The interdisciplinary nature of biology in the 21st Century requires new skill sets and has led to calls for overhauling the ways we teach the subject. One promising way to transition biology education is to emphasize connections between science training and challenges faced by students and their communities, making science relevant for students to increase interest and engagement. Urban agriculture is one potential activity that can engage students in introductory-level biology classes while teaching core skills and concepts. While many college and university campuses now have campus gardens or farms, we hypothesize that these resources may be underutilized for teaching and research. In order to test this hypothesis, we analyzed the American Association for Sustainability in Higher Education (AASHE) Sustainability Tracking Assessment & Rating System (STARS) database. We quantified how many institutions reported having a campus farm or garden, and how many institutions reported using these gardens in research or teaching.
Results/Conclusions
Out of 288 institutions in the STARS database, 270 (94%) reported having one or more campus farms or gardens. Of these institutions, 33 (12%) reported using the gardens for research, and 120 (46%) reported using gardens for teaching. There was no significant difference among categories of institution (associates, baccalaureate, masters, doctoral/research) in the percentage of institutions using campus gardens in teaching or research. Courses utilizing campus gardens represented a wide array of disciplines, with environmental science/environmental studies being most common. Less than 4% of institutions reported engaging introductory biology classes in garden-related research activities. To better facilitate the use of campus gardens in undergraduate biology education, we created the Training Undergraduate Biologists through urban Agriculture (TUBA) Research Coordination Network through NSF’s Undergraduate Biology Education program, with the goals of (1) developing and sharing curricula using urban agriculture to teach biological principles and (2) developing and implementing quantitative assessments that measure relevant learning objectives.