Progress 09/01/16 to 08/31/17

Outputs
Target Audience:The audience that this initiative focuses on are the students at the University of Houston, Downtown (UHD). UHD is an urban campus that serves the city of Houston. Many of the over 14,000 students come from homes within the city limits. The ethnic diversity of the campus closely matches the diversity of Houston and is 41% Hispanic and 21% African American. In addition, a majority of UHD students are both the first in their families to attend college and are financially eligible for Pell grants. As such, programs such as the one we developed at UHD are automatically supporting minorities and students that are economically disadvantaged. This is the second year of this program. We spread the word about this year's application by sending it to relevant student clubs (UHD Garden Club and the UHD Environmental Club). We emailed information to faculty and sent a special message to the UHD Scholars Academy (SA). The SA is a program that supports nearly 200 talented students in the areas of science, technology, engineering and mathematics. We also advertised by word of mouth as some students had heard of the program from the previous semester. We had 9 applicants that met the requirements of the program and an additional student from last summer interested in being involved in the program again. Grant funds supported 8 of the students, we used funds from the UHD Center for Urban Agriculture and Sustainability to fund the 9th student and funds from another sustainability account to support the 10th student who was engaged in a second year of the program and served as both a participant and peer-mentor for the group. The students engaged in the second year experiential learning program were diverse in many ways. For this year we had 5 students from engineering technology and 4 from the life sciences. One student was a major in Interdisciplinary Studies with a strong interest in life sciences and sustainability. This year's cohort included 5 males and 5 females. The ethnic breakdown was 6 Hispanic students and 4 Caucasian students. Given that the percentage of Hispanics at UHD is 41%, our second year cohort at 60% Hispanic surpassed our goal of serving at least as many Hispanic students as are a proportional make-up of the UHD community. Using our external evaluator survey information we also know that his year 60% of the students (6/10) report being first generation college students and 40% self-reported coming from "social, cultural or educational environments such as found in rural or inner-city environments that has demonstrably or directly inhibited you from obtaining the knowledge, skills and abilities necessary to develop and participate in a research career." Sixty percent (6/10) of this year's cohort also self-reported "coming from a family with an annual income below federally established low-income thresholds (Pell grant eligible)." The focus of our program is two-fold. It is building new curriculum and giving experiential learning experiences through the new Center for Urban Agriculture and Sustainability. Great strides have been made this year in the area of curriculum. Our first year we taught a pilot class on sustainability. This year the course was officially added to the UHD curriculum and given a new title, SUST 2301, Fundamentals of Sustainability. The reason for the name change was to encourage students to take this as the first course if they are interested in getting a minor in Sustainability. The SUST 2301 was offered under its new name in summer 2017. As planned, we have developed our second course, SUST 3301 titled Renewable Energy Systems and it was also taught in summer 2017. Another one of our curriculum goals was to develop a minor in Sustainability at UHD. We hoped to start this in the second year of our program and complete by the third year. We are ahead of schedule on this initiative. The minor in Sustainability was approved by the university curriculum committee and is officially part of the UHD Curriculum. The minor has been designed so that it can be taken by any major at UHD with no hidden science pre-requisites. The minor has 3 required courses and then a course from a list in each of three categories: Environmental Science, Social Science and Business/Engineering. The three required courses are Fundamentals of Sustainability (SUST 2301), Seminar in Sustainability (SUST 4301) and Capstone Experience in Sustainability (SUST 4302). The seminar will be offered in spring and we are working to have it count as the seminar requirement in several other degrees. The Capstone Experience class could be service learning, research, internships or other projects with a focus on sustainability and must be approved by the new minor in Sustainability coordinator (Dr. Morano who is the principal director of this grant program). This year's experiential learning program was even more successful than the first year. One of our observations of last year was that the engineering technology (ET) students and the life science students were too segregated in their projects. The ET students focused on technology and life science students on biology experiments and there was less integration that we had hoped. This year we split the participants into 3 teams. Each team had both ET and life science/interdisciplinary students. The teams were given specific design goals for building aquaponics systems with both sustainable engineering and plant and fish design needs. Students were given specific instructions about working together and how each member of each team must be involved in all features of design, building and testing. This approach was wildly successful. The experiential learning program of working together in teams to design, build and use aquaponics systems proved to be rewarding for all students and they reported gaining not only new knowledge and skills, but improved team-work and confidence. The energy levels and positive engagement within groups and the entire cohort was much greater than the project director and co-director experienced last year. Although last year was great, we feel the experiential learning program this summer was even more impactful. Although not an official goal of this program, the summer 2017 program also did demonstrated innovative teaching methodologies. In early 2017 our university proposed internal grants for innovative programs that bring high-impact activities to the class room. Leveraging our ideas for the summer experiential program we proposed students in the program who would be taking SUST 2301 and SUST 3301 would also engage in the building of aquaponics systems and that aspects of the building of these systems would play a role in the curriculum of the courses. As such, we proposed that the learning about sustainable practices and renewable energy systems would be strengthened by actually building an aquaponics system that supports fish and plants and that runs off of solar power. The proposal for this was funded and we received some supply funds to supplement the supply funds available by the USDA NIFA grant. Therefore, we not only leveraged our grant to attain additional funds from the university but we developed and tested an innovative approach in high-impact practices at our university. Changes/Problems:This year of the program has been very successful. The new team format of the summer program created more integration between the students and will be continued. The external evaluator made two suggestions for improvement to better meet our specific objectives. First, it was suggested that we may want to consider ways to increase the student applicants from other areas of the university. Most of our applicants are still from the College of Science and Technology and we have a goal of preparing both science and non-science students. We plan to use all of our previous advertising techniques, but to also move the applicatorion process up earlier to increase diversity of majors as it may take longer for news to flow outside the college. Also, the PI and co-PI will send emails to faculty outside our college (that we know) and encourage them to have students that may be interested apply. This person encouragement from faculty appears to be much more effective than fliers or mass emails. The external evaluator also suggested a more targeted lunch discussion on graduate school. Although we did have many conversations with our students about graduate school, a more formal discussion topic on this will be included in our discussions with cohort 3 in summer 2018. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?Students in the summer experiential learning program haven been encouraged to present their research on and off-campus as appropriate. Meeting give students great professional development opportunities particularly when they are presenting. One student in the summer experiential learning program (engineering technology major Isaias Gonzalez) accompanied the co-PI (Dr. Tzouanas) to the July 25-28, 2017 meeting of the American Society of Engineering Education in Columbus, Ohio and engaged numerous professional development opportunities. Two students from the last summer program (biology majors Yarmilla Reyes and Leticia Villalobos) attended and presented a poster at the USDA NIFA Principle Investigators meeting in Albuquergue, NM Meeting February 16-18, 2018. The poster presented was 'Genetic Fingerprinting of kale varieties, Brassica oleracea." The USDA NIFA funding for UHD has supported the establishment of curriculum and experiential learning through the Center for Urban Agriculture and Sustainability (CUAS). This center has synergistically supported research in more areas of urban agriculture and sustainability. Below is a list of poster presentations at the 16th Annual UHD Student Research Conference that was April 7th, 2017. The student posters below either came out of work that was started during the summer experiential learning funded by this program. The list includes students who were members of our experiential learning programs (bold) and other students who became interested in research topics that were started under the CUAS and joined that research team. Benavides, A., Samake, S. and Morano, L. (mentor). Comparison of plant endophytic communities in heritage and modern corn, Zea mays. 16th Annual UHD Student Research Conference, April 7, 2017, University of Houston, Downtown, Houston, Texas. Espino, M., Wilson, G., Tzouanas, V. (mentor) and L. Morano (mentor). Mash tun batch process with bioreactor. 16th Annual UHD Student Research Conference, April 7, 2017, University of Houston, Downtown, Houston, Texas. Garcia, J., Huynh, C. and L. Morano (mentor). Assessment of two organic fungicides against rust infection in a community garden and molecular identification of a potential rust pathogen. 16th Annual UHD Student Research Conference, April 7, 2017, University of Houston, Downtown, Houston, Texas. Hain, A., Moreno, J., Huynh, C., Villalobos, L., Valdez, R., Reyes, Y. Garcia, J. and L. Morano (mentor). Comparison of morphological characteristics, genetics and nutritional data of multiple varieties of the plant Brassica oleraceae. 16th Annual UHD Student Research Conference, April 7, 2017, University of Houston, Downtown, Houston, Texas. Valdez, R., Reyes, Y., Tran, D. and L. Morano (mentor). Screening for Xylella fastidiosa across a collection of plant species in the Texas Gulf Coast. 16th Annual UHD Student Research Conference, April 7, 2017, University of Houston, Downtown, Houston, Texas. Villalobos, L., Hudson, A. and L. Morano (mentor). Plant nutrition evaluation in two leafy vegetables, Beta vulgaris var cicla and Lactua sativa. 16th Annual UHD Student Research Conference, April 7, 2017, University of Houston, Downtown, Houston, Texas. Between the second and third year of this program we will continue to pursue travel opportunities for our summer experiential learning students and this year's cohorts will certainly be presenting at the coming spring UHD Student Research Conference for 2018. As was a design of our program, students in the summer experiential learning are engaged in a number of professional development activities over the length of the program. This year we went on two field trips. One was to Westside high school in Houston where they have an active aquaponics systems under the guidance of a talented environmental scientist who then talked with our students at length about the design and development of their own systems. We also had a field trip to the Harris County AgriLife Research Center to learn about the agriculture research that is conducted both at the center and the outreach activities the center is involved in for the city of Houston. Students also had guest speakers either during lunch or during afternoon snack breaks to tackle specific topics relevant to not only their professional development, but to professional development within the areas of science and technology and/or sustainability. The Director of the UHD Career Center came and discussed the logistics of creating a resume or CV and the importance of networking to getting a job. Dr. Windy Lawrence, director of the UHD Center for Public Deliberation, led a discussion on the power of oral communication and public deliberation, particularly how it relates to topics in sustainability. Dr. Vida Robertson, director of the Center for Critical Race Studies and member of the English faculty, led a discussion on the power of writing in science including tips for good writing. Finally, Dr. Jerry Johnson, Asst. VP for the Office of Research and Sponsored Programs led a discussion on performance vs. master-based skills in determining your path toward a successful profession life. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?Results of the summer experiential learning experiences have been presented both off-campus and at the on-campus UHD Student Research Conference. The new minor which was approved ahead of schedule is being advertised on campus screens around campus. The initiation of the CUAS through this grant has led to numerous additional activities sponsored by the CUAS. We are now hosting the community courses and training for the Texas Master Naturalist Gulf Coast Chapter. The CUAS is also supporting Student Government Projects (funds awarded from the Provost office to the Student Government, but overseen by the CUAS). UHD communications has indicated they would like to run a large story on the CUAS and all their initiatives in a publication that goes out to UHD faculty, alumni and community members. This would disseminate to a large Houston communities about the activities that CUAS is engaged in. CUAS was able to get approval for a staff position, Sustainability Coordinator. With the help of the Coordinator we hope to engage the Houston Community in outreach. We already had a preliminary community meeting with nearly 30 community members in attendance as we brainstormed how the UHD CUAS could assist the Houston community with new curriculum (both academic and continuing education). Two additional initiatives through the CUAS that have the power to dramatically increase the dissemination of information are the new Student Government Association (SGA) Sustainability grants and a new podcast. Neither of these are directly funded by the USDA NIFA program, but they are the result of the energy the USDA NIFA program created through its support of the new CUAS program. The SGA Sustainability program allows students at UHD to run a sustainability-based program at UHD (10 projects to be funded) and the projects must have a community engagement component and some focus on sustainability. The value of this is that student will be bringing new initiatives to their neighborhoods which could have a powerful dissemination impact. The program PI (Morano) is also planning to start a podcast about Sustainability in fall of 2017 with links hosted from the CUAS website. This too will increase knowledge about important sustainable topics in Houston and disseminate information to a larger community. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?Goals for the next year are to continue our progress in curriculum development and experiential learning through the CUAS. We have established a new minor in Sustainability ahead of schedule. Although all courses have been approved all courses have not yet been taught. We have one additional course in Agricultural Food Systems which we will develop in summer of 2018. The new Seminar in Sustainability (SUST 4301) will be taught for the first time in spring of 2018. We will recruit our third year of cohorts for summer of 2018. Although we feel the professional development aspects of the program are very strong we plan to strengthen focus on preparing students for graduate education with an additional guest speaker. The number of synergistic activities that have happened this year through CUAS have been tremendous and although not directly related to the original activities of the grant they will support the goals of the grant and will therefore be continued. These include combine sustainability curriculum and high-impact activity of building systems in teams, funding from the school per student government so students can engage in their own sustainable projects, engagement of Houston community with CUAS to plan future initiatives.

Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals? The first general goal of this program was to attract and support undergraduate and graduate students from underrepresented group in order to prepare them for careers related to the food, agriculture and natural resources and human sciences of the United States. The percentage of the 10 students in our 2017 experiential learning program were 60% Hispanic, 60% below the threshold for low income, 40% from environments where they had trouble 'obtaining the knowledge, skills and abilities to develop and participate in research careers. Finally, 60% of the students were first generation college students. Our experiential learning program has given high-impact learning activities including professional development to 10 students of a diverse background that will prepare them for careers in food, agriculture, natural and human sciences. Change in knowledge increased for students in the experiential learning program and can be evaluated by the pre and post test administered by our external evaluator. Student reported knowledge gain in each of the areas was as follows: sustainable resources (went from 50% to 100%), buying local (90% to 90%, no change), ethical labor practices (50% to 80%), organically grown (80% to 100%), food deserts (60% to 80%), renewable energy (80% to 100%) and urban agriculture (40% to 100%). The last one is particularly exciting as knowledge about urban agriculture is particularly important for students like ours living in the urban environment. Change in skill increased for students in the experiential learning program. At the completion of the program the % of students that reported having no opportunities to participate in skills development through experiential learning dropped from 20% to 0%. Likewise, students saying they had had no professional development dropped to 0% and those saying they hadn't done any undergraduate research dropped from 40% to 0%. It is too early to measure the change in condition of more students engaging in graduate education or professional careers in food or agriculture, but we can measure perceptions or interest in these directions before and after the program. Five of the summer program students are interested in graduate or professional schools. Of the 5 students interested in employment after graduation, none of the 5 selected a sustainability/agriculture focus on the pre-survey, but three of them did on the post-survey. In the words of the external evaluator, "This is quite a notable shift and is almost certainly due to exposure offered to the students via EL CUAS." Our second goal of this program was to enhance the quality of postsecondary instruction within the disciplines of agriculture and sustainability. We developed new curriculum including permanent addition of the first course SUST 2301, Fundamental of Sustainability. We developed our second course, SUST 3301, Renewable Energy Systems and had the minor in Sustainability approved by the university curriculum committee. The change created by this goal is concreate new curriculum (new courses, and new minor) which will be available to every UHD student as of fall of 2017. Currently, this is a measureable change in the curriculum condition at UHD. A third goal of this program was to provide opportunities and access to careers in the public and private sector and align efforts in support of the academic development and career attainment. As reported above student perceptions were that they were exposed to experiential learning, professional development and undergraduate research. The % of students that felt they had no exposure in these areas dropped to 0%. Students were given numerous opportunities to interact with professionals with field trips and discussions. In this program we also hoped to engage students from very different disciplines so that they could have experience communicating and working together. This very much simulates what will be required of them in a real world situation. Comments indicate a positive experience that will likely be related to many aspects of their future including working with diverse groups. "This program was an overall great experience, by collaborating with peers outside my discipline it allowed me to gain a new perspective." "It was a very good opportunity to collaborate with students and faculty that I otherwise would not have had. I really enjoyed the reading for the sustainability class and the draw down book. I think the program is a great way to reach out to people that may not otherwise be exposed to the importance of sustainability and would be valuable to expand beyond the science and technology department." "This program was a great opportunity to learn new techniques as well as have hands on experience. While learning certain topics in class, we were able to apply what we have learned to make our project more sustainable." "This program surpassed all my expectations. I came out with a completely different view of the world and changed the industry I would like to work for. It has made me aware of the environmental issues we face and the things we can do to change them." Embedded within the goals are the 4 objectives. Objective 1 is to increase the number of science student competitive for graduate school or careers in agricultural or related fields of sustaibility. Objective 2 is to increase the number of non-sicnece students competitive in such fields. Objective 1 and 2 are both met by the new curriculum and experiential learning program. This year 5 engineering technology, 4 science and one interdisciplinary studies major have increased their competitve edge for graduate school or careers through the initiatives of our program, as outlined above. Objective 3 is to make collaborative multi-disciplinary bridges between USDA, local companies and non-profits. We did have a field trip to a Texas AgriLife Extention Office. We also had a field trip to a high school with an active aquaponics system. This June we sponsored a CUAS brainstorming meeting of the Houston community and made a number of tremendous connections with nearly 30 participants. We had representatives from the Houston mayor's office, Texas Parks and Wildlife, Texas Mater Naturalist, local urban farmers, a solar power company, local communty colleges and non-profits that support growing food and after-school activities. This new collaborative community group gives us numerous opportunities for future seminars, field trips and possible internships for our students. Objective #4 is to create an agricultural emphasis at UHD. The new curriculum with a Sustainability minor includes agricultural curriculum. The CUAS now supports the UHD Sustainabiilty Garden where undergraduate research takes place and a number of undergraduate research projets are underway within the CUAS. These research projects include studies on plant nutrition, genetic fingerprinting of kale varieites, studying plant pathogen of grapevines, comparision of organic treatments to treat fungal rust, studies of bioethanol production and building solar-powered aquaponic systems. Student poster titles are listed in the professional development section (below). In summary, the objectives of the program in second year showed good progress both with respect to experiential learning and curriculum development. The external evaluator gave very positive comments on the report of 2nd year findings and student survey results. The report reads, "Implementation of the program continues to be efficient and effective, with USDA as well as locally-funded students completing the program, and with course development and deployment occurring on schedule. Data with respect to diversity, knowledge gain, skills development, teamwork, and student satisfaction were all exemplary. Evaluation data indicates that EL CUAS administration and students should be commended for an exemplary second year."

Publications

• Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2017 Citation: Gilmore, J., Patterson, S., Morano, L. and V. Tzouanas. 2017. Sustainable Development and Engineering Technology. American Society of Engineering Education (ASEE) Conference Proceedings, July 25-28, 2017, Columbus, Ohio. Paper ID#18960, 18 pgs.

Progress 09/01/15 to 08/31/16

Outputs
Target Audience:The Target audience for this grant are all students at the University of Houston-Downtown (UHD). UHD is a public, urban university in the center of Houston. It is considered one of the most ethnically diverse liberal arts universities in the US with over 14,400 students with an ethnic make-up which is 41% and 21% African American. Additionally, many students at UHD are below the federally established low-income threshold and over half areFirst Generation College students. For this first year cohort we were able to recruit 11 students into the experiential learning program throughthe UHD Center for Urban Agriculture and Sustainability (CUAS). Our applications were advertised throughout the university via fliers, electronic message boards and through the UHD Scholars Academy (SA) newsletter. The SA supports approximately 200 students per year pursuing degrees in science, technology, engineering and mathematics through scholarships, field trips, mentoring and encouragement to do research. We received 11 applications from students that met the requirements for the program. Although the grant had funds to support 8 students we were able to use matching funds from the college to support the three additional students. Of the 11 students admitted one was a Social Work major from the College of Public Service and the other 10 were from the College of Science and Technology (CST). Students from CST included 5 Biology majors, 2 Biotechnology majors, 1 Biological and Physical science major and 2 students who were Engineering Technology majors. There were 6 males and 5 females in the 2015-2016 cohort and the ethnicity of the group was 2 Caucasians (1 male, 1 female), 2 Asians (1 male, 1 female) and 6 Hispanics (3 females and 2 males). Therefore, our program cohort in the first year was 64% Hispanic (which is higher than the UHD percentage of 41%). This program also targeted students in that are socially or economically disadvantaged. Given the composition of UHD students, this was easier to accomplish then it might be at other universities. Based on our survey data taken from our first cohort a total of 9 of 11 students or 82% in our first cohort were First Generation. 50% of thestudents self-reported from families below the poverty line. Given that one of the goals of this program was to increase opportunities in agricultural and sustainability research for students that were economically disadvantaged or ethnically not well represented in agricultural science, it is clear that this experiential learning program was achieving that goal. The diversity of Hispanic students in our program was greater than expected based on the UHD population (64% vs. 41%) and we gave opportunities to First Generation students than expected based on the UHD population (82% vs. 55%). In addition to the experiential learning we taught our first sustainability course titled Environment, Energy and our Sustainable Future. The course included the 11 students in the Experiential Learning portion and 4 additional students from across UHD that thought the course sounded interesting. These additional students included two Caucasian students and two students who were African/African American. Of these 4 additional students in the course, all 4 self-reported as coming from a family below the federally established low-income threshold, three self-reported coming from a social, cultural or educational environments and 3 of these 4 also came from a family where they were a First Generation college student. So, not only was the first year experiential learning program targeting a diverse group, the new course was also targeting a diverse group of students. The Experiential Learning of this first year focused on a project with a sustainability focus that also included science, technology and connection to the community. One of the larger summer projects we engaged in was building a solar powered irrigation system for a Houston community garden within Kashmere Gardens, a historically black community nearUHD. This community garden is overseen by Target Hunger which is a large non-profit organization that grows food for the Houston homeless. Through our summer project UHD has established a solar irrigation system and adopted three 40 foot garden beds to do future research at this garden. In addition, this project led to an additional connection with another new community garden in a poor area in Houston (Seeds of Change) where we will also be setting up future experiments. In summary, our goal of establishing relationships with the target audience of community gardens has also been very successful. Changes/Problems:For our target audience we proposed recruiting 8 students with the goal of having 4 from the College of Science and Technology (CST) and 4 from colleges outside CST. The idea was to create a broad cross-disciplinary cohort. Despite extensive advertising university-wide we had 11 students that met the requirements of the program and 10 were from CST. Therefore, we didn't have the original ratiowe proposed. Despite this we had engineering technology students working with biology and biotechnology majors and one social work major. Students self-reported that one of the things they loved about the program was the cross-disciplinary collection of students and learning to work together. This year we will continue to recruit from the entire university and we will again try to get a variety of students from CST and any students from outside CST that meet the requirements. We will not likely focus on the strict 4 and 4 numbers as we originally written in the proposal as long as a diverse group of majors are recruited for next year. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?? In spring of 2016 the 11 students in the experiential learning program had a small group training session with UHD's new career center specialist in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM). She reviewed resume and CV format, searching for careers, applying for programs and general interview skills. She also described the extensive resources available at the UHD Career Services Office and encouraged all students to take advantage of these and to contact her when they were getting ready to apply for positions (nearing graduation). On June 17, 2016 the 11 students and 2 faculty mentors toured the research lab of Dr. Grusak of the Children's Nutrition Center in the Houston Medical Center. This is a facility which is a joint facilityof the USDA ARS and Baylor College of Medicine. He gave a tremendous tour of the facilities along with presentations by both himself and his graduate students on the connections between plant biology, sustainability and human nutrition. He discussed the variety of careers that intersect all of the areas of human nutrition that he is engaged in. The students were very impressed with the trip and stated that it really opened their eyes about the variety of careers that are out there that they had no idea existed. During the summer program students and faculty mentors (PI and Co-PI) had big potluck lunch meetings every Friday. The rules of the potluck were that you personally had to make the dish you brought and it had to include at least one fruit or vegetable. Each of the 5 potlucks had a learning theme. In the first potluck we reviewed CVs or resumes that had been produced by the students previously in the spring. During the second potluck we discussed how to determine one's individual strengths and to direct those into important interview skills. The third Friday we had the topic of effective writing. We invited an English faculty member with expertise in this area (Dr. Vida Robertson). He gave a presentation and did activities with students. The fourth potluck we covered the topic of good oral communication. We invited a communication faculty member with expertise in this area (Dr. Jillian Hill) to run this discussion. Likewise, she gave a brief presentation and did exercises with the students. The last potluck of the summer program students gave oral presentations of their summer projects in front of the group which included a few additional guests including the Dean of the College. Given the collection of activities offered and the level of student engagement designed into these activities, the first year did have numerous opportunities for training and professional development. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?As the first summer has just finished up, results have not yet been disseminated to communities, but this is a goal for the fall of 2016. Results of studentprojects and new community connections will be uploaded to the UHD CUAS website. Some of the student projects can also be presented at scientific meetings. In October UHD students can present work at the UHD Graduate School and Internship Fair and all program students will be encouraged to present there. Additionally, some of the students will likely present off-campus this fall at meetings with either a sustainability or engineering technology education focus. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?During the next reporting period we will develop the next two courses proposed in the new curriculum. We will also submit the paperwork for a new minor in Sustainability which will be able to be taken by any student at UHD. We will engage a second cohort of students in our experiential learning program. We have new connections at two different community gardens and we now have a connection with an Extension Officer from Texas AgriLife Extension whose expertise is Urban Agriculture. We are going to work collaboratively with him this fall and winter to establish some scientific trials comparing plant varieties in urban gardens and comparing organic treatments for particular urban garden pests. This means that by next summer all biology students will be working collaboratively with a Texas AgriLife Extension officer in the development of an important scientific varietal or organic treatment trials. This new connection will greatly strengthen the career connections for students, particularly those from the life-sciences.

Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals? Our first goal was toattract and support undergraduate and graduate students from underrepresented group in order to prepare them for careers related to the food, agriculture and natural resources and human sciences of the United States. As mentioned in the Target section64%of the students in theexperiential learning program wereHispanic (which is higher than the UHD percentage of 41% and therefore higher than our goal). Also, 50% of the students reported "coming from a family with an annual income below federally established low-income thresholds (Pell grant eligible)" and 82% of the students in our program report being First Generation college students. In addition, we were able to enroll 11 students in this first year of the program which is three over the 8 funded by the grant. In this way we were able to leverage matching funds from the College of Science and Technology to support the Center for Urban Agriculture and Sustainability by supporting even more students and therefore more underrepresented groups in order to prepare them for careers. Our second goal was to enhance the quality of postsecondary instruction within the disciplines of agriculture and sustainability. We successfully developed and taught the first course in our program titled Environment, Energy and our Sustainable Future (NS 3390) in spring of 2016. Pre- and post-surveys of students' knowledge about related topics in January and again in July reflect that student perception of knowledge gain in these topics improved dramatically. For example, Sustainable resources (went from 27% to 100%), buying local (36% to 73%), ethical labor practices (36% to 64%), organically grown (55% to 91%), food deserts (18% to 100%), renewable energy (73% to 100%) and urban agriculture (27% to 91%). Our third goal is to provide opportunities and access to careers in the public and private sector and align efforts in support of the academic development and career attainment. One way we did that was to focus on skills development. Details of the opportunities are in the following section, but this goal was successful because throughout the course of the program the students self-reported that they had increased opportunities in experiential learning (82%) , professional development (91%) and opportunities for doingscientific research projects (91%). Students were asked to provide (in short-answer question format) "one thing that you have learned by participating in this program." While there were several interesting answers, ranging from the very specific (i.e., "how to install a solar panel") to the more general (i.e., "that renewable energy is awesome!") a few comments about teamwork seemed to strike at one of the grant's key purposes of having students from multiple backgrounds working together to solve a problem or address a need in sustainability of urban agriculture. For a flavor of the teamwork comments, note the following two verbatim comments: There are many things however one will be the collaboration between biology and engineering technology. It was interesting how we worked together to accomplish our goal without each group knowing much about the subject of the other group simply because of the different majors, it was so interesting seeing how all our minds worked together to accomplish something and we were each from different backgrounds. Capabilities to work as a team The students were given the opportunity to comment on the experiential learningprogram (short-answer question format) and these responses were overwhelmingly positive. Two particularly thoughtful ones that speak to the value of the EL CUAS program are provided verbatim below: This program was awesome. I was able to truly see the real problems the world as a whole is facing now. I also understand now that there must be so much more involvement in the sustainable background to get things moving the way they are supposed to in order to have a safe and healthy environment for the future. This program was very interesting. At first i had no interest in participating in this program and just joined so i could do something during the summer (Because that is what i was interested about the program was the internship and the help they program gave with professionalism in presentations, etc..). But while taking the class my eyes opened to problems i personally did not know were there. The class was a real eye-opener. I liked how we were able to work with a big group of people. Helps to create connections with them and you get to know them almost to a personal level. Overall if i could participate in this program again i would do it. My Future-self thanks this program for setting "its" mind in the right path towards making a change in the future. In summary, the all of the objectives for the first year were accomplished and the results of the program with respect to cross-disciplinary student engagement curriculum development and skill attainment to improve knowledge and skills to attain future career goals were in keeping with our planned goals. Students were engaged and excited about the collaborative, hands-on projects in sustainability and urban agriculture, the program made valuable new community connections for next year and we have completed and taught one course toward the new Sustainability minor at UHD. In the words of our external evaluator "Y1 of UHD's USDA CUAS grant should be counted as a success. Implementation was swift and effective, with a full cohort plus 3(!) having already completed the program, and with one of its proposed courses having been created and delivered. Data with respect to diversity, knowledge gain, skills development, teamwork, and student satisfaction were all exemplary. Evaluation data points to the need for EL CUAS administration to be commended for a stellar first year."

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