Progress 09/01/19 to 08/31/23
Outputs
Target Audience:Our target audience for the La Mesa project were underrepresented groups in STEM and FAHN, specifically women and minorities high school students. The purpose was to expose the students to STEM with various experiential learning opportunities. Changes/Problems:As mentioned on the previous page, the biggest problems that we had with the project were due to the challenges associated with the COVID-19 pandemic. Because of the pandemic, one of the major changes that had to occur was the recruitment of larger groups of students rather than individual cohorts, as was originally proposed. While a smaller set of students would have had more in-depth experiences over the normal project period, being able to have a cohort come to campus for three years in a row turned out not be feasible, due to the pandemic. Instead, we were able to have larger impacts over the shorter period of time with our new recruitment strategy and were able to have 181 students experience the university setting. Again, almost three-quarters of the students who came to the University Minnesota Crookston for our on-campus STEM/FAHN experiences had never been on a college campus before, and giving them the opportunity to experience teh college settingwas a huge accomplishment. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?The main training that we provided through this project was to high school students with various STEM experiences. The experiences that the students had were always agriculture- and employment in fields of agriculture-related. This was intentional to provide students with the introductory training of what it would be like to be employed in a lab or similar field that helps support food, agriculture, natural resources, and human services. We also had one professional development event for teachers where we brought them to campus and provided them with training related to laboratories they can use in their classrooms. We did this as in cooperation with the Northern Great Plains Youth Institute (i.e., World Food Prize),which we host at the University of Minnesota Crookston. We intentionally held the professional development on that day to provide the greatest impact with our professional development, because the teacher's mentioned they wouldn't need to take an additional day of school to attend. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?The results and impacts of this project have been disseminated to the communties and stakeholders of interest. In fact, one of the biggest impacts, which was because of this project and the need to assist rural communities, we were able to develop the Center for Rural Education in Science and Technology (CREST) at the University of Minnesota Crookston. The missionof CREST is to enhance, improve STEM accessibility in rural education. CREST provides professional development, classroom instruction, STEM competition support and on-campus educational opportunities for students and educators. The University of Minnesota has provided support for this effort and this effort would not have even been possible without receiving this grant from the USDA. There is no question that this work is important and necessary for the future of our rural communities and the field of agriculture. It is unfortunate that the pandemic made it difficult to achieve all of the goals of the project, but there was certainly good that came out of what we were able to accomplish, even in a relatively short period of time following the pandemic. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?
Nothing Reported
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
This project had many challeneges associated with it accomplishing all of its goals. Soon after receiving the grant, everthing was shut down due to the COVID-19 pandemic. After being able to return to the University of Minnesota Crookston, no individuals that were not faculty, staff or students were allowed to come to campus. When things finely started to open back up and return to normal, there was difficulty it getting rural students recruited to participate in the project. There were a number of reasons for this, including but not limited to, concerns from parents and the students about health and safety. Although we explained we had precautions in place, obtaining the trust of the individuals was challenging.Fortunately, we were able to get recruit rural schools home school groups to participate rather than a cohort group as we originally proposed. For this reason, we applied for a one-year extension to be able to accomplish many of the goals of the project. As things returned to normal following the pandemic, we found therewere still other challenges we had in recruitingrural schools participate in this project.For example, we received interest from a nearby rural school, but the school didn't have any substitute teachers that they could get to have students come to campus. Another challenge was for rural schools being able to get a school bus or find a driver to bring them to campus. Due to these challenges, instead of applying for another one-year extension, it was decided that we needed to reset everything following COVID and will look to try to do similar work and have a greater impact as we return to even more so to levels ofnormalcy prior the pandemic. Goal 1:Diminish hesitancy toward pursuing higher education goals upon high school graduation Accomplishments: Although we had to change our approach towards recruiting students to participate, and were unable to deveop a cohort of students to go through the program, we did have 181 rural students have the opportunity to have STEM/FAHN experiences on the campus of the University of Minnesota Crookston. This was all in the span of a little over a year. In receiving feedback from the students who attended the on-campus experience and were graduating seniors, over half decided they were going to pursue higher education and felt that the their experience supported their interest in pursing high education. Goals 2 & 3: Familiarize regional high school students with a campus that is close to home and family and Demystify the university, thus briding the gap between "town and gown" Accomplishments: Goals 2 & 3 were combined as these two are similar in how we approached familiarizing students with the campus and explaining college experience.As mentioned above, we were able to bring 181 students to campus. During their visits, besides performing STEM/FAHN experiences in the lab, we also gave them tours of campus to show and discuss withthe students what the college exprience is actually like. We made a strong effort to help students feel comfortable with what it means to go to college. As this was an important part to the purpose of the project, we were unable to readily accomplish this until things returned to normal following the COVID-19 pandemic, but this is why we made a strong effort to achieve this goal in the last year.In a survey of the students who came to the University of Minnesota Crookston,almostthree-quarters of the students who came on-campus to participate in theSTEM/FAHN experiences had never been on a college campus before. Thus,getting them on-campus to have these experiences was a huge accomplishment. Goal 4: Expand students' and parents' perception of ag-related majors and employment opportunties Accomplishments: When students came to campus we made sure that all of the lab experiences that the students had related in some way around agriculture. We did this purposefully to help promote how STEM relates so much to agriculture and the future of agriculture. We would also discuss with students what jobs were currently available in ag-fields that would be using the various techniques that they were learning by performing the lab with us. The one thing we realized was there wasn't a good way to involve parents in helping with the perception around ag-related majors and employment opportunities. What came of our pursuit of accomplishing this goal, was having rural home school groups with high school students who wanted to participate in these experiences. This allowed us to also speakwith this group, which is often overlooked, about the importance of agriculture and the employment opportunities in this area. Goals 5 and 7: Contribute to the development of the future ag-related workforce and Promote the future strength of the Nation's scientific, professional, and technical workforce in the food, ag, natural resources, and human sciences. Accomplishment: Goals 5 and 7 were compbined because they have similar outcomes related to workforce. To assess the whether we achieved this particular goal is extremely difficult. We made sure that all of the experiences that the students had when they came to campus, were in some way agriculture related. We also were intentional about making sure they understood how the various techniques related to the field of agriculture and how they may be able to use them in the future if the students pursued a career in agriculture. Goal 6: Increase rural prosperity in NW Minnesota, particulary for women and minorities Accomplishment:Providing students in rural communities the opportunity to experience a college or university setting and to actually be exposed to STEM experiences in this setting, is so critical to opening the door to rural students attending college. There is no question, and the data supports, that rural students pursuing a college degree will assist with their prosperity in the future. Therefore, just having any rural student participate was important for us, whether they were women or a minority. However, we made sure that women and minorities were groups that we would also provide additional emphasis towards when seeking schools and home school groups. Of the 181 students that came to campus, almost a third of the students were women. Also, about fifteenpercent of all the students who came to campus were from a minority group.
Publications
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