Theme 3
Education
Overview
This cross-cutting theme focuses on leveraging the expertise from all RegenPGC objectives to provide educational opportunities impacting students ranging from urban pre-college and FFA and 4-H students living throughout Iowa to undergraduate and graduate students at multiple institutions.
Goal
Our goal is to create educational programs that will provide rich cross-disciplinary training and engagement opportunities for secondary school teachers and undergraduate and graduate students to meet the workforce education and training requirements needed to adopt successful perennial ground cover production systems.
Specifically, we will:
Undergraduate Courses
Develop instructional materials to introduce PGC systems into existing undergraduate courses
Research Experience
Develop a comprehensive research experience for undergraduates (REU) while leveraging the REU student experience to help increase interaction among the project objectives
Internship Program
Create a coordinated undergraduate in-semester internship program using principles from the REU, ensuring that these interns understand the larger context of their work
RET Program
Create a Research Experience for Teachers “RET” program to provide a research experience for secondary school teachers
Graduate Community
Develop an industry-informed and student-driven community that meets regularly to share ideas across objectives, take mentoring training together, and assist with the development of critical course materials. Learn more here.
FFA and 4-H Materials
Develop curricular materials related to PGC crop production systems for Future Farmers of America (FFA) high school students and 4-H participants.