All Soil Science graduate students,
I am contacting you to participate in a CanU Academy in Agri-Food Science. The attachment provides a brief description.
I met with a young lady from Human Nutritional Sciences who is acting as a point person for lining up the various modules and I had a good discussion with her. Apparently, there is already a Grade 6 and/or 7 CanU academy, so they are trying to expand it to include school age kids a year older. They are targeting agri-food and using a pizza as a central theme so they can incorporate all of the various ag faculty departments in figuring out the where all the ingredients originate. I thought it was a neat way to pull it all together.
The Departments of Soil Science and Plant Science would share Module 2 which runs on Oct 15 and 22 from 5:00 to 7:30 p.m. on both days. For Soil Science specifically, I discussed 3 potential topic areas we could cover; Soil Physical properties, Soil Ecology, Soil and Surface water. For the latter, I was specifically thinking about Mitch Timmerman's demonstration kit with the different soils, different sources of runoff and different residue covers. I saw it when I was on the MSSS tour. I have sent Mitch an email and I am waiting to hear from him. Mario has since made a suggestion that perhaps we could figure out how many of the various nutrients are contained in a 100 pizzas. Then, we could follow the nutrients through the soil. This would work well with Mitch's demonstration, if he is available.
On Oct 15 and 22, they would like to split the participants (40 kids, 4 chaperones) into 2 groups. Half would come to Soil Science on Oct 15 and the other half the following week (that is 20 kids each week). I thought we could set up the first 2 modules in the Ellis Building teaching labs and have Mitch's station set up in the equipment shed. That would mean that on each day, there would be 3 groups of 6 to 7 kids, each spending about 45 minutes at each station.
I would like to engage all of the Soil Science graduate students in this exericise. First, I would like some of you to work with Rob Ellis and Mario Tenuta to develop the first 2 modules. Then, I want to involve all the grad students on Oct 8, 5:00 to 7:30 for a "dry run" (i.e. have some of the grad students play the part of the high school kids who will be coming the following 2 weeks). Mitch would probably also want a graduate student to work with him at his station.
Lynda has booked Room 346 for Monday, Aug 17 at 1:30 p.m., so we can all meet to start getting organized for this academy.
Would you please put this on your calendar and plan to attend. Some of you have previous experience working with school kids and we would appreciate your advice and input. All of you are creative people with great ideas. So, everyone can contribute.
Thanks, Paul