UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Two faculty members in Penn State’s College of Agricultural Sciences have received funding to support the development of innovative curricula under the college’s Harbaugh Faculty Scholars program.
Justine Lindemann, assistant professor of community development and resilience, and Ricky Bates, professor of horticulture, received awards under the program, which was created by a gift from Penn State alumnus Earl Harbaugh and his wife, Kay.
Income generated from the endowment is combined with funding from the college’s Office for Undergraduate Education to help faculty develop innovative teaching and learning methods. Faculty members who demonstrate a commitment to creativity and wish to cultivate new, innovative curricula are selected for the program.
“Since its inception, the Harbaugh Faculty Scholars program has enabled faculty members in our college to enhance teaching and offer unique and inventive learning experiences to students,” said Tracy Hoover, associate dean for undergraduate education. “The visionary support of Earl and Kay Harbaugh that makes this program possible helps to keep the college on the leading edge of land-grant undergraduate education. We look forward to seeing successful outcomes from the innovative curricula developed by this year’s Harbaugh Scholars.”
Lindemann will use her award for a project titled “Mapping Student Engagement: Building Civically Engaged Classroom Communities.”
“Student engagement has become a priority for contemporary universities, especially given the strong correlations between student engagement and student success,” Lindemann said. “But research on student engagement in the classroom has lagged behind practice. Classroom mapping offers a potential way to bridge this gap.”
She noted that classroom mapping is based not on the physical location of objects or people, but rather patterns of engagement between the people who occupy a classroom space and the social and spatial production of that space. “The resulting maps constitute visual representations of interactions between instructors and students, students with each other, and students and their environment,” she said.
Lindemann’s Harbaugh Scholar proposal calls for the continued development of an alternate research methodology based on classroom mapping. She plans to translate the findings into teaching tools that can be integrated into a course throughout the semester.
“This research and practice deploys classroom mapping to encourage instructors to think critically about the spatiality of their teaching, students and classroom,” she explained. “In other words, how does classroom layout interact with and influence both teaching processes and learning outcomes? How do methods of instruction over the course of a class period or the semester impact student willingness to engage with their peers?”
Lindemann said the project also is aimed at developing more democratic and equitable teaching methods that encourage students to think of themselves as members of a classroom community, with associated responsibilities and accountabilities to themselves and their peers.
Bates’ award will support “Reimagining Postharvest Physiology: Experiential Learning and Course Globalization as a Framework for Improved Understanding of Sustainability,” a project designed to enhance a course on the postharvest physiology of horticultural crops by integrating a travel component and hands-on, experiential-learning delivery methods.
“In addition to improving student learning outcomes within the discipline, the ultimate goal is to strengthen the critical link between key postharvest concepts, such as reducing food waste and increasing global agricultural sustainability,” Bates said.
Bates taught the course for the first time in spring 2022, adding a few at-home postharvest activities to facilitate student engagement — a feature to which students reacted enthusiastically, he said.
“I discovered that the topic of postharvest physiology lends itself to a variety of experiential learning activities and case studies that can help students develop critical thinking skills and better equip them to solve future problems,” he said. “Also, postharvest physiology and technology are critical to food system sustainability. The global nature of reducing food waste, its crucial link to global food security, and its place in sustainable agriculture are themes our students are keenly interested in.”
With the Harbaugh Scholar award, Bates plans to develop in-class demonstrations and at-home student experimentation highlighting key concepts, such as the role of temperature on produce shelf-life, changes in fruit due to chilling injury, novel seed storage techniques and produce preservation methods. He said he also intends to include content covering “low-tech” postharvest strategies common in developing countries, based on his experience conducting research in Southeast Asia.
In addition, he will incorporate a spring-break study trip to Florida to visit two organizations — ECHO’s Global Farm and the nongovernmental organization Cultivate Abundance — that work with growers in the U.S. and abroad to provide knowledge, training, technology and other resources to address food insecurity.
“Both these organizations can provide unique insights and real-life context for students on issues such as appropriate postharvest technology, regional food supply chains, ‘food deserts’ and more,” he said.