Addressing Barriers to HSI Student Retention through Community-Engaged Sustainable Food Systems Education

Arizona agriculture needs to adapt to a fast-changing climate and to significant shortcomings in land and water access, even as wide swaths of the state face severe issues of food access and insecurity. To address this, we intend to train a new generation of young people for careers in food- and agriculture-related fields, and to do so through intensive community engagement. This support will allow students both to understand career paths and to experience the importance of community involvement as a key element in both educational attainment and the sustainability of food systems.

We propose to accomplish this by funding a total of 27 undergraduate interns, as well as one graduate research assistant, who will conduct food-related internship work at Flagstaff public schools that feature a high percentage of students from underrepresented populations. These students will serve as role models for K-12 students even as they themselves engage in experiential learning related to growing food and to garden education.

Specific objectives:

1. Recruit and support a total of 27 undergraduate students, with an emphasis on those from underrepresented populations, as they perform off-campus internship work, with our community partners, that focuses on food systems education within the K-12 system.
2. Recruit and support a graduate research assistant, with substantial Spanish-language skills, who will work with program faculty on administering the program, as well as conducting their own thesis research on a topic related to the program.
3. Work with our community partners in the public school and county extension systems, as well as NGOs, to offer supervised garden-education programs and field trips for students attending Flagstaff schools with substantial Hispanic and other minority student populations.
4. Develop a new Sustainable Food Systems certificate, including a new class focused on community engagement, that will serve as a training venue and credential for funded interns, as well as other students from a variety of majors.
5. Produce materials summarizing and researching our work, including a project website, presentations at national and regional conferences or workshops, and articles prepared for the peer-reviewed academic literature.
6. Conduct regular evaluation activities, using such metrics as student retention and survey responses, to monitor project effectiveness.