Feature

How A SURGE in Horticultural Awareness Can Motivate the Next Generation of Advocates for Agriculture

By Dr. Sharon Jean-Philippe, Dr. Natalie Bumgarner, Edward “Bear” Moran, Rebecca Hughes, Alenna Fletcher, Spencer Wood, Gabriella King and Allison Padovani

Student Engagement to Grow the Next Generation of Agriculturally-aware Professionals

The Summer Undergraduate Research Group Experience (SURGE) is a new program offered by the University of Tennessee (UT) that is providing a novel way to introduce and engage undergraduate students to research opportunities at the college level. The Exploring Sustainable Urban to Rural Agriculture Practices (E-SURP) Initiative was funded by SURGE in fall 2019 for implementation in 2020. Due to COVID-19, the first teams were deferred until summer 2021. The purpose of the E-SURP initiative was to focus on small-scale food crop research and experiential learning opportunities for non-traditional agriculture students while integrating educational outreach for similar audiences. Essentially, this project was designed to engage and teach students currently underrepresented in agriculture in the process of educating members of the public who may well share their previous lack of agricultural knowledge and awareness. Through these linked research and outreach goals, students gain knowledge and experience that addresses key awareness gaps of their own in the areas of food production, forestry, and natural resource management while providing a platform for participants to educate others and assist agriculture and natural resources professionals in better understanding and connecting with new and underrepresented audiences.

The goal for SURGE is simple: identify and invite undergraduate students who are unlikely to enter research to be introduced to undergraduate research during the summer (Photo 1), and to explore what research opportunities can look like. Many different UT faculty are advancing the SURGE mission and have partnered with the UT Leadership Excellence Achievement Diversity (LEAD) academic, inclusive initiative to provide an avenue for first-generation and minority students to participate in undergraduate research. Students participating in SURGE are paired with a team who together, are introduced to and fostered in the scientific method and principles of research for the duration of the program. Students also receive guidance and support from one or two faculty mentors. There are several projects that students may apply to and each team, composed of up to eight students, then sets out to investigate prominent questions in the disciplinary fields that reflect their respective projects.

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A Novel Approach to Undergraduate Research Engagement

Perhaps SURGE’s most defining quality is the unique way that the teams are composed. Not only are team members less likely to have entered undergraduate research on their own, but participants are purposefully chosen to build an interdisciplinary team. The diversity of not only students’ backgrounds, but also their chosen studies, makes room for tremendous creativity in solving research problems. In research, this creativity and diversity is invaluable. Once teams are established, the holistic approach means that each student has the power to be informative to the whole group. SURGE allows students to gain experience in working in groups to achieve a goal. The diverse and interdisciplinary nature of the teams further reflects contemporary academic and workplace environments setting the stage for how future problems are most likely to be approached to be solved effectively. SURGE offers students a way to explore research in a supportive, guided environment that grows participants’ ability to work as a contributing member in diverse, interdisciplinary, and group settings.

The Tale of Two Projects: Student Teams Engage in Selected Research Aims

During the summer of 2021, the E-SURP inaugural student cohort included interdisciplinary team members recruited from among freshman and junior undergraduate students studying majors in Plant Science, Biology, Economics, Computer Science, Environmental and Soil Science and Language and World Business (Photo 2). This unified team cohort began with the overarching goal of developing a response to selected problems presented within the E-SURP project objectives. During the summer, the students traveled across Tennessee to visit different urban farms and community gardens. Students were able to see multiple examples of how these gardens were operated and how garden staff interacted within their various communities. Applying what they learned through observations, the E-SURP participants developed two projects entitled Urban Agriculture: Do Soil Tests Tell the Whole Story and Rainbow Garden: Cultivating Community.

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The team that was picked to examine Urban Agriculture: Do Soil Tests Tell the Whole Story was focused on understanding food insecurity within a small urban city. To begin, the team took soil samples from four locations across Knoxville, which included garden and landscape plots at the Knoxville Botanical Gardens and Arboretum (KGBA), UT Organic Farm, University of Tennessee campus, and from several residential backyards. Their soil sampling efforts were intended to gather baseline information about urban soil profiles that were intended to eventually inform and promote opportunities for small scale urban farming. Students spent the summer putting their soil knowledge in practice by preparing an urban site and growing food that ultimately became connected to the second E-SURP team project. Fourteen vegetables/herbs were planted and grown at the UT Organic Farm and KBGA from June through August of 2021 (see Table 1).

The Rainbow Garden: Cultivating Community project established a model for providing urban farm-to-table education at the local community level. The community chosen were the Knox County residents who lived in the area surrounding KBGA. Project 2 participating students planted two small plots at KBGA containing a diverse array of edible plant crops (Photo 3). Crops were selected that provided a range of visual and sensory attributes highlighting various colors, textures, and scents to demonstrate the tremendous array of food that can be grown and prepared, even within an urban environment (Table 1). Once plots were established, team members watered, weeded, and cared for the plants in their plots. The produce that they grew in their urban farm plots was used to support community outreach.

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Community Engagement and Outreach That Showcases SURGE Students as Informed Educators

To bring the experience full circle, the final key component for student participants was for the teams to develop an outreach activity that promoted community engagement to educated community members about urban agricultural practices. Program attendees would learn about the program and also be shown different ways to prepare common local horticultural crops, including vegetables. The re-united E-SURP team developed a Zucchini workshop that was hosted on site at KBGA. Through the workshop students were led by their faculty mentors in developing a program to show how zucchini, an easy-to-grow and healthy vegetable that grows vigorously, is easily prepared as food, and eaten in a variety of recipes (Photo 4). The students created fliers which were distributed through the KGBA that promoted the upcoming workshop. Working with Jammin’ 99.7 WJBE Radio (Photo 5),

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the team also wrote and recorded a radio ad to reach out and attract participants from the regional community. E-SURP hosted the Zucchini workshop on July 31, 2021 with 10 women community members in attendance range from 50 to 80 years of age. The workshop was a success for attendees who learned about the workshop through the radio advertisement. At the workshop, four of the students prepared fried zucchini and zucchini bread, which provided hands-on evidence about how easy it is to prepare zucchini (Photo 6). Participants also got to tour the KBGA garden plots, learned about crop care and maintenance, and received a loaf of zucchini bread that was prepared by the E-SURP students during the workshop (Photo 7).

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