(194g) Development of Middle School STEM Classroom Lesson Plans and Afterschool Program Activities to Support USDA-Sponsored Project on Alternative Crop Bioenconomy

The Sustainable Bioeconomy for Arid Regions (SBAR) project is a USDA-funded coordinated agricultural project (CAP) between the University of Arizona, Colorado School of Mines, Colorado State University, New Mexico State University, Bridgestone Americas, and the USDA Agricultural Research Service. SBAR focuses on development of the feedstock, processing, and logistics of two alternative crops for the desert Southwest: guar (Cyamopsis tetragonobola) and guayule (Parthenium argentatum). As one of nine USDA regional biofuels and bioproduct CAPs, SBAR includes research, education, extension, and outreach components. SBAR research components include plant breeding and agronomic trials, value-added co-product development, and sustainability modeling. The extension and outreach components include demonstration plots, farmer workshops, extension publications, and 4-H youth camps and programs.

The SBAR education component focuses on workforce development to enable suitable people to fulfill the jobs needed in the developed bioeconomy, specifically to create and disseminated STEM education materials at the middle school level. Graduate student fellows (4 in NM and 6 in AZ) were paired with public middle school teachers to draft and vet classroom and afterschool program activities and materials. Prior to the school year, fellow/teacher pairs attended a week-long science concept orientation, followed by a week of professional development to translate the STEM concepts into suitable lesson plans for middle school students. Fellows, mostly engineering and science majors, assisted in the classroom for at least 10 hrs./wk. to develop their own communication and teaching skills. Deliverables for fellows included a working draft of an SBAR-related lesson plan, with input from their mentor teachers, and formal/informal format hands-on activities. Two of the SBAR fellows worked with their teacher mentors to start an after-school program called “Guardians of the Biosphere” (GOB). Activities for GOB to date have included food calorimetry, biofuel synthesis, giant bubbles (surfactants), and aquaponic agriculture, all with discussions of laboratory safety and engineering principles.