Performing Department
(N/A)
Non Technical Summary
SDSU brings together more than 32 internal and external partners, including four USDA agencies and three Mexico-based universities, to expand and diversify the workforce in food, agriculture, natural resources, and human sciences (FANH) by graduating inspired undergraduate and graduate students eligible to join the USDA FANH workforce in positions ranging from entry-level to leadership. ELP activity will involve 240 undergraduate, 18 Masters and 7 Doctoral students in focused experiential, classroom-based learning, and research-oriented solutions that bridge the practices and knowledge of Historically Excluded Communities (HECs) with new strategies for regenerative agriculture addressing climate change, environmental degradation, food insecurity and poverty. Participants will be students from Indigenous, immigrant and Mexican-origin HECs along the US-Mexico border, who will train in programs spanning research, field schools, intensive internships, symposia, classroom education and extension, within regional and binational sectors, including exposures to the work of USDA FANH agencies, field stations, scientists, and policy experts. OEP activity to diversify the pipeline of future FANH professionals will include K-12, non-traditional, and community populations, with activities delivered through 4-H, Master Gardener, Growing Hope, Climate Science Alliance, SAGE, SD County Food System Alliance, SD Botanical Gardens, two HEC-dominant high schools and tribal communities (50 scholarships to tribal students participating in workshops). SDSU participants from HECs will graduate with baccalaureate and advanced degrees, highly qualified and interested in bringing a unique set of skills, knowledge and expertise on sustainable food systems and regenerative agriculture to the next generation of the USDA FANH workforce. Process, formative and summative evaluation will measure participant behavioral change, academic progress, degree completion, and USDA career pathways knowledge, interest, and application.
Animal Health Component
15%
Research Effort Categories
Basic
50%
Applied
30%
Developmental
20%
Knowledge Area
102 - Soil, Plant, Water, Nutrient Relationships;
136 - Conservation of Biological Diversity;
111 - Conservation and Efficient Use of Water;
501 - New and Improved Food Processing Technologies;
125 - Agroforestry;
201 - Plant Genome, Genetics, and Genetic Mechanisms;
604 - Marketing and Distribution Practices;
123 - Management and Sustainability of Forest Resources;
704 - Nutrition and Hunger in the Population;
701 - Nutrient Composition of Food;
Subject Of Investigation
0210 - Water resources;
0199 - Soil and land, general;
3110 - Insects;
6220 - Marketing, processing, and supply firms other than cooperatives;
6030 - The farm as an enterprise;
6050 - Communities, areas, and regions;
2499 - Plant research, general;
5010 - Food;
Field Of Science
3000 - Anthropology;
1060 - Biology (whole systems);
2050 - Hydrology;
1070 - Ecology;
1010 - Nutrition and metabolism;
1080 - Genetics;
2060 - Geography;
3100 - Management;
Goals / Objectives
Project Goals and Program Priorities As the environmental and social problems associated with prevailing food systems become more evident, practitioners, policymakers, scientists, and advocates increasingly recognize the need to ensure access to sufficient, safe, nutritious, and culturally appropriate food--without threatening biodiversity, soil health, and water resources or contributing to climate change, which weakens our ability to feed future generations.San Diego State University (SDSU), a federally designated Hispanic Serving Institution, brings together over 32 partners to solidify the institutional structure that will enable students to specialize in the study of sustainable local/regional food systems. Our goal in this proposed Tier 1 project is to expand and diversify the workforce in food, agriculture, natural resources, and human sciences (FANH) by graduating inspired undergraduate and graduate students eligible to join the USDA FANH workforce in positions ranging from entry-level to leadership. We will involve 240 undergraduate, 18 masters and 7 doctoral students in focused experiential, classroom-based learning, and research oriented solutions that bridge the practices and knowledge of Historically Excluded Communities (HECs) with new strategies for regenerative agriculture to address climate change, environmental degradation, food insecurity, and poverty. We will recruit and support students from HECs in programs spanning research, field schools, intensive internships, education, and extension, within regional and binational sectors, including planned exposures to the work of USDA agencies, field stations, scientists, and policy experts. Fifty members of tribal communities-at-large will receive stipends for participation in extension activities. The educational theme will be contributions of sustainable food systems of Hispanic, Indigenous, and immigrant communities along the US-Mexico border.The activities of this Tier 1 project will include experiential learning projects and outreach and engagement projects, strengthened by curriculum development, scholarships, and academic and professional career mentorship.
Project Methods
The Strategy: Theinterrelated social and environmental challenges of our times may be best addressed in tandem through a systemic approach that incorporates multi-disciplinary expertise, considers food as a complex socio-ecological system, and engages HECs in knowledge co-production. This project will focus on the promises of regenerative agriculture to renew environmental resources, capture carbon, rebuild social connections around food, promote climate adaptation, and reinvigorate local economies by bridging HECs' practices with the development of new strategies for regenerative agriculture. A robust cluster of Co-PD-led academic centers includes the new Center for Better Food Futures and interdisciplinary Food Studies Program (BFF, FSP-Joassart-Marcelli); Binational Plants Studies Program (BPSP-Flores-Renteria); Santa Margarita Ecological Reserve (SMER-Lipson); Center for Latin American Studies (CLAS-Pérez); Watershed Science Institute (WSI-Biggs); our Oaxaca Center for Mesoamerican Studies in Mexico (OCMS-Pérez), and the Sage Project under the Center for Regional Sustainability (SAGE), along with four USDA partners and three universities in Mexico - Universidad Autónoma de Baja California (UABC), Universidad Tecnológica de los Valles Centrales de Oaxaca (UTVC), and Centro de Investigación Científica y de Educación Superior de Ensenada (CICESE). This leadership team is well-positioned to work with HECs to address a systemic educational challenge and yield important insights into the creation of more sustainable, inclusive, and equitable food systems, while training a diverse group of students and engaging them in exploration of potential USDA-FANH careers.With prior USDA support, we established and created a high-impact program coalescing around an interdisciplinary, bi-national and systemic approach to food security. The program, Transnational Approaches to Sustainable Food Futures, provides a supportive academic and advising framework to generate greater understanding of different Indigenous and immigrant farming and food practices on both sides of the US-Mexico border.Our proposed program will build upon this foundation by training students from HECs in identifying and addressing research questions through intensive, multi-week internships and graduate programs that will aim to provide solutions to address food security and environmental challenges that disproportionately burden their communities. The proposed project will apply a sustainable food systems framework that focuses on regenerative agricultural practices along the southern border, including San Diego County, Imperial County, and Baja California; this work will expand into Oaxaca, Mexico, where the practices and knowledge of Indigenous and immigrant communities built over millennia are slowly being recognized for their contributions to sustainable food and regenerative agriculture and from which significant numbers of our students and communities derive. Given the importance of income that enables HEC students to participate in educational opportunities, we will expand opportunities for paid high-impact learning activities, immersing students in research and service-learning through experiences ranging from summer-long internship and field schools to semester-long community-engaged classes and year-long research mentorship. Likewise, paid, mentored assistantships for graduate students to pursue their master's thesis and doctoral dissertations in FANH disciplines will strengthen the pipeline of diverse, highly qualified candidates for leadership roles in the USDA. The target audience includes K-12, undergraduate and graduate students from HECs. We emphasize outreach to and engagement of populations identifying as Mexican-origin and/or Indigenous along the US-Mexico border, for whom we will also develop a certificate program and other extension-based learning, to be made available to the general public as well. We will transfer professional development on effective mentoring to graduate students directly mentoring undergraduates, who will in turn mentor K-12 students and extend knowledge to community members. The goal here is to diversify the pool of prospective applicants who graduate with leadership skills and unique disciplinary knowledge and expertise, and who will be assets to FANH appointments in USDA,