RCN-UBE Incubator: Urban agriculture supports accessible and impactful biology education

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Too many students, especially those from underrepresented groups, abandon their pursuit of STEM degrees in college. This attrition is a significant problem because there are not enough science, health professionals, and teachers in the U.S., and more diverse perspectives are needed to help solve the world's complex scientific challenges. Part of the reason for this attrition is because science education can seem abstract and not relevant to the problems that students are aware of in their own communities. This project addresses this attrition by creating a network focused on urban agriculture. Urban agriculture engages undergraduate students, in part, because it connects two of the world's most pressing problems, how to make agriculture more sustainable, and how to make cities healthier. Urban agriculture sites such as campus gardens and community farms, filled with crop plants, flowers, and insects, can captivate the imagination and connect them to nature. Although underappreciated, urban agriculture is also an ideal setting for helping students learn about science because plots of crop plants can easily organized as experiments. This project will build on this feature to develop labs that help undergraduate students learn every aspect of the scientific process, coming up with questions, developing a project design, collecting data, analyzing results, and presenting findings. This project will also make important contributions to communities by helping students, particularly those from underrepresented groups, stay interested in biology, and by connecting science education to community service projects such as produce donation programs. Undergraduate attrition from science fields is a significant problem in the United States. Attrition from science fields contributes to a shortage of available science and health professionals and teachers, and represents lost investments for students. Science attrition is particularly pronounced in underrepresented groups, which are needed to diversify perspectives. Reducing this attrition requires the development of rigorous yet engaging programs accessible to a large number of students from all backgrounds. This project will create a research coordination network that enhances undergraduate biology education by capitalizing on the advantages of urban agriculture as a model system. The network will be guided by two core goals: 1) to develop and implement biology curricula using the Core Concepts and Competencies outlined by the AAAS in their 2011 report, Vision and Change in Undergraduate Biology Education; and 2) to create quantitative assessments that measure progress toward our curricular and network goals. Urban agriculture provides an ideal setting for this program because the topic is relevant to students and the venue provides opportunities for hands-on training around core concepts in biology. The project will also help students connect their science training to community service through produce distributions, educational programming, and other types of outreach activities with community partners. This project is being jointly funded by the Directorate for Biological Sciences, Division of Biological Infrastructure, and the Directorate for Education and Human Resources, Division of Undergraduate Education as part of their efforts to address the challenges posed in Vision and Change in Undergraduate Biology Education: A Call to Action (http://visionandchange/finalreport/).This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.