SPRING/SUMMER 2022
Pioneering Agri-Tech Course Takes Root Where dairy cows once grazed, a new kind of farming is germinating. Applied Technologies in Botany is a new science course made possible by and designed to realize the goals of the Signature Academic Program. Picture a greenhouse filled with crops monitored by sensors and tended by robotic arms and other controllers, which in turn are designed, installed, monitored, and tended by George School students. The course, the brainchild of biology teacher Pascal Lanciano and robotics teacher Brian Patton, takes an interdisciplinary and applied approach that marries plant science and technology to foster real-world learning and address issues of environmental sustainability. In recent years, Pascal had seen a drop in the time available for botany in courses like AP Biology, as newer topics like molecular biology swelled. Meanwhile Brian, whose family are avid
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gardeners, was seeing a rise in local food production, especially through the application of technology. Both have a passion for growing a greener world and see a shift from today’s agribusiness model—with the unpredictability caused by climate change and unsustainability of longdistance transportation—as inevitable. “Growing our own food locally will become a necessity,” explains Brian, with Pascal pointing to the rise in high-density agriculture, from shipping containers (freight farms) to urban warehouses. As Brian, an entrepreneur himself, puts it, the course is “a way to get our students introduced to an emerging market and an important skill.” Enter the new academic schedule, with longer class periods that allow for increased “lab” time—time for the hands-on experimentation
