Recipient Organization
PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIVERSITY
408 Old Main
UNIVERSITY PARK,PA 16802-1505
Performing Department
(N/A)
Non Technical Summary
Women comprise a significant and rising share of the agricultural workforce domestically and worldwide as farmers, farmworkers, policy-makers, and extension professionals. In the U.S., women participate in farm decision-making on 56% percent of all farms (USDA 2019). Yet, systematic gender bias persists in agriculture due to discriminatory policies, practices, and norms in rural areas (Sachs et al, 2016). Employers of food and agricultural sciences (FAS) graduates have increased their demand for job candidates with training and experience in the area of gender and agriculture to support the vitality and success of the agricultural sector. Yet, university curriculum in the FAS have been slow to provide such educational and workforce development programming, often due to the difficulty of addressing sensitive cultural norms around gender equity and women's rights in the classroom.This Standard Grant proposes a three-year interdisciplinary program to prepare students for future work supporting gender equity and diversity in agriculture. Fifteen students (total) will be placed in internships with six partner organizations who are recognized local and global leaders in gender and sustainable agriculture research and programming (Pennsylvania Sustainable Agriculture, Penn State Extension, International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), Cooperative for Assistance and Relief Everywhere (CARE) USA, Oxfam America, and Mennonite Economic Development Associates (MEDA). The program has three workforce development components: (1) Weeklong pre-internship training covering gender equity issues in agriculture and professional development for non-profit work; (2) Summer internship program that enables students to develop and apply their problem-solving and cultural awareness skills while helping advance the gender equity work of partner organizations; (3) Creation of a new course on Gender and Agriculture that will utilize products generated by students during internships as curricular materials. Altogether, 15 students will participate in summer internships, and up to 75 students will participate in the Gender and Agriculture course, over the three-year lifespan of the project.The main goal of our program is to equip students for future careers in farming or agricultural research, education, policy, or extension with the competencies needed to address gender equity concerns in the domestic and international agricultural workforce. This aligns with HEC Program Goals #1 and #7.
Animal Health Component
(N/A)
Research Effort Categories
Basic
(N/A)
Applied
(N/A)
Developmental
(N/A)
Goals / Objectives
The main goal of our program is to equip students for future careers in farming or agricultural research, education, policy, or extension with the competencies needed to address gender equity concerns in the domestic and international agricultural workforce.We have five target objectives that we intend to accomplish during the three-year grant period in order to reach this goal:Build leadership and problem-solving skills for food and agricultural sciences students through an immersive experiential learning opportunity with sustainable agriculture organizations at home and abroad.Improve students' substantive knowledge, cultural awareness, inter-cultural sensitivity, and communication skills, needed for successful engagement with women and the increasingly diverse workforce in the U.S. agricultural sector.Strengthen Penn State's curriculum on gender and other forms of diversity in agriculture and continue building a faculty network around gender and agriculture through collaboration on this program.Support academic and post-graduation job market success among students from minority groups in the food and agricultural sciences through internship opportunities that promote their knowledge and professional development.Provide useful resources and outputs on gender equity in agriculture to our partner organizations that can be utilized in their research and programming efforts.
Project Methods
(1) EffortsBelow we list the specific efforts that will be taken in relation to each of the five project objectives.Build leadership and problem-solving skills for food and agricultural sciences students through an immersive experiential learning opportunity with sustainable agriculture organizations at home and abroad. We will establish a three-month summer internship program for five undergraduate and Master's students for three consecutive years. Each intern will be placed with one of our partner organizations and assigned tasks that support their research, programming, or evaluation activities related to gender and agriculture. The internships will promote leadership skills by cultivating independence in the work environment and by providing opportunities to present work in the Gender and Agriculture course; and promote problem-solving skills by immersing students in agricultural communities and tasking them with supporting the efforts of organizations that are working to address gender inequities. Students will receive mentoring from Drs. Sexsmith and Dr Castellanos, and peer mentoring from other interns, through regularly scheduled Zoom calls during internships.Improve students' substantive knowledge, cultural awareness, inter-cultural sensitivity, and communication skills, needed for successful engagement with women and the increasingly diverse workforce in the U.S. agricultural sector. Students will be immersed in 'real-world' agricultural settings where they will engage directly with farmers either through research or development programming. Through these hands-on experiences, they will develop, refine, and learn the importance of inter-cultural awareness, sensitivity, and communication. During the annual pre-internship training workshop, we will provide trainings on these skills through workshops on recognizing implicit bias, inter-cultural sensitivity, and community engagement.Strengthen Penn State's curriculum on gender and other forms of diversity in agriculture and continue building a faculty network around gender and agriculture through collaboration on this program. We will create a course called "Gender and Agriculture: Theory, Research Methods, and Policies" that will be offered to 25 upper-level undergraduate and graduate students every year in Fall semesters. This course will be based on the graduate seminar "Gender and Agricultural Development" taught previously (2019 and 2021) by Dr. Sexsmith. Internship outputs and publications will be used as curricular materials. To continue strengthening our faculty network on gender and agriculture, GEARE network faculty who work on gender and agriculture will be invited to participate as guest speakers to share their research and expertise implementing work in this area.Support academic and post-graduation job market success among students from minority groups in the food and agricultural sciences through internship opportunities that promote their knowledge and professional development. Co-PI Dr. Ingram will lead efforts to recruit students from traditionally under-represented groups in the FAS through her leadership of the College of Agricultural Science's Office of Multicultural Affairs. She and her staff will work directly with student groups representing minorities such as Minorities in Agriculture, Natural Resources and Related Sciences (MANRRS), the Latinx Outreach Club, Collegiate Cattlewomen, and the Society for Advancement of Chicanos/Hispanics and Native Americans in Science (SACNAS) to recruit a diverse pool of student interns. Mentoring from faculty, peers, and partner organizations during the internship period will help contribute to retention and success of diverse interns during the project. Interns will be offered a post-internship resume and job search workshop with attention to needs of under-represented students. Provide useful resources and outputs on gender equity in agriculture to our partner organizations that can be utilized in their research and programming efforts. Students are expected to produce written, audio, or visual materials as assigned by their partner organization host over the summers of the project. For example, a student intern with PASA in Pennsylvania might plan, implement, and evaluate a workshop on tractor safety for women farmers over the course of the three-month internship period. A student interning with MEDA in Ghana might interview women farmers about land inheritance practices as a barrier to their agricultural productivity. In this way students will provide valuable outputs and activities to our partner organizations and the communities they serve.(2) EvaluationOur main evaluation tools include weekly student journals (to encourage open-ended reflection on achievement and challenges of independent problem-solving and intercultural awareness skills); post-internship interviews with students (to assess how the program prepared them for work in the area of gender, diversity, and agriculture); post-internship interviews with partner organizations (to assess how well our program supported their capacity to address gender inequities in agriculture, and thus how well we are preparing our students for future work in this area); and a post-internship annual virtual external group evaluation meeting with all partners, three invited GEARE faculty, and the Dean of Undergraduate Education for the College of Agricultural Sciences (to discuss any needed changes to the program for the subsequent year). We will obtain IRB approval for our project evaluation methods in order to prepare academic articles and presentations using the results. Dr. Habashy will write a (de-identified) annual report summarizing his findings and recommendations.We will also evaluate the Gender and Agriculture course in terms of student learning/satisfaction, diversity of student enrollment, and utilization of products created by students during internship. This evaluation will be accomplished through surveys of enrolled students and by analyzing the course syllabus.Finally, we will evaluate the sufficiency of the weeklong pre-internship training through interviews with students.Detailed plans for the timing of these evaluation activities and specific metrics of success are included in the project proposal.