Su leading USDA project to help students pursue careers in climate-smart agriculture

The project is headed by Jianzhong Su, professor and chair of the UTA Department of Mathematics, and is funded by a three-year, $500,000 Agricultural Workforce Training grant from the National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA), a federal agency within the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA).

The project, “Developing an Alliance for Training and Apprenticeship in Climate-Smart Agriculture (DATA-Ag)”, aims to equip students from community colleges and underrepresented groups to pursue careers in agriculture with the objectives of expanding and improving workforce training through student engagement; curriculum development and faculty preparation; and building a regional agricultural alliance among Hispanic Serving Institutions (HSIs).

The project will address NIFA’s goals by increasing the number and diversity of students who pursue careers in agriculture, enhancing students’ educational experience, and creating a technology and data savvy workforce.

Su is joined on the project by Keaton Hamm and Dengdeng Yu, UTA assistant professors of mathematics, and Jaime Cantu, UTA adjunct professor of engineering. The project team also includes engineering colleagues Jose Espiritu and Heidi Taboada from Texas A&M University at Kingsville, and Delia Valles-Rosales from New Mexico State University, as well as partners at community colleges in Texas and New Mexico, including Tarrant County College.

“I am excited to be part of this workforce development project,” Su said. “The project team will work with the USDA Natural Resource Conservation Service and other partner community colleges to develop training, mentoring and developing curriculum in climate-smart agriculture, and use data-driven technology to serve agricultural needs while it reduces climate impacts from farming.”

The team plans to enhance agriculture workforce development through things such as climate-smart agriculture symposiums, faculty workshops, a USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) apprentice program, online introductory modules, and in-person and online curriculum learning. The team will introduce agricultural curricula for students on community college campuses, in-person and remotely, which will enable students to gain the knowledge and skills to work in agricultural fields.

“This grant is geared toward creating new opportunities for students to be introduced to data-driven agriculture and will create robust pipelines of students from high school and community colleges through four-year colleges like UTA to be able to pursue high-impact careers in this area,” Hamm said.

Areas the project will cover include agriculture data analytics, data-driven natural resource conservation, and agricultural planning.

Undergraduate and master’s students from UTA, Texas A&M at Kingsville and New Mexico State will be recruited to work on research in agriculture data science, serve as peer hosts for faculty workshops and annual symposia, and lead peer mentoring groups for community college students, in which they will share their experience in research and internship programs and their success stories in four-year universities, and provide guidance for community college students to transition into four-year universities.

“The project is intended to connect college students in urban areas with agricultural industries that are increasingly requiring statistical and data analysis skills,” Yu said. “This is an exciting opportunity for me as I have been working on the development and application of cutting-edge statistical machine learning methods for analyzing complex data. These methods can be essential for analyzing agricultural data.”

Added Hamm, “I got involved with this grant because of the significant work being done here at UTA on introducing data science and machine learning techniques into agriculture, and because I am excited to help students and faculty create and pursue new opportunities in this space. I look forward to helping with our faculty training workshops and student research workshops over the next few years.”

Online training modules will be developed by merging agricultural curricula from New Mexico State and practices from NRCS with data analytics from UTA and Texas A&M at Kingsville. The modules will include agricultural data science, agricultural logistics, agricultural economics, and agricultural technology.

UTA will host a Climate Smart Agriculture Workshop on May 16-17, with Su serving as organizing committee chair. The workshop will include presentations; panel discussions; new curriculum development in agricultural data science, economics, logistics and technology; USDA NRCS intern program and research opportunities at universities; and faculty professional development. 

Topics to be covered during the workshop include mentoring students in climate smart agriculture; Increasing STEM participation from underrepresented and underserved groups; fostering networking among NRCS, universities and community colleges; career pathways for community college STEM students; and a federal pathway program. Register to attend at https://math.forms.uta.edu/view.php?id=36611 by May 2. There is no cost but registration is required and attendance is limited.

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