Browsing by Author "Niewolny, Kim"

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Sustainable Agriculture Education and Civic Engagement: The Significance of Community-University Partnerships in the New Agricultural Paradigm
(2012-05) Niewolny, Kim; Grossman, Julie; Byker Shanks, Carmen; Helms, Jennifer; Clark, Susan; Cotton, Julie; Jacobson, Krista
Universities and colleges across the United States are making innovative strides in higher education programming to catalyze a more sustainable era of agriculture. This is clearly exemplified through the formation of community-university partnerships as critical illustrations of civic engagement (CE) for sustainable agriculture (SA) education. This paper explores the praxis of CE for SA education by focusing on the ways in which five land-grant universities (LGUs) with undergraduate programs in SA have developed and put into practice community-university partnerships. Drawing upon these programs and supportive literature, this article specifically attempts to describe the role and significance of CE for SA education, emerging community-university partnership models and their implications for prompting food and agriculture sustainability, and student learning and program assessment outcomes. We also reveal the many challenges and opportunities encountered by stakeholders involved in the creation and continuation of these programs and their subsequent coursework. Conclusions offer "real world" recommendations for other faculty, staff, student, and community stakeholders to implement and generate action-oriented scholarship for and with communities as a viable thread of SA education.
Sustainable agriculture undergraduate degree programs: A land-grant university mission
(2012-05) Jacobsen, Krista; Niewolny, Kim; Schroeder-Moreno, Michelle; Van Horn, Mark; Harmon, Alison H.; Chen Fanslow, Yolanda; Williams, Mark; Parr, Damian
There has been considerable growth in the number undergraduate degree programs in sustainable agriculture (SA) in universities and colleges across the country in the past 25 years. As a subset of this national trend, land-grant universities (LGUs) are emerging as catalysts in innovative SA program development, in part due to the LGU tripartite mission of education, extension, and research. This mission compels LGUs to develop undergraduate degree offerings to engage student, faculty, and community stakeholders who are increasingly interested in SA. In this article, which is an outcome of a gathering of faculty, staff and students from SA programs at LGUs at a workshop prior to the 4th National Sustainable Agriculture Education Association Conference in August 2011, we discuss the justification for SA programming at LGUs, the emergence of SA major and minor degrees at 11 LGUs to date, the common successes and challenges of current SA programs, strategies for improving existing SA programming, and systematic approaches for expanding SA education impact across institutional lines. We also introduce several additional topic-based articles that resulted from workshop dialogue that appear in this issue of the Journal of Agriculture, Food Systems, and Community Development, including civic engagement efforts in SA education through community-university partnerships, a critical documentation of the implicit inclusion of values into SA education, and efforts to internationalize SA curriculum.