2017 ASHS Annual Conference

I was hired by NCA&T State University (an HBCU) as a lecturer and director of the campus greenhouse range in the fall 2012. My initial task was to help develop and teach courses for a new horticulture degree program in the department Natural Resources and Environmental Design. Keeping in mind the objective of broadening recruitment opportunities from the traditional pool of students, we focused on an undergraduate curriculum geared towards urban and local agriculture to attract students from urban areas. Because these students may not have practical agricultural experience, it was important to incorporate experiential learning opportunities in the new curriculum. My program arose from developing experiential and service learning-based horticulture courses focused on local and urban agriculture. Through these efforts I have developed strong ties with the community by having outreach activities and projects that I incorporate in the academic part of my program. I have also infused research projects to support undergraduate STEM activities in our curriculum.

The new curriculum was designed to accommodate students coming into the program with limited agricultural experience, and be flexible enough with approved electives for students to follow their passion whether it is in business, production, crop protection, policy, or advanced studies. The core courses provide the fundamental subject knowledge needed for students to be competent horticulturalist upon graduation. Soft skills are gained through experiential learning, service learning opportunities, and internships. The approved curriculum “Urban and Community Horticulture” was first offered in the fall 2013.

To facilitate the Urban and Community Horticulture (UCH) program, I wrote and received a $150K NIFA capacity building grant in the fall 2014 to develop the infrastructure supporting a strong experiential learning component in the UCH curriculum. The grant was used to develop the surrounding greenhouse grounds building multiple growing structures for students’ hands-on experience on what became the “Urban Food Platform”. The platform has been designed to maximize experiential learning. It includes 35 raised beds of various size in 2 locations, a pergola providing a shaded seating area, vertical structures, hydroponics and a 12x25-ft passively heated and cooled greenhouse for students use. While the campus greenhouse offered opportunities to initiate collaborations with the community through my plant propagation course, the Urban Food Platform allows further community engagement and openly showcases students’ work and research in urban and community horticulture. Many people walk by the platform every day and observe or ask questions, curious about new crops or new projects under progress. Taking advantage of these opportunities, we organized special events with students at the platform, and shared our work by celebrating important dates such as World Food Day and Earth Day. The development of the Urban Food Platform has also proven to be a fantastic recruitment and retention tool. Providing recruitment opportunities was part of the NIFA grant. The visit of the UFP is now part of our College of Agriculture recruitments tours.

The courses I developed and teach for the new curriculum include ‘Plant Disease Management’, ‘Plant Nutrition’, ‘Vegetables for Small-Scale Production’, ‘Plant Propagation’, ‘Factors affecting Urban and Community Horticulture’, and ‘Practice in Sustainable Horticulture’. We use the Urban Food Platform for observations and students’ experiments by growing food crops. The location of the platform on campus feet away from the classroom makes it an ideal environment for students’ experiential learning. Even during a 50 minute-class time, it is possible to step outside for a demonstration, an observation or hands-on activities.

The actual Urban Food Platform design and building has been a learning experience for students as well. The Vegetable Production class built many of the raised beds and the class of Season Extension built the 12x25 greenhouse as a major piece of the platform. The construction process allowed students to experience all of the preliminary and preparation work and allowed students to apply the concepts learnt in class. Involving students in the planning and building process has been extremely valuable, allowing students to learn the value of team work and take ownership of the platform.

The Urban Food Platform has also been a great tool to engage the broader community in different ways, which in the end benefits the program and our students. The platform was featured in 2016 during the week-long celebration of local food in our county, and has been used to organizing educational workshops for various community stakeholders. In the spring, we hosted several workshops for students of other institutions and for teachers of the county school garden network. We collaborate with the ‘Early STEM College’ on campus to engage their students in hands-on agricultural opportunities. We have also collaborated with Guilford College’s sustainable agriculture program.

Through the UCH program, I have developed an important network for my courses and academic responsibilities. I have helped in the development of the Guilford County Food Council, and I am now the Chair of the Education and Awareness cluster. I am a member of the Greensboro Community Food Task Force and an advisory board member of the Guilford County School Garden Network. I am Chair of the Guilford County Extension advisory board and part of the organizational team for the 2017 Guilford County Local Food Week. Two of the courses I developed are focused on discovering and understanding our local food system using these networks. One of the courses is a service-learning community project, which has been an eye-opening experience for most of our students. I am the faculty mentor for our Local on-campus Food Ambassador for the NC10% program and was asked by the College of Agriculture to supervise the development of a student-run farm at the University Farm.

Finally, the Urban Food Platform has been designed to develop research projects associated with urban and local food production. We are developing production calendars that fit the academic as well as food production calendars. We investigate intensive food production in urban environments and local adaptability of cultivars, which are incorporated into our experimental learning curriculum.