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From STEM to STEAM!

"The pool of potential candidates for the agricultural disciplines is no longer a relatively homogenous group of young people who grew up on farms. That number is diminishing, while the student population has grown increasingly diverse in terms of age, background, and culture. The diverse and broader student body is generally unaware of the multi-dimensional and challenging nature of the agricultural disciplines and the exciting career opportunities open to them, despite evidence that many students have an interest in a variety of scientific, business, economic, environmental and social issues related to food and agriculture. The problem is that educators have not helped students make the connection between those issues and a degree in agriculture.

In many ways, agriculture is intertwined with other disciplines in the natural and social sciences, with agriculture professionals using similar approaches and systems as those in other fields. Agriculture now so thoroughly combines basic and applied aspects of the traditional STEM disciplines of science, technology, engineering and mathematics that the acronym might rightly expand to become STEAM, joining agriculture with the other fundamental disciplines."

Recommendations for Change in Agriculture Education

1. Strategic planning

Strategic planning should involve a broad array of stakeholders with an interest in undergraduate agriculture education, including faculty in and outside agriculture colleges, current and former students, employers, disciplinary societies, commodity groups, local organizations focused on food and agriculture, and representatives of the public. The plan should be revisited every 3 to 5 years to shape change, evaluation and adaptation.

2. Include Introductory Courses that serve multiple populations

By incorporating agriculture in courses outside agriculture with team-taught and interdepartmental introductory courses in a variety of majors, agriculture colleges can bridge the many domains that can contribute to a broader understanding of agricultural issues.

3. Broaden the undergraduate student experience

Integrate opportunities for a variety of transferable skills including communication, teamwork and management. Participate in undergraduate research, outreach and extension. Participate in internships and other experiential opportunities outside the institution. Gain exposure to international perspectives including learning-abroad programs and international perspectives in coursework.

4. Prepare faculty to teach effectively and develop new courses and curricula

Support faculty development at the institutional, local, regional and national levels. Prepare the next generation of faculty by providing appropriate training to graduate students and post-doctoral researchers. Ensure that responsibility for faculty development rests not only with individual faculty members but with departments, colleges and institutions. Leverage existing resources or provide additional resources to support development of new courses, curricula and teaching materials. Resources needed include faculty release time, support for teaching assistants, workshops and use of education materials and technologies.

5. Provide substantive support for exemplary undergraduate teaching

Reward high-quality teaching, curriculum development, mentoring and other efforts to improve student learning, including rigorous hiring, tenure and promotion. Implement new tenure-track faculty appointments that emphasize teaching and education research in a discipline. Reward excellence in teaching with education and research grants. Professional societies should raise the profile of teaching in the disciplines with support and rewards for teaching and sponsored education sessions and speakers at society meetings, workshops on teaching and learning, education-focused articles and dissemination of teaching materials.

6. Connect for support, opportunities and student pathways

Develop connections between four-year colleges and universities, community colleges and land-grant institutions. Establish and support joint programs and courses relevant to agriculture and develop pathways for students pursuing agricultural careers.

7. Outreach to elementary- and secondary-school students and teachers

Expose students to agricultural topics and generate interest in agricultural careers and public perceptions. Programs to consider include:

• Agriculture-based high schools
• Urban agricultural education programs
• Summer high-school or youth enrichment programs in agri
• Partnerships with youth-focused programs (4-H, FFA and Scouting)

8. Partner to facilitate coordination between food and agriculture

Include representatives of industry and other employers on committees, advisory boards and in strategic planning. Exchange programs can enable food and agri professionals to spend semesters teaching and working at academic institutions and enable faculty to spend sabbaticals working outside academia. Student opportunities in nonacademic settings can be expanded with internships, cooperative education programs, summer opportunities, mentoring and career programs, job shadowing and other experiences.

9. Reviews should be updated to include these recommendations

Accreditation, grant proposal reviews, department reviews, institutional reviews, etc. that include strategic direction in their policies and procedures will provide a strong incentive for implementation. Develop a checklist of items that should be used by any review of programs, curricula, departments, colleges or institutions.

Summary

This addresses strategic planning processes, but does not address content of education such as green and sustainable practices. By engaging a variety of stakeholders in the strategic planning of tomorrow's agricultural best practices, it is hopeful that a long term outlook will include these innovations and developing methodologies.

These recommendations are from "Transforming Agricultural Education for a Changing World", by Committee on a Leadership Summit to Effect Change in Teaching and Learning, from the National Research Council of the National Academies.

More information is available at www.nap.edu Read the book online

The intersection of earth and civilization.
Restoration is Paul Hawken's key theme. 
WiserEarth.org

Because of the recession and a new generation of workers entering the workplace, talent recruitment and benefits are changing...at the workplace, and at both ends of the career ladder.

New benefits such as flex time to give back to the community, and a green workplace are growing in popularity to meet the motivational needs of both senior employees and new workers entering their chosen career paths.

Two large groups of employees, Boomers and Gen Y are driving innovative changes in work policies and benefits.  For example:

CVS/pharmacy, the retail division of CVS Caremark

As one of America's largest pharmacy chains, CVS has stores in every region of the country--and in every regional climate. In 2004 CVS created its Snowbird Program to let experienced store employees move seamlessly among CVS locations according to their seasonal preferences. As the program's name implies, many of the participants are mature workers who enjoy wintering in southern states and summering in northern ones. Since the program started, over 1,000 employees, ranging from retail clerks to pharmacists and managers, have enthusiastically participated, earning CVS a high-profile award from the American Society on Aging.

Time Warner

This cutting edge media and technology company has developed a mentoring program that engages people on both ends of their careers.

Some of the company's senior executives were challenged to stay at the forefront of a rapidly evolving new-media landscape. To raise their awareness of digital media, Time Warner launched Digital Reverse Mentoring--a program in which tech-savvy college students mentor senior executives on emerging digital trends and technologies such as Facebook, Twitter, and other Web 2.0 applications. In addition to imparting technical skills, Gen Y mentors provide Boomer mentees with a peek into the values, consumer behaviors, and communication styles of the younger generation.

Read more about changing "talent management" progress at Harvard Business Review.

I hadn't herd a good solution to California's budget woes until today.  In an article by Ellen Brown, you get a very different picture than I've seen in the media.  Here' an excerpt that summarizes the infrastructure of the problem:

"Among the banks rejecting California's IOUs are six of particular interest: Citibank, Union Bank, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, U.S. Bank, and Westamerica Bank. These banks are interesting because they are six of the seven depository banks in which the state of California currently deposits its money. (The seventh is Bank of the West, which loyally said it would accept the IOUs indefinitely.)

...according to the California Treasurer's report, as of May 2009 the state had aggregate deposits and investments (in these banks) exceeding $55 billion.

And to add insult to injury, three of these six banks actually received federal bailout money from the taxpayers, something that was supposedly done to keep credit flowing to the states and their citizens. Citibank got $45 billion in bailout money, Wells Fargo got $25 billion, and Bank of America got $45 billion, not to mention guarantees of $300 billion for Citibank and $118 billion for Bank of America. When Governor Schwarzenegger asked for a loan guarantee for a mere $6 billion to bolster California's credit rating, on the other hand, he was turned down. Californians compose one-eighth of the nation's population.

When the state's appeal for aid was rejected by the banks, California State Treasurer Bill Lockyer said he was "disappointed."

He and other state leaders should show their disappointment with their feet. California could pull its deposits out of those depository banks refusing its IOUs and put them instead in its own state-owned bank, following the lead of North Dakota, which now has the only state-owned bank in the country.

Set up in 1919 to escape Wall Street predators, the Bank of North Dakota has been generating low-interest credit for the state and its residents for nearly a century. North Dakota is one of only two states (along with Montana) currently able to meet their budgets.

A state-owned bank could be fast-tracked into operation in a matter of weeks. With over $17 billion available to deposit in its own bank, California could create $170 billion or more in credit--enough not only to meet its budget shortfall but to fund many other much-needed projects; and rather than feeding an ungrateful Wall Street, the bank's profits would return to the state and its people.

---

Read the full article at YesMagazine.org -- an excellent online magazine!

Ellen Brown is an attorney and the author of eleven books, including Web of Debt: the Shocking Truth About Our Money System and How We Can Break Free. She can be reached through her website at www.webofdebt.com.

It might not be "socialism", but what we are seeing not only in the US, but across the globe could be somewhat similar in concept:

State capitalism is an economic system in which governments manipulate market outcomes for political purposes. Governments embrace state capitalism because it serves political as well as economic purposes--not because it's the most efficient means of generating prosperity. It puts vast financial resources within the control of state officials, allowing them access to cash that helps safeguard their domestic political capital and, in many cases, increases their leverage on the international stage. But state capitalism also stems the rise of globalization, because to varying degrees it hampers the flow of ideas, information, people, money, goods, and services within countries and across international borders.

The rise of state capitalism

As the Cold War stumbled to a close, the belief that governments could micromanage national economies and generate prosperity seemed dead. The dynamism and market power of Japan, the United States, and Western Europe--fueled by private wealth, private investment, and private enterprise--appeared to have fully and finally established the dominance of the liberal economic model. As these countries' governments privatized businesses and pensions, companies such as Exxon Mobil, Microsoft, Toyota Motor, and Wal-Mart Stores feverishly sketched out global expansion plans. Globalization became a household word.

But even before the still-developing global financial crisis had shaken the foundations of faith in free markets, the determination of a new generation of emerging-market heavyweights (many of them politically authoritarian) to chart their own courses toward prosperity and power ensured that public wealth, public investment, and public enterprise would make a stunning comeback.

The engines of state capitalism

Yet, despite the massive state interventions in economies across both the developed and developing worlds, many corporate leaders and investors act as though globalization remains the dominant paradigm. That is a mistake. In fact, the new importance of the state had become obvious well before the onset of the current crisis. Energy markets provide a good example.

The story extends well beyond energy. Across a broad range of economic sectors, China and Russia are leading the way in the strategic deployment of state-owned enterprises, and other governments have begun to follow their lead. In defense, a growing number of emerging-market governments--power generation, telecom, metals, minerals, and aviation--not content with simply regulating markets, are moving to dominate them.

Such state-corporate activity is fueled in part by the emergence of a new class of sovereign wealth funds. States with large holdings in the currencies of other countries are establishing ever larger risk-taking funds meant to maximize their return on investment--and their political influence. With the global credit squeeze making funds harder to come by, sovereign wealth funds have become even more important for the financing of state capitalism.

The global recession has accelerated the trend of state involvement in markets as governments around the world spend billions to stimulate growth and bail out vulnerable domestic industries and companies.

Winners and losers As the landscape shifts around them, international companies and investors will discover that the large-scale injection of politics into market processes will produce its own set of winners and losers. Because political factors unique to each state will determine the response to each domestic economic slowdown, countries with relatively strong political fundamentals will have a better shot at a quick recovery.

Given the vast sums its government can spend on fiscal stimulus, China will likely emerge from the global recession before most of the developed world.

In Brazil, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has over the past several years forged a durable consensus in favor of disciplined macroeconomic policy.

Second-order effects

There are other implications of these trends worth considering.

We're likely to see new restrictions on the access to certain foreign markets for some companies.

• Tit-for-tat protectionism will remain a serious threat until the global recession comes to an end.
• Social upheaval will pressure politicians to turn increasingly toward a familiar and reliable tool: subsidies.
  
• Some of the regulatory changes will favor domestic firms... and SOME domestic firms.

Read more at McKinseyQuarterly.com

Every job can be a greener job by engaging EVERY employee, EVERY supplier, EVERY customer in energy efficiency and natural resources conservation.

By implementing cost-effective energy efficiency projects, annual utility bills can be reduced up to 20%. The simple reasons are that efficiency upgrades reduce annual maintenance costs, increase cost savings, conserve resources and reduces greenhouse gas emissions.

Here are additional ways EVERY job can be a greener job:

1. Save Energy
2. Drive Clean and Drive Less
3. Use Green Energy
4. Recycle and Cut Waste
5. Save Water
6. Buy Green
7. Build Green

Need a boost to get you started:  try the website coolcalifornia.org for more information and ideas about incentives, resouces, and regulatory compliance kicks in your "buts!"

http://coolcalifornia.org/article/money-to-get-you-started 

The California Green Economy map features more than 2,200 businesses statewide in four categories--energy generation, energy efficiency, green building and transportation--that are likely to grow as California transitions to a low-carbon economy.

Companies on the map can be sorted by city, county and congressional district. The top five California  counties are:

Los Angeles County - 398 companies

San Diego County - 208 companies

Orange County - 202 companies

Santa Clara County - 173 companies

Alameda County - 131 companies

"To our knowledge, this is the first time that a map of California's green companies has been published online, creating a visual dynamic resource for people to better understand what a green economy looks like," said Tim O'Connor, an attorney and California climate change analyst at the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF).

Southern California alone has more than 1,000 green companies, according to the Los Angeles Greenprint report, which details how the implementation of Green LA and Solar LA initiatives proposed by Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa are expected produce high-quality green jobs for people living in the Los Angeles area.

Green LA by the LA DWP

Implementation of Green LA will be overseen by the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, the largest public power utility in the country and the utility that uses the most solar energy nationwide. The plan calls for fighting global warming by reducing greenhouse gas emissions 35% below 1990 levels by 2030 through the use of renewable energy, conservation, new green building standards and strategic land use planning.

Solar LA

Solar LA calls for growing the region's green economy by adding 1.3 gigawatts of solar power by 2020, enough to meet 10% of L.A.'s energy needs and more than is currently available nationwide.

"Los Angeles and Southern California are uniquely vulnerable to climate change because of existing pollution problems, our coastal setting and overstretched water supplies," said Erica Fick, an EDF clean energy fellow based in Los Angeles, who co-authored the report. "Green LA and Solar LA will be a shot in the arm for the entire Southern California economy, creating a lasting upswing in the manufacturing, construction, technology, and "green" service sectors."

SOURCE: Sustainable Business  and Environmental Defense Fund (EDF).

It takes an inside champion to get an organization started on a greener pathway.  You can practice your leadership skills at the same time you develop new job skills AND green your own workplace environment by initiating a green program.  And you don't have to do it alone.  The San Francisco based Connect the Dots nonprofit is making it easy for you by providing an easy to implement system just for nonprofits!

Connect the Dots disseminates environmental sustainability practices to nonprofit organizations to help organizations meet their social missions in an environmentally responsible manner. They provide the guidance nonprofit organizations need to realize their desire for environmental responsibility. Now nonprofit organizations can undertake the path towards sustainability and truly maximize their care for the communities they serve.
 

The Green Start Program

The Connect the Dots consulting program, the Green Start program, concentrates on high impact, minimal effort conservation practices to "jumpstart" organizations towards sustainability.

Initially, they act as an extension of an organization's staff, planning and taking action on its behalf, including scheduling audits with existing programs, creating action lists and implementing them, setting up and/or facilitating an internal "green team" group, developing a strategy, and setting up and monitoring savings.

Over time, as organizations acclimate to using our tools (e.g. action worksheets, monitoring tools, etc.), they take over their own planning, execution, and tracking of their green program.

For 3 months, Connect The Dots partners with nonprofits to serve as "personal trainers" to address the most beneficial greening processes:

• Waste Management

• Energy & Utilities

• Environmentally-Preferred Purchasing Policy

• Education & Outreach

• Tracking & Reporting

To promote ongoing changes, the Connect The Dots' methodology integrates planning and tracking tools to help nonprofits make informed decisions about environmental sustainability.

CONTACT:
Connect The Dots
1442 Florida Street
San Francisco, CA 94110
415.830.5858 or 888.666.0031
www.connectthedotsnetwork.org

Need a starting point to look for a job...or green or sustainability consulting gigs?  Try this list of innovators in the sustainability niche. They're not all green...and some don't make any claims...but they're trying.

Here's a list of innovators...

1-800-GotJunk
Amway Corporation
Best Buy
Brandia Central
CarbonPass,
gConscious
Cohn & Wolfe
Coca-Cola
Connectivity Consulting
Desert Glory Limited
DOMANI
EBay
Edun Apparel Ltd.
Enlightened Brand
Envirobrand
Evenson Design Group
FITCH
GlobeScan Incorporated
GOOD
Havas Media Intelligence
Heifer International
HOTEL SAFARI GATE
HP
Interface, Inc.
J. Ottman Consulting
J.D. Irving, Limited
Johnson & Johnson
Marks and Spencer
Massechusetts Convention Center Authority
MeadWestvaco
Mohawk Industries
Morrison & Foerster LLP
Moxie Design Group Limited
Natural Logic Inc.
NatureWorks LLC
NAU
New Leaf Paper
Office Depot
Pepsi-Cola North America
Proctor & Gamble
RecycleBank
Smith Design
SustainAbility
Sustainable Value Partners
The Centre for Sustainable Design
The Coca-Cola Company
The Right Environment
The TATA Group
Under the Canopy
Unilever
UPS
US Dept. of Agriculture
Valley Forge Fabrics
Wal-Mart
WWF