Catching Up with CALS — March 6, 2024

Dean's Message — Addressing FCS, Ag Teacher Shortages

Mackay Junior-Senior High School agriculture teacher Trent Van Leuven recalled having a world-renowned expert on speed dial when one of his classes encountered something puzzling while dissecting the reproductive tract of a dairy cow. Van Leuven, ’09, got the answers he sought by consulting his former University of Idaho animal sciences professor, Amin Ahmadzadeh. Van Leuven, who is the 2024 Idaho Teacher of the Year, attributes much of the success he’s enjoyed in the classroom to the broad agriscience education he received while enrolled in U of I’s Department of Agricultural Education, Leadership and Communications (AELC), as well as the continued support of the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences (CALS). CALS collaborates with the College of Education, Health and Human Sciences (CEHHS) to address teacher shortages in two growing fields — agriculture and family and consumer sciences (FCS). Graduates of both programs emerge with a broad knowledge of their disciplines, uniquely preparing them to enter rural Idaho school districts as “utility players” equipped to tackle a variety of classes. Van Leuven, for example, must teach eight different ag-related subjects per semester — such as fish and wildlife, welding and agricultural economics.

CALS runs the only state-approved teacher licensure program in agricultural education, and 93 of Idaho’s 172 working agriculture teachers received either a bachelor’s or master’s degree from U of I. AELC recently added two new faculty members, and its student enrollment is growing steadily. Nine AELC students are currently completing their student teaching in agricultural classrooms throughout the West. Kattlyn Wolf, AELC interim department chair, anticipates the department will graduate 12 students in 2025, about 15 students in 2026 and about 20 students in 2027. AELC students take a host of courses across CALS, preparing them with a general understanding of a breadth of agricultural disciplines. Prior to graduating, AELC students are paired in classrooms with trusted past graduates, where the student teachers are observed by AELC faculty. Aspiring agriculture teacher Hannah Davis, for example, is now student teaching in Nez Perce. Davis has been assigned to teach greenhouse courses and feels well prepared thanks to the CALS courses she was required to take. “U of I does a good job of setting a foundation for people. They create teachers whose knowledge of agriculture is an inch deep but a mile wide,” Davis said. “If an agriculture teacher is at one school and moves to another one and they really want you to teach horticulture, I think it’s better to be exposed to those things so they don’t catch you off guard.”

AELC prepares agriculture teachers to follow a model with three overlapping components — classroom instruction, a student organization (FFA), and a supervised agricultural experience involving hands-on, real-world experiential learning activities. The economic impact of Idaho high school students’ supervised agricultural experience projects, such as completing a livestock project for a county fair, was estimated at more than $20 million in the past school year. Furthermore, about 1,000 FFA members visit the U of I Moscow campus each June to participate in the annual Idaho State FFA Career Development Events, and AELC employs the state’s FFA Association executive director, Clara-Leigh Evans. The result of combining these three circles has been graduates who are well prepared for the rigors of a demanding job and go on to have far greater career longevity than U.S. teachers in general.

The Margaret Ritchie School of Family and Consumer Sciences offers a similar teaching program — equipping aspiring FCS teachers with a broad knowledge base through a diversity of classes taught by the school’s experts. Aspiring FCS teachers may either earn a 30-credit teaching certification with an FCS emphasis or participate in a 60-credit FCS bachelor’s program that can be paired with teaching curriculum and a student-teaching experience through CEHHS. In 2025, the school also plans to expand upon its summer FCS “base camps,” which will provide continuing education opportunities for FCS teachers across every content area. The FCS teaching program is overseen by Professor Sonya Meyer and Trevor White, an academic advisor and peer liaison within the school. “That bachelor’s in family and consumer sciences is a great general degree that opens so many doors,” Meyer said. “We are the ones who teach life skills.”

These teaching programs require students to put in hard work across many areas of study. They’re certainly not for anyone looking for a shortcut. We happen to think that’s a good thing, given the importance of the work they do in preparing the next generation of community leaders, as well as the stability and versatility well-prepared agricultural and FCS teachers afford to their school districts. Our results speak for themselves.

Michael P. Parrella

Dean
College of Agricultural and Life Sciences

By the Numbers

CALS has 14,000 acres of land for research and teaching and operates 9 research and extension centers across Idaho. CALS faculty conduct 35% of the sponsored research at U of I and brought in $91.6 million in funds toward sponsored research in 2023. CALS employs more than 200 individuals with a research appointment. Limagrain Cereal Seeds paid more than $489,000 in wheat variety royalties for using varieties developed by the CALS wheat breeding program.

Our Stories

Grand Opening in Parma

Leaders with University of Idaho’s College of Agricultural and Life Sciences (CALS) and supporters dedicated a new laboratory in Parma on Feb. 20 that promises to advance crop science and technology, helping farmers adapt to a changing world.

More than 200 stakeholders attended the grand opening of the 9,600-square-foot Idaho Center for Plant and Soil Health, which replaces aging and dilapidated facilities at the U of I Parma Research and Extension Center. The university’s new state-of-the-art building contains laboratory space for research in nematology, pomology, plant pathology, microbiology and hops quality.

“This facility is going to give farm families and farm companies all over the nation and particularly all over the state of Idaho the tools they need to be survivors and actually thrive in the face of changing challenges, whether they be climate challenges, whether they be consumer challenges or whether they be all of the challenges that we know exist every day,” Gov. Brad Little, ’77, agribusiness, said during the ceremony. 

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Searching 'Sky Islands'

University of Idaho doctoral student Karina Silvestre Bringas and her advisor in the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences, Chris Hamilton, spent a month hiking unexplored areas of “sky islands” in search of undiscovered tarantula species.

Spanning from southeastern Arizona and southwestern New Mexico into northwestern Mexico, the Madrean Sky Islands aren’t islands in the traditional sense — they’re remote mountains covered with Madrean pine and oak forests, isolated by harsh deserts rather than water. And they are considered hot spots for biodiversity.

In support of their groundbreaking research, Bringas and Hamilton earned the prestigious Howard Hughes Medical Institute Gilliam Fellowship, which is awarded annually to graduate students and their advisors who advance equity and inclusion in science through their work.

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New IAMP Program Manager

As an avid home gardener who also tends to a residential fruit orchard and a few goats, Berkley Ridenhour raises much of her own food and is always trying new ways to improve her production efficiency.

Ridenhour will soon dramatically scale up her pursuits in sustainable agriculture as the new program manager with the University of Idaho-led Innovative Agriculture and Marketing Partnership (IAMP), formerly known as Climate Smart Commodities for Idaho.

IAMP is funded with a five-year, $55 million grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), representing the largest single grant in the university’s history. It will seek to build markets and increase adoption of climate-smart production practices on more than 200 farms throughout the state. U of I and its funded partners — including the Idaho Association of Soil Conservation Districts, the Nez Perce and Coeur d’Alene Tribes, The Nature Conservancy Agricultural Program in Idaho, Desert Mountain Grassfed Beef and Arrowleaf Consulting — hope to roll out the program this spring. Producers who wish to receive notification when the application period opens should email iamp@uidaho.edu.

IAMP has a goal of preventing 31,000 to 70,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalents from entering the atmosphere annually while offsetting emissions equivalent to the annual consumption of 6 million gallons of gasoline. The program offers producers of major Idaho commodities including barley, beef, chickpeas, hops, potatoes, sugar beets and wheat annual payments of $38 to $74 per acre for enacting designated sustainable agricultural practices, allowing producers to stack practices to increase incentives.

Covered practices will include cover cropping, cover cropping with livestock grazing, reduced or no-till, interseeding, precision fertilizer application and partial nitrogen fertilizer replacement with biochar, among others.

Ridenhour joined U of I on Nov. 16 and is based at the Moscow campus. Her duties include project management, administrative support, serving as a liaison with funded partners, assembling required quarterly reports for USDA, planning meetings and aiding in budget monitoring, among other responsibilities. Many details of the IAMP program are still being finalized.

Ridenhour appreciates that her job will give her the chance to do on-the-ground environmental work while providing direct support to farmers.

“It supports producers in trying new practices. It helps take out a little bit of the risk in trying something new that might be more climate smart,” Ridenhour said. “It can be hard to take that risk when it’s entirely your own investment and you’re not sure how it’s going to turn out. Hopefully the incentives are such that they alleviate some of that uncertainty or help farmers to try new practices more.”

Ridenhour holds a bachelor’s degree in English literature from Utah State University. She has relevant experience having worked for The Nature Conservancy for more than 12 years. Her first position with the nonprofit was as a conservation coordinator supporting a team involved in combating aquatic species in the Great Lakes. From 2018 until recently, she worked for The Nature Conservancy’s Canada Program, participating in Indigenous-led conservation projects, as well as Natural Climate Solutions projects with an emphasis on agriculture. In that capacity, she helped implement several large grants.

Unlike other programs that pay producers for trying sustainable agricultural practices, IAMP also entails sophisticated monitoring to gauge the environmental benefits of various practices in Idaho’s climate, conditions and soils. Furthermore, one of the funded partners, Arrowleaf Consulting, will aid in efforts to identify and develop markets and supply chains to fetch a premium for sustainably raised commodities.

Sanford Eigenbrode, a university distinguished professor of entomology, and Erin Brooks, a professor of agricultural engineering, co-lead IAMP. Extension staff have been attending agricultural conferences and other events for producers to raise awareness about the grant and say interest is strong.

IAMP is funded by USDA’s Partnerships for Climate Smart Commodities Program, award No. NR233A750004G038.

Faces and Places

Congratulations to the recent winners of the Governor’s Awards for Excellence in Agriculture. Jack Brown, who recently retired from U of I as a canola, mustard and rapeseed breeder, received the marketing innovation award. Lance Griff, ’03, agricultural science, is a third-generation farmer who has been an innovator in cover crops and no-till farming. Griff received the environmental stewardship award. Cory Kress, ’01, agricultural engineering, and his wife Jamie received the education and advocacy award. They operate a dryland farm in the Rockland Valley of Power County, and Cory is a past member of the Idaho Oilseed Commission and currently serves on the Idaho Wheat Commission. Jamie is a past president of Idaho Grain Producers Association and currently serves on the Executive Board of the National Association of Wheat Growers. Stan Boyd, who was the longtime executive director of the Idaho Wool Growers Association and has lobbied on behalf of several Idaho agricultural organizations, received the Lifetime Achievement Award.

CALS Dean Michael Parrella and U of I Extension economist Brett Wilder recently presented to the state’s House Agricultural Affairs Committee.

Tom Jacobsen, UI Extension educator in Fremont County, John O'Connell, CALS assistant director for communications and Michael Colle, associate professor in meat science, graduated from Leadership Idaho Agriculture as part of class 44.

The Plant and Soil Science Club traveled to Seattle recently to attend the annual Flower Festival, tour the Amazon spheres, browse the University of Washington's plant collections and visit the Volunteer Park Conservatory.

CALS faculty members Sanford Eigenbrode, Erin Brooks, Colette DePhelps, Ariel Agenbroad, Lorie Higgins, Jennifer Werlin, Mark McGuire, Louise-Marie Dandurand, Tim Ewers, Michael Strickland and Annie Roe have been nominated for the first annual Office of Research and Economic Development Awards. Recipients will be named on April 1. The awards aim to celebrate individuals who have demonstrated exceptional innovation, leadership and impact in their respective fields of research.

Congratulations to CALS Alumni and Friends awardees:

• Alumni Achievement Award — Carrie Clarich ’06 BS Animal Science, ’12 MS Animal Science
• Distinguished Alumni Award — Joe Blackstock ’87 BS Ag Ed, ’93 MS Ag Ed & Karl Umiker ’00 MS Soil Science
• Distinguished Associate Alumni Award — Laura Wilder, Friend
• Distinguished Retiree Award — John Mundt ’67 BS Ag Ed, ’73 MS Ag Ed, ’89 PhD Ed Administration
• Early Career Achievement Award — Sammi Jo Sims ’17 BS Ag Ed