Performing Department
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Non Technical Summary
Situation/Need: The DE Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control (DNREC) has promulgated the necessary regulations to oversee the nascent shellfish aquaculture industry. After an initial flurry of interest in the leasing program for space in the Shellfish Aquaculture Development Areas (SADA), there has been a limited number of adopters. Ongoing efforts, funded in part by our FY 2021 CBG, by DSU Cooperative Extension and the DE Sea Grant Marine Advisory Service, are assisting new and prospective growers learn how to farm shellfish, and are introducing K-12 teachers and students to aquaculture in new and exciting ways. Through these efforts, it has become apparent that there is unmet demand for a more formalized aquaculture training materials in DE, especially for middle and high school students.Goal: To work in conjunction with educational partners (DE Department of Education, FFA, 4-H, school districts, teachers, etc.) to develop an aquaculture curriculum for use in STEM classrooms statewide and pilot curriculum activities and create demonstration aquaculture systems at a minimum of one school in each partner district.Anticipated Outcomes/Benefits: The end result of this effort will be to increase the aquaculture literacy of Delaware youth. Doing so will provide an expanded pool of potential workers to fill jobs at a variety of levels in the growing Blue economy, create better informed seafood consumers, and ensure that decision makers have working knowledge of aquaculture and its contributions to Delaware's economy.
Animal Health Component
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Research Effort Categories
Basic
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Applied
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Developmental
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Goals / Objectives
The Delaware Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control (DNREC) has promulgated the necessary regulations to oversee the nascent shellfish aquaculture industry. After an initial flurry of interest in the leasing program for space in the Shellfish Aquaculture Development Areas (SADA), there have been only a limited number of adopters. Ongoing efforts, funded in part by a FY 2021 CBG, by DSU Cooperative Extension (PI - McIntosh) and the DE Sea Grant (DE SG) Marine Advisory Service (co-PI Hale), are assisting new and prospective growers learn how to farm shellfish, and are introducing K-12 teachers and students (co-PIs Christopher and Dupont) to aquaculture in new and exciting ways. Through these efforts, it has become apparent that there is unmet demand for more formalized aquaculture training materials for use in Delaware, especially for middle and high school students. Our goal through this current proposal is to work in conjunction with educational partners (DE Department of Education, FFA, 4-H, school districts, teachers, etc.) to develop more formalized aquaculture training materials for use in STEM classrooms statewide, pilot curriculum activities and create demonstration aquaculture systems at a minimum of one school in each partner district.Collectively our planned activities will allow DSU to continue to fulfill its mission to 'enhance the recruitment and preparation of talented professionals to contribute to a sustainable, global community,' by addressing the following three objectives:Compile and review existing aquaculture curricula/training materials (Christopher with help from McIntosh, Hale and Dupont).Develop a DE aquaculture training manual (Christopher with help from Dupont).Create a multi-institutional (articulated) undergraduate aquaculture course (McIntosh with help from Dupont and Hale).
Project Methods
We have identiifed three objectives that we will complete as part of this project.A. Compile and review existing aquaculture curricula/training materialsProject partners will review existing school-based aquaculture programs and resources such as Maryland Sea Grant Aquaculture in Action, the Sound School in New Haven, Connecticut, the New York Harbor Schools and the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Service's Aquaculture Educator Resources webpage (FDACS 2023). During this review, we will be looking to identify best practices in school-based aquaculture as well as best practices in system design. We will also identify gaps in aquaculture education and new areas to explore. During the review phase, we will seek input from a variety of groups. We will engage with the Delaware Department of Education Science office and the Career and Technical Education office to determine avenues for classroom integration of aquaculture. We will seek input from aquaculture farmers on the skills and competencies they look for in their workforce. Finally, we will work with 2- and 4-year colleges and universities on determining the policies and requirements for creating an articulated course. The majority of this review will take place in year one, but may continue into year two.B. Develop a DE aquaculture training manualThis project will create an Aquaculture Training Manual for Delaware Schools. At this time, we envision the manual will have two main sections.Section I: Technical Manual for Setting Up an Aquaculture SystemSection II: Lessons and Resources for Classroom IntegrationThe manual will be created and field tested over all three years of the project and will be informed by the resource review in year one.Year 1Through a needs-assessment, we will identify specific skills, competencies, and content needed for the aquaculture lessons as well as the technical information required for the manual. Using this information, the project partners will create an outline of the manual. We will work with five Delaware teachers to begin drafting aquaculture lessons that meet state learning objectives. We have included money in the budget to pay teachers a modest stipend for them to assist us with this task. Teachers will be recruited through the Delaware Department of Education, Delaware Association of Agriscience Educators, Delaware Association for Environmental Education, and the Delaware Foundation for Science and Mathematics Education. During year one, we will reach out to various school districts to solicit applications for three pilot schools for this project to help trial and refine training materials. We will review the applications and select one school from each of our three counties.Year 2We will continue to work with five Delaware teachers to write lessons and create resources. We will encourage teachers from year one to remain on the project, but if they choose not to, we will recruit new teachers. As above, we have included money in the budget to pay teachers a modest stipend for them to assist us with this task. Teachers will be recruited through the Delaware Department of Education, Delaware Association of Agriscience Educators, Delaware Association for Environmental Education, and the Delaware Foundation for Science and Mathematics Education. We will also work with the three schools selected in year one to build/update classroom aquaculture systems and field test the activities created. Throughout this pilot phase DSU and Delaware Sea Grant will provide in class help with lessons and will offer to co-teach some of the content. Throughout these activities, we will solicit feedback from the pilot schools on the lessons, resources, and system designs as well as what other lessons and resources they feel are needed to be successful. This feedback will be used to revise the current lessons and resources and develop new ones as needed. These lessons will be combined, along with the technical information, to create a draft manual.In the summer of year two, we will host a three-day teacher professional development on aquaculture for five teachers. Teachers will receive a stipend for attending and we will recruit teachers through the pilot-schools, the Delaware Department of Education, Delaware Association of Agriscience Educators, Delaware Association for Environmental Education, and the Delaware Foundation for Science and Mathematics Education. We will use the newly created a draft manual throughout the workshop.Year 3We will continue to solicit feedback about the draft training manual, lessons trialed by the pilot schools and the teachers trained during the summer workshop. Feedback will be reviewed and incorporated into a final draft of the Aquaculture Training Manual for Delaware Schools. In the summer of year three we will unveil the completed manual at a teacher professional development for 10 Delaware teachers. Teachers will receive a stipend for attending. We will recruit teachers through the pilot schools, the Delaware Department of Education, Delaware Association of Agriscience Educators, Delaware Association for Environmental Education, and the Delaware Foundation for Science and Mathematics Education. Following the summer professional development, we will compile the manual and resources and make them available to all Delaware teachers. Once completed, these resources will be posted on both the DSU and Delaware Sea Grant websites for easy access.C. Create a multi-institutional (articulated) undergraduate aquaculture courseBeginning in year one of the project, we will arrange a meeting between faculty and administrators (likely to initially focus on academic department chairs) to review current undergraduate curricula and undergraduate course syllabi. During these discussions we will examine the curricula for relevant academic programs, and existing individual course syllabi for content, scope and parity including DSU's NTRS-261 Aquaculture, UD's School of Marine Science & Policy, and syllabi from the discontinued Delaware Technical Community College 1990's aquaculture program.At this initial meeting we will discuss both the alignments within the respective institutions' program goals and existing courses' content, as well as hone in on the differences between them to lay out the ensuing conversations. We expect that given the nature of the various higher education programs in Delaware that there should be sufficient overlap in foci to allow for the establishment of a common undergraduate course in Aquaculture. Once the respective faculty and academic department chairs agree that their programs will support an articulated undergraduate course in Aquaculture, we begin the discussion of what the scope, breadth and depth of this course should be, and will pull from all of the existing courses to develop the syllabus for a common multi-institutional (articulated) undergraduate aquaculture course. A second meeting will be held amongst the respective instructors and/or department chairs as needed to refine the course existing course resources (e.g. texts books, lab exercises, lecture notes, etc.) with an eye toward optimizing the new course's content. With the course designed and agreed upon by the respective instructors and department chairs, we will craft a proposal to the respective University administrations to accept the newly developed course into their department's curricula and to formalize an articulation agreement.