just the planned 8 students were able to enroll an additional 3 students with funds from the CUAS. These 11 students represented a diverse student population. Of these 11 students 7 were self-reporting as a race/ethnicity nationally underrepresented in the sciences (ie. Black or African American/Alaska Native/Native American/Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander and/or Hispanic). In addition, 6/11 of the SUSTAIN students reported as first-generation college students. These data suggest that the SUSTAIN Scholar program does attract and support students from diverse backgrounds. The external evaluator also evaluated the impact of the SUSTAIN program on the interest of SUSTAIN students to pursue FANH careers or graduate school using pre, mid and post-tests. The evaluator found that at the start of the program 27% or 3/11 had an interest in FANH careers. This rose to 60% (6/10) in Spring of 2021 and then 80% (8/10) in August of 2021. Of these 8 students that now are interested in FANH careers, 8/8 said that the program improved their confidence that they would be pursuing a career that would fulfill them and helped them see themselves in a FANH career area. Of these same 8, a total of 7 said the program impacted their decision to pursue a career in FANH and the other one had already decided on such a career by the start of the program. The external evaluator did not find that the program increased the students' interest in applying to graduate school in FANH. In talking with this cohort of students, many of them stated that they might be interested in graduate school in the future but want to first get into a career. The external evaluator was also able to show that SUSTAIN participants reported experiencing a valuable mentoring relationship (55 to 100%) and that the program helped them narrow the type of careers they were interested in (73 to 90%). The second objective of this program is toenhance the quality of post-secondary education in FANH fields through expansion of curriculum and inclusion of more inclusive course delivery modes. To meet this objective, we have a handful of goals to meet over the four years of the program. One of these was to slowly move the SUST courses into an online format to make the courses and the associated Minor is Sustainability more assessable. The pandemic year has greatly accelerated this part of the program. All of the SUST courses were offered online in the 2020-2021 academic year. The instructors of the courses have been trained in online best practices (as all UHD faculty were) and two of the four classes so far have adopted best practices and been approved as permanent online offerings. We expect the other two will be approved as permanent online offering in a couple of months. Two other plans related to this objective are to teach a new SUST course in Urban Agriculture. We propose that this course will be taught in fall of 2022. Another plan was to establish a proposal to offer a Certificate in Urban Agriculture and Sustainability. The university is behind in its establishment of guidelines for certificates, but such guidelines should be ready this winter and this will be pursued in the 2022 year. The final objective of this programto provide opportunity and access to FANH career in the public and private sector through the addition of the summer internship component of the SUSTAIN experiential learning program. One aspect of this program was to give students an internship component in the summer at the end of the academic year aspect of the program. This was designed as a 6-week summer internship so that students could still take a course or two the other summer session as needed. Student feedback from the internship was positive and likely played a role in the increase in interest in FANH careers seen in the previous section. The external evaluator was able to determine that the students were able to find an internship that matched their career interest (55% at start and 100% at the end of the program). An Internship Supervisor Survey was deployed to assess the internship component of the SUSTAIN program, and among other topics, supervisors were asked to rate aspects of the experience. There were only 7 internship supervisors because some took more than one student and two students had to be put on projects through the CUAS. Below are how the supervisors felt about how the students performed. The surveys stated that the interns performed to their satisfaction with 71% (5/7) strongly agreed and 29% (2/7) agreed. Key Outcomes We have changed the knowledge that the SUSTAIN Scholars from UHD had about sustainability, renewable energy and urban agriculture. We have also improved knowledge about professional skills. We have made significant strides in our curriculum objectives and strengthening our experiential learning program. This year we included the UHD SUSTAIN mentoring program of high school students. The UHD SUSTAIN Scholars report a positive experience with this mentoring of high school students. In terms of change in actions we have increased the number of minority students interested in FANH careers. We have converted our curriculum (4 SUST courses) to the online format so it is more accessible. We have created a collaboration with a local high school allowing for mentoring between that high school's urban agriculture class and the UHD SUSTAIN students. The changes in conditions include an increase in number of minority undergraduate students pursuing FANH careers and that those students have had professional development and internships making them better prepared for those careers. UHD has also had a change in conditions that we have stronger collaborations with our community partners, a better pipeline from the local high school and have migrated curriculum to online so that it is more accessible.
Publications
- Type:
Journal Articles
Status:
Awaiting Publication
Year Published:
2021
Citation:
Adams, J., Morano, L., Tzouanas, V. and M. Hasan. 2021. Classical soil gardens versus outdoor hydroponic gardens utilizing energy and water capture technologies to combat climate change. Journal of Emergency Management. 19(4): 8 pages. DOI:10.5055/jem.0000. (Acknowledged the 2015 grant we were awarded before this grant.)
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Progress 09/01/19 to 08/31/20
Outputs
Target Audience:This is Year 1 of the University of Houston-Downtown (UHD) program titled Support Undergraduate Sustainable Technology and Agricultural Instructional Needs (SUSTAIN). The program is offered through the Center for Urban Agricultural and Sustainability (CUAS) which coordinates a number of student programs and learning opportunities. The PI of this NIFA USDA-funded program is the Director of the CUAS and a faculty member with a background in environmental science and agroecology. The Co-PI is faculty in engineering with a focus in renewable energy. Using their distinct specialties these two faculty have designed an experiential learning program that combines agricultural science and technology to all UHD students. A faculty member from the social sciences is also participating to a small degree to bring more aspects of social science to the program (ie. discussion about behavior and policy). Targets of the program include undergraduates at UHD who engage in the SUSTAIN experiential learning program to work in teams on sustainability focused projects that solve a problem in urban agriculture. The SUSTAIN experiential learning program selects 10-12 UHD students and engages them in formal classroom teaching and team projects where students work collaboratively to solve real-world problems. This program also includes a summer internship where each UHD SUSTAIN student works with a local company, agency or non-profit to gain more real-world experience. The target audience for this experiential learning program is all UHD students. A majority of UHD students (up to 80% of new Freshman) are the first ones in their family to attend college. UHD is both a Hispanic Serving Institution (HSI) and a Minority Serving Institution (MSI) with a student body that is 51% Hispanic and over 20% Black. UHD is in Downtown Houston and is easily accessible by public transportation and it is the most affordable 4-year institution in the region and is therefore a valuable resource for students that are economically disadvantaged. Hands-on experiential learning and the mentoring that have been incorporated into this program can be invaluable for the success of first generation and minority students. The goal of this experiential learning program is to engage undergraduate in mentored activities, encourage them to consider graduate school and expose them to the career opportunities in food, agriculture, natural and human sciences. This program includes curriculum that serves the target of the entire UHD student body and ultimately the Houston community. The program will lead to the creation of a new sustainability-focused class (SUST 4XXX) titled Urban Agriculture. Once developed this course will serve the UHD undergraduate population of 15,000 as the SUST courses are open to all majors and the course will count toward the Minor in Sustainability. Another ultimate goal of the program is to move all the SUST courses (5 including the new course) online to make the curriculum more accessible to a diverse audience. Another target population that will ultimately be served by this program is the Houston community. Over the next few years we will create a professional academic certificate in Urban Agriculture using the current courses in sustainability and the new Urban Agriculture course. This will increase opportunities for those in Houston that want to get academic training in Urban Agriculture. A final target population to be served are high school students at a local Houston high school where a teacher has created an Urban Agriculture course. UHD students in the SUSTAIN program (about 10-12 per year) will also serve as mentors for the high school students. There will be two sections of the course (60 students each) so that 120 high school students per year will get some mentoring from university students on their projects. Changes/Problems:The major delay in this implementation year was engagement of the local high school. We knew collaborating with a high school in the Houston Independent School District (HISD) would require a contract to work together. We knew this would take a while and probably would not be implemented until the first spring. Due to COVID-19 shut down all contracts were frozen for several months in spring. However, the contract has been approved this summer and we are good to go for the next academic year. Our plan is to move forward with the high school component this fall. Originally, we planned for UHD SUSTAIN students to mentor high school students in two sections of an Urban Agriculture course at local Westside High School and then come to UHD for a day of visit and experimentation. Due to COVID-19, the visiting of UHD will not happen, but the UHD SUSTAIN scholars will still mentor the high school students on independent projects through Zoom. Other aspects of the SUSTAIN project that were supposed to be in person have also moved to Zoom for now. This includes weekly meetings, group planning and implementation meetings and classes. Even the summer 2020 internships were moved all online. Our partner companies, agencies and non-profits which were themselves online (as was most of Houston in summer 2020) and they were incredibly supportive finding online projects and mentoring our students in an online environment. So, this was a major change, but a change that appeared to be successful as reported in the positive comments by students and supervisors (as described above). What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?Students in the first SUSTAIN Cohort had numerous training activities. Students were required to take an academic course with the PI (Fundamentals of Sustainability). Then the 11 students were mentored weekly in a large group by the PI (Morano), Co-PI (Tzouanas) and the Sustainability Coordinator (Martinez). Students were given weekly topics to consider for conversation and wrote short summaries of what they learned about the activity. Students were also put in groups of 3-4 to work on solving a problem in urban agriculture with technology. In spring 2020 the three projects were optimization of a mushroom growing incubator, experiments in a bioreactor to increase alcohol production from food biomass and optimization of a UHD aquaponics system. In early March 2020 these projects were moved online and included more theoretical rather than hands-on components due to COVID-19. During spring 2020, all SUSTAIN students continued to meet weekly with all three mentors through Zoom and all internships were arranged for the summer 2020 with a focus on online only projects. There were many professionaI development activities available for SUSTAIN students. Some were general CUAS activities open to all UHD. For example, in late 2019 the CUAS sponsored a seminar by a visiting Polish scientist on the conversion of agricultural trash materials into pellets for burning in heaters (very popular heat source in Europe). The CUAS PI also hosted a seminar on Ethics and Plagiarism which was open to all students, but SUSTAIN students were encouraged to attend. A number of professional development activities were designed specifically for the first cohort of 11 SUSTAIN students. We had lunch sessions dedicated to discussions of owning your own story and using it to power your future direction and the role of a diverse team in problem solving. After we moved online (due to COVID 19) our meetings continued (without lunch). One of the staff at the UHD Career Center developed a presentation for the SUSTAIN students on what they need to be doing now to prepare for the career they are interested in. Dr. Johnson, a UHD Asst. Provost, who is also a faculty hosted a Zoom discussion on metacognition for SUSTAIN students on metacognition which is thinking about your thinking. The focus of the discussion was to consider what motivates each person and to learn about what drives your thinking process so that you can use it for your own potential. Dr. Flores, the past-president of UHD and now faculty of Social Science met with students to talk about his personal road to success as a Hispanic college student to President of a University. He talked a lot about what students need to be successful and the value of finding and keeping mentors througouht one's lifetime. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?The SUSTAIN program and CUAS activities are conveyed to UHD and the greater Houston area using the UHD CUAS web page. This year, the CUAS also hired a staff member (Martinez) who serves as the UHD Sustainability Coordinator. Martinez uses social media platforms (Facebook, Twitter and Instagram) to update students and the outside community that might be interested in our initiatives. Specific opportunities for students (programs to apply for) also are emailed to faculty and leaders of other student programs on campus to email specifically to students that might be interested. It seems this is a more effective method of getting students to apply (they are encouraged by a faculty they know). Students seem unlikely to respond to calls for program that they receive in their emails. The UHD Communications group also sends updates of student successes from our program to post on the weekly UHD programs page. For example, two SUSTAIN students working for an architectural firm as their summer internship worked on a sustainability project that won third place in a regional contest and that was covered by UHD Communications on our website which is advertised externally to the local communication channels. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?This is the first year of the program and we are largely on track despite the existence of COVID-19 and movement of some aspect of this program online. This second year plans will see the implementation of the high school collaboration. In this collaboration the UHD SUSTAIN students will mentor the high school students on the projects that the high school students design. This will involve Zoom meetings between the UHD SUSTAIN students and the high school students they are mentoring at least once per month. We are currently finishing the selection of our second SUSTAIN cohort. Our first cohort had a slightly truncated year as it was our first year of funding. We are confident that the success we had with the first cohort will likely be repeated in this new second cohort. As in the first cohort we will be supplementing the 8 grant-funded spots with additional spots supported by the CUAS budget so as to give 10-12 UHD students the year-long experiential learning SUSTAIN program. We will continue with a focus on mentoring, professional development and soft-skills development before the current students are assigned to internships in summer 2021. Curriculum development will continue. Three of the 5 SUST courses will be online this fall. This online development is emergency approval and so we will continue throughout the year to make the couses approved as best-practices online courses. We expect it may take 1-2 years to move all 5 courses online with best practices approval. We will develop the SUST course Urban Agriculture. It is unclear whether this will be taught in spring 2021. It may need to be moved to fall of 2021 depending on the level of COVID-19 in Houston. Materials for this class require visiting and making videos of Urban Farms in the Houston area and we need to wait until that is a safe situation. Our curriculum goals stated above and the creation of an academic certificate in Urban Agriculture have been planned to occur in years 2-4 so we are still well within our plan of accomplishing these goals.
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
The first goal of this proposal (as stated above) isto attract and support undergraduate students from underrepresented groups to pursue careers or graduate programs in food, agriculture, natural resources and human sciences (FANH) in the United States. This component is to be accomplished through the creation of the SUSTAIN experiential learning program which includes coursework in sustainability and renewable energy, mentoring of students on team projects and giving the UHD SUSTAIN students experience mentoring high school students in agricultural experiments. This was the implementation year of this program. The SUSTAIN program was fully subscribed with 11 students (exceeding the grant-funded 8 students with the addition of CUAS funds). This first year we were able to attract a diverse pool of students to the program. Nine of the 11 students (82%) self-reported as a race/ethnicity underrepresented in the sciences (Black/African American, Native American/Native Hawaiian or Hispanic). To evaluate student changes in attitudes and knowledge within the program the SUSTAIN students were compared to a control group of UHD students (a sustainability course where students were not engaged in the SUSTAIN program). The compare group was less racially/ethnically diverse indicating that the SUSTAIN program was successfully targeting underrepresented students in alignment with its objectives. This year's SUSTAIN students also reported being majority first-generation college (7/11 or 64%). A specific SUSTAIN program goal is to increase student interest in graduate school and careers within the FANH fields. To measure student changes in perception a survey was given to students at the start of the program and again at the end of the program. With respect to interest in attending graduate school in an FANH field, the percentage of SUSTAIN students who indicated that their post-graduation plans included getting a master's degree or Ph.D. in FANH increase from 18% to 27%. Of those who expressed interest at the end in graduate school they reported being very interested and very confident in this career path. In addition to interest in graduate school students were also surveyed about their interest and degree of self-efficacy regarding FANH careers. At the start 3/11 (27%) students reported interest in a FANH specific career. At the end of the program 7/11 (64%) self-reported an interest in an FANH career. It is clear that the SUSTAIN program is increasing interest in FANH careers and even FANH graduate programs in a diverse student body. Another goal of this proposal isto provide opportunity and access to FANH career in the public and private sector through the addition of the summer internship component of the SUSTAIN experiential learning program.An important component for increasing opportunity and access was to improve skills development within the undergraduates in the SUSTAIN experiential learning program - specifically soft skills critical for professional success. This was attained partly through a series of lunch seminars and guest speakers focused on a series of relevant topics to their professional success (Resume/CV creation, quality writing and preventing plagiarism, ethics in science and technology, metacognition - thinking about your thinking, and forging pathways to your success). These were followed by an internship opportunity with a company, agency or non-profit. There was a dramatic increase in of self-reported skills for SUSTAIN students between the start and end of the program. For each of the soft-skills students were asked how much guidance they have had and their general comfort with these soft-skills. 'Working in a team to solve a problem' increased from 80 to 91%. 'Learning how different areas of study are relevant or connected to your own' increased from 50 to 100%. 'Preparing an academic poster' increased from 50 to 64%. 'Preparing an academic talk' increase from 60% to 82%. 'Participating in a professional team meeting' increased from 60 to 100%. 'Planning a controlled experiment' increased from 50 to 73%. 'Preparing a resume or an e-portfolio' actually went down from 70 to 64% and we are not quite sure why. 'Participating in an effective mentoring relationship' increased from 33 to 100%. 'Finding an internship that matched your interests' increased from 40 to 100%. 'Narrowing down the types of careers you are interested in pursuing' increased from 70 to 91% and 'exploring graduate degrees in my field of interest' increased from 60 to 82%. To get at how successful the students were in their internships we asked internship supervisors to weigh in on the interns that they had. We had only 5 external supervisors as some supervisors took two students and a couple of students did not do planned internships. One student was admitted to a national REU that had a sustainability focus and another student worked on a project for the Co-PI due to a mix-up in the setting up of his internship. Of the external supervisors, 80% (4/5) strongly agreed (and 20% agreed) that interns performed to their satisfaction, exhibited an appropriate level of professionalism, and took advantage of opportunities provided by the internship. In addition, 80% (4/5) strong agreed (20% agreed) that they were interested in hosting interns next summer if possible and that being a partner with SUSTAIN had been a satisfactory experience. Comments also revealed that interns were very productive. One supervisor stated that the intern had been able to answer questions that had been need to be answered for the last several years and another noted that their two interns had completed a regional design content and won 3rd place. We are additionally pleased that the internship worked so well because all summer internship had to be moved to completely online projects. The final goal of this program is toenhance the quality of post-secondary education in FANH fields through expansion of curriculum and inclusion of more inclusive course delivery modes.The specific components of this goal are to create a new course in our sustainability program (SUST prefix) in Urban Agriculture, to move the entire sustainability program online (5 courses over 4 years) and creation of a certificate in Urban Agriculture which will be open to the Houston community interested in an academic certificate to accompany other education they may have. Due to COVID-19 we are further along in our online transition than we planned. Three of the 5 SUST courses will be offered online in fall of 2020. The Urban Agriculture courses will be taught in either 2021 or early 2022 based on how far we get in the preparation of materials. The Certificate in Urban Agriculture is only in preliminary planning phases, but is on-track with what we proposed. Our collaboration with the high school will start this fall.
Publications
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