Destination Areas (DAs)

Permanent URI for this community

https://hdl.handle.net/10919/78628

Destination Areas provide faculty and students with new tools to identify and solve complex, 21st-century problems in which Virginia Tech already has significant strengths and can take a global leadership role. The initiative represents the next step in the evolution of the land-grant university to meet economic and societal needs of the world.

Browse

Now showing 1 - 9 of 9

Assessing the Role of Cyberbiosecurity in Agriculture: A Case Study
Drape, Tiffany A.; Magerkorth, Noah; Sen, Anuradha; Simpson, Joseph; Seibel, Megan M.; Murch, Randall Steven; Duncan, Susan E. (Frontiers, 2021-08-19)
Agriculture has adopted the use of smart technology to help meet growing food demands. This increased automation and associated connectivity increases the risk of farms being targeted by cyber-attacks. Increasing frequency of cybersecurity breaches in many industries illustrates the need for securing our food supply chain. The uniqueness of biological data, the complexity of integration across the food and agricultural system, and the importance of this system to the U.S. bioeconomy and public welfare suggests an urgency as well as unique challenges that are not common across all industries. To identify and address the gaps in awareness and knowledge as well as encourage collaborations, Virginia Tech hosted a virtual workshop consisting of professionals from agriculture, cybersecurity, government, and academia. During the workshop, thought leaders and influencers discussed 1) common food and agricultural system challenges, scenarios, outcomes and risks to various sectors of the system; 2) cyberbiosecurity strategies for the system, gaps in workforce and training, and research and policy needs. The meeting sessions were transcribed and analyzed using qualitative methodology. The most common themes that emerged were challenges, solutions, viewpoints, common vocabulary. From the results of the analysis, it is evident that none of the participating groups had available cybersecurity training and resources. Participants were uncertain about future pathways for training, implementation, and outreach related to cyberbiosecurity. Recommendations include creating training and education, continued interdisciplinary collaboration, and recruiting government involvement to speed up better security practices related to cyberbiosecurity.
Boundary politics and the social imaginary for sustainable food systems
Niewolny, Kimberly L. (2021-05-02)
In this essay, Kim Niewolny, current President of AFHVS, responds to the 2020 AFHVS Presidential Address given by Molly Anderson. Niewolny is encouraged by Anderson's message of moving "beyond the boundaries" by focusing our gaze on the insurmountable un-sustainability of the globalized food system. Anderson recommends three ways forward to address current challenges. Niewolny argues that building solidarity with social justice movements and engendering anti-racist praxis take precedence. This work includes but is not limited to dismantling the predominance of neoliberal-fueled technocratic productivism in agricultural science and policy while firmly centering civil society collective action and human rights frameworks as our guiding imaginary for racial, gender, environmental, and climate justice possibilities for sustainable food systems praxis. She concludes by exploring the epistemic assertion to push beyond our professional and political imaginaries to build a more fair, just, and humanizing food system.
Brain-based learning: A synthesis of research
Bellah, Kimberly; Robinson, J. Shane; Kaufman, Eric K.; Akers, Cindy; Haase-Wittler, Penny; Martindale, Lynn (North American Colleges and Teachers of Agriculture, 2008-06-01)
The purpose of this study was to synthesize research as it relates to brain-based learning and its relevance to the agricultural education profession. Through a comprehensive literature review, brainbased studies were analyzed to create a historical timeline of the discipline, investigate teaching principles, articulate relevance, and identify potential future implications for agricultural education. The holistic approach to learning in agricultural education programs presents a ripe environment for action research with brain-based learning practices. Professional development with agricultural educators may be needed to further encourage and support comprehensive studies that investigate the precepts of brain-based learning.
Community food work as critical practice: A faith-based perspective through narratives
Ligrani, Rebecca; Niewolny, Kimberly L. (2017)
Community food work is a framework for understanding the interconnections and complexities of food systems issues such as farm sustainability, food access and health equity, environmental resiliency, and social justice. An emerging yet overlooked perspective of community food work is the role of faith-based organizations and practitioners. In this single case study of six faith-based practitioners focused on urban food security in Virginia, we use narrative inquiry to explore how they understand and perform their community food work from a faith-based and social justice context. Our methods included interviewing each practitioner to create stories of their everyday work, researcher-participant analysis of those stories, and a collective reflection session of the group's narratives. The final narratives not only point toward specific social justice values and practices aimed at addressing race and class inequity in the food system as significant elements of their community food work, but also created new space for practitioner reflection and discovery of the way white privilege and class-based assumptions can be uncovered and challenged in the work itself. In this way, the research describes what community food work looks like through a faith-based lens, while also showing how storytelling and narratives can be used as an approach to create possibility for critical reflection about power and privilege in our everyday practice. We conclude with suggestions for using storytelling and narrative inquiry in similar food system contexts as a strategy for community change.
Creating and Connecting Champions for Diversity in the Geosciences: Hearts of GOLD
Dixon, P. Grady; Quardokus Fisher, Kathleen; Myles, LaToya; Brinkworth, Carolyn; Kaufman, Eric K.; Simmons, Denise R. (American Meteorological Society, 2019-01-08)
Improving diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) in the geosciences requires a multi-level effort that builds knowledge and skills across the community at various stages of career development and progression. The Hearts of GOLD effort (GOLD: Geo Opportunities for Leadership in Diversity) focuses on professional-development for established scientific leaders in the geosciences, to give them the content knowledge, tools, and skills needed to become champions of change for DEI. By targeting scientists who are actively engaged and well-respected in the field, the project seeks to connect and expand the cohort of diversity champions who have power to make significant cultural shifts in their institutions, professional organizations, and across the geosciences community. Through professional development sessions called “GOLD Institutes,” participants engaged in facilitated sessions led by the Knapsack Institute. The GOLD Institutes were completed in July 2017 and July 2018 and hosted a total of 38 participants representing 27 institutions or organizations. Participants were nominated by colleagues, directors or deans, past students or mentees, or by themselves. Additionally, some participants were nominated by alumni of the 2016 NSF GOLD Ideas Lab, where the Hearts of GOLD effort was initially proposed. Results of the GOLD Institutes are currently being analyzed to determine the effects of the methods, and numerous experiences and insights will be shared to advance DEI strategies in the geosciences.
Developing scientists as champions of diversity to transform the geosciences
Quardokus Fisher, Kathleen; Kaufman, Eric K.; Calagna, Oriana; Myles, LaToya; Brinkworth, Carolyn; Simmons, Denise R.; Dixon, P. Grady (2019-06-13)
To address complex geoscience questions, communities with a variety of experiences and perspectives are needed in local workplaces and institutions across academia and government. To achieve this goal, geoscience needs leaders who are champions of diversity and who have positive attitudes toward others and act upon these attitudes to become change agents in advancing diversity and creating inclusive environments. We established a professional development workshop, Geo Opportunities for Leadership in Diversity (GOLD) Institutes, to provide geoscience leaders with the tools and skills necessary to be self-reflective of their own ideas and to promote diversity, equity, and inclusion in their respective institutions. Our objective was to equip senior geoscientists, who are at the core of local communities of practice (CoPs), with knowledge of diversity, equity, and inclusion theories and practices to lead change across the discipline. In this preliminary report, we investigate institute participants’ perceptions of allophilia (love of the other) and identify actions taken by senior geoscientists to promote diversity, equity, and inclusion within local CoPs. Results indicate that senior geoscientists who participated in the institute had high scores on the allophilia scale and took steps to integrate diversity, equity, and inclusion into their day-to-day activities, and in a few cases created new workplace support structures for diversity and inclusion. Future work will build on these results by refining professional development opportunities that target the needs of geoscience champions of diversity.
Extension and Advisory Services: Supporting Communities Before, During, and After Crises
Grove, Ben; Archibald, Thomas G.; Davis, Kristin (Virginia Tech College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, 2020-10-10)
Extension and Advisory Services (EAS) providers are important partners for communities to prepare for, respond to, and recover from shocks such as natural disasters and human, plant, and animal disease and pest outbreaks. EAS providers work long-term in communities to equip people with knowledge, skills, and technical resources to improve their livelihoods. EAS are provided by various actors including governments, nongovernmental organizations, private sector entities, higher education institutions, and other organizations. EAS often serve in bridging roles connecting resources from numerous actors operating in communities and are valuable conduits of information during shocks. EAS are seen as key partners in helping communities rebuild and strengthen food systems after the initial shock, given their long-term work horizons. There are numerous examples of EAS responding to crises around the world, such as HIV/AIDS, Ebola, Avian Influenza, malaria, and, more recently during the current COVID-19 pandemic. During COVID-19, EAS have undertaken an unprecedented shift to virtual and distanced programming as daily life has been disrupted through restrictions on movement and gatherings. EAS agents have been challenged to modify program delivery and remain effective in serving their clientele while navigating this new landscape. In this essay we explore examples of EAS supporting communities before, during, and after crises, and discuss implications for future EAS work, including considerations of lessons learned during the COVID-19 pandemic response.
Participatory praxis for community food security education
Niewolny, Kimberly L.; Schroeder-Moreno, Michelle S.; Mason, Garland; McWhirt, Amanda; Clark, Susan F. (2017)
Community food security (CFS) has a robust history as a social movement addressing the politics and practice of food access and availability. While CFS advocacy and policy activity are closely connected to grassroots efforts, the academic community has supported CFS goals in a number of ways. CFS intersects with similar food movements, such as food sovereignty, emphasizing a social justice agenda for achieving democratic social change in the food system. In our paper, we illustrate the teaching of CFS in higher education at the graduate level where masters, professional, and doctoral students seek programmatic and community-based research experiences rooted in the goals of food justice, health equity, and ecological sustainability. Drawing upon a participatory education and critical pedagogy philosophy, we describe our approach and outcomes in developing a graduate course centered on CFS with two institutions and stakeholder participation in central Appalachia. An interdisciplinary approach was taken using a food justice lens, with special attention given to rurality, race, and class as issues informing CFS work in the region. We illustrate how course themes, assignments, and community engagement aims were collectively developed by students, faculty, and community practitioners through the Appalachian Foodshed Project, a regional CFS project. We focus our insights learned through several processes: developing and offering a pilot course in food systems; conducting focus groups with graduate students from two institutions; and collecting course evaluations from the final CFS course we developed. Our paper concludes with suggestions for utilizing a participatory approach-as praxis-to create new opportunities for students, faculty, and CFS practitioners to learn together for food systems change.
Situating on-farm apprenticeships within the alternative agrifood movement: Labor and social justice implications
MacAuley, Lorien E.; Niewolny, Kimberly L. (2015)
The beginning farmer phenomenon offers an array of possibilities for facilitating social, economic, and political changes in the agrifood system. Apprenticeships within both formal and informal institutions are increasingly important in the education and social connectivity of beginning farmers. Although apprenticeship opportunities are popular for "new farmers," "aspiring farmers," and their on-farm hosts for a number of reasons, a critical approach is necessary in the design and nature of these experiences, in light of inequitable structural conditions that may reproduce potentially insurmountable barriers to new farm entry and sustainability. Drawing upon alternative agrifood movement discourse and social reproduction at work within critical traditions of sociocultural learning, we illustrate on-farm apprenticeship learning from a critical perspective in order to better describe and understand this form of beginning farmer education. We share findings from a mixed-methods empirical study of on-farm apprenticeship learning in Virginia, where we focus on the practices, structures, and institutional activity that inform on-farm apprenticeship experiences. This study sought to answer the questions: what kinds of on-farm apprenticeships are available, to whom, and in what ways? Also, what are important educational practices, structures, and/or institutions that support on-farm apprenticeship learning? Data are derived from qualitative interviews of host farmer/educators, on-farm apprentices, and new farmers who were recently apprentices; and from a quantitative survey of Virginia farmers who host apprentices. Our findings situate on-farm apprenticeship within a broader discourse about farm labor, as we open the discussion surrounding the relationship between difficulties experienced by small, diversified farms in meeting their labor needs, and the growing popularity of the apprenticeship model on individual farms. We also explore how cultural whiteness within alternative agrifood movements (AAMs) translates to low inclusivity of historically underrepresented groups, and consider how the low-or no-pay model for the tenured duration of the apprenticeship may affect structural barriers to entry for members of low socioeconomic groups, within on-farm apprenticeship and thus within beginning farmer education. Through the themes that emerged in our study, we posit considerations for social justice implications of on-farm apprenticeship, offer several recommendations for the practice and planning of on-farm apprenticeship, and lay groundwork for future exploration of the ways in which the apprenticeship model may reproduce equitable learning spaces.

Browse

Browsing Destination Areas (DAs) by Department "Agricultural, Leadership, and Community Education"

Results Per Page

Sort Options